Spec Campaign - Chicago Film Festival

In 2019, Ogilvy Chicago were brought on by the Chicago International Film Festival to rebrand the prestigious competition. For each of the past 4 years, Ogilvy has launched a city-wide campaign to promote the fest. Here is my pitch for the 2023 edition.

Theme

The past two years of CIFF themes have sought to make the festival more accessible by bringing cinema into the lives of everyday Chicagoans: 2021’s “Life, Scripted” narrated daily happenings and made them a movie, and 2022’s “Life, Subtitled” built on this approach by using the democratizing force of subtitles as the entryway. While both years were incredibly successful, 2023’s theme should take the next step.

To do so, this year’s campaign should remind would-be attendees that it is not only our own everyday lives that can mirror the drama and grandeur of cinema – movies themselves reflect our lives. From the cafés of Paris to the jungles of the Amazon and the alleyways of Tokyo, those flickering images on the screen show us unknown people in far flung places, yet despite the distance, we look up and see life as we know it to be. Cinema unites people across cultures, and the best movies – and the best film festivals – take us places we didn’t know we needed to go. That’s why this year’s theme should be:

where have you been?

Cinema transports us to every corner of the globe from the comfort of our local theater, meaning the world is never more accessible than it is through film. With that in mind, 2023’s theme should highlight the places cinema can take you, while also serving as a call to action, telling Chicagoans to get to the festival before they miss out on another great year of movies.

OOH Campaign

To bring the campaign to people, the festival should once again buy out bus stops and billboards around the city. But this time, they should feature sketch drawings (staying on-brand with the festival’s black and white palette) of different places where previous films shown at the festival have been set. Sketches of Tokyo (where 2021 Oscar winner Drive My Car begins), New York City (the setting of Martin Scorsese’s first feature film, Who’s That Knocking at my Door, which premiered at CIFF in 1967), Mexico City (where Alejandro Iñárritu’s Gold Hugo Award Winner Amores Perros takes place), or Nice (where legendary French New Wave director Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night is set) can highlight the many places cinema takes us, and invite viewers to come along. All the while, the theme’s call to action will motivate would-be audience members to buy their tickets – they won’t want to miss out on another year.

See below for a few examples of how they might turn out.

City sketches generated using Runaway.

Festival Trailer

Every year the fest releases a trailer to remind viewers of the power of movies. 2021 saw a script themed trailer with VO from Jon Hamm, while 2022’s trailer featured Rainn Wilson’s musings from the perspective of subtitles themselves.

This year’s trailer should highlight film’s ability to transport us, and given the focus on words for the past two years, should take advantage of the visual possibilities suggested by the “where have you been?” theme.

With VO from an up and coming star like Ayo Edibiri – of The Bear fame, a nice nod to the city – the trailer should start where cinema did, in France. Using a black and white, pencil sketch animation style (see below), it should bring viewers to the 1890’s and the invention of film by the Lumière Brothers, and make a fun reference to the apocryphal Arrival of a Train short film that supposedly had first time cinema goers convinced a real train was about to crash into them.

Then, the trailer should take us through film’s rapid adoption around the world, with sketches showing how a little machine on a tripod, and the prints that resulted, made its way to Germany and Japan, India and the United States, and all the way back to France again.

via GIPHY

@rafaeldearaujo on GIPHY, found via the Eyecandy library

From there, rapidly advance through the history of movies, and blend the pencil sketch style with some real life footage (see an example below). If possible, use footage of some of the past CIFF movies referenced in the OOH campaign to create a synergy between the two touchpoints. Invite audience members to take a trip somewhere they didn’t know they wanted to go, and ask them to grab their popcorn and settle in, it’s going to be a wild ride.

via GIPHY

@shotopop on GIPHY, found via the Eyecandy library

“Last Night was a Movie” Social Campaign

To get users involved on social media, the festival should encourage audience members to post their thoughts with the hashtag #lastnightwasaCIFFmovie when describing all the great on-screen stories they see at the fest. The phrase is popular on the internet, and to make this tongue and cheek reference to its ironic status in today’s culture will appeal to a younger demographic and help them get interested in the fest. It’s use on the internet more generally will also broaden the reach of posts about the festival.

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