Reed Pop Culture Group and Lucas Films needed a Florida agency to help them drive ticket sales for their Star Wars Celebration V convention slated for mid August of 2010. Presales of event tickets were lagging and they really need to pump up the interest in the event locally to dramatically increase walk up ticket sales from local residents.
We created the “Welcome to Lando” campaign after the Star Wars character played by Billy Dee Williams. An integrated attack with PR at its backbone, supported by outdoor, broadcast and digital advertising, an interactive/social media buzz component and guerilla.
Acropolis turned on its PR machine and went to work pitching local media.
In conjunction with limited paid advertising utilizing radio and digital outdoor, the Acropolis team created the welcometolando.com, a website authored by a fictional persona, Scott Moon. Scott Moon used welcometolando.com to urge visitors to sign a web based petition to change the city of Orlando’s name to Lando, all the while promoting the convention. Scott Moon reached out to Star Wars fans through this site as well as Twitter and Facebook, utilizing a strategy targeting influencers with large followings on both networks. Limited paid advertising also utilized to promote welcometolando.com through Facebook ads and Google Ad Words.
To further support Scott Moon’s efforts, the Acropolis team utilized guerilla tactics throughout Orlando to create buzz and increase web visitation by Orlando residents.
The campaign was a resounding success. Acropolis PR used the force and was able to garner over 100 placements in the media, ranging from local magazines and newspapers including the Orlando Sentinel, Orlando Business Journal, The Tampa Tribune and La Prensa, to 9 local and nationally syndicated tv news and programs including WESH 2 News and the Daily Buzz, which themed an entire episode around Star Wars Celebration V. The estimated media value of the placements is in excess of $1 million.
Additionally, the social media buzz campaign exceeded all its goals. Within a 2-week period over 1,000 people signed the online petition. Welcometorlando.com received over 1,000 Facebook “Likes”. Our Scott Moon persona garnered over 1,000 followers/friends on Facebook and Twitter. The total impact of the campaign on Twitter topped out at 2.4 million people. Total impressions on facebook peaked at 3.6 million. 10,000 unique visitors and 160 distinct web domains linked to welcometorlando.com drove over 116,000 hits to the site. Acropolis is strong with the force indeed.
