Dive Brief:
- “Wonder,” a new film from Lionsgate Entertainment, premieres this Friday and to promote the release the studio partnered with Jigsaw, an Alphabet tech incubator, and MediaMonks to create Choose Kindness, a Chrome extension which turns hurtful comments and copy on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and turns them into messages of kindness reported Adweek.
- The extension has three levels of moderation: kind, kinder and kindest and it automatically covers abusive content with a banner including copy such as, “Kindness is contagious.” Users have to mouse over the content to decide if they want to reveal the hidden abusive text or not. The tool uses machine learning to find offensive content and was created with Jigsaw’s Perspective technology. The campaign launched on World Kindness Day and along with the Choose Kindness extension includes Snapchat ads and additional social media elements.
- Conversational chatbot development studio imperson also partnered with Lionsgate for a Facebook Messenger experience promoting "Wonder" with an interactive conversational experience that lets users find inspirational and empowering content, access information about the movie and purchase tickets to see the film, per news made available to Marketing Dive.
Dive Insight:
Lionsgate is taking a highly interactive approach to is marketing for "Wonder." The Chrome extension fits into the happiness theme of the film by altering users’ experiences with content and comments on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, all platforms known for exposing users to hurtful or derogatory language. The partnership with imperson includes interactions with a bot that include delivering enlightening quotes and phrases promoting kindness, courage and inspiration as well as posing a series of questions to users, giving them the opportunity to choose kindness as an answer and to share their own content.
The basic thematic background for the "Wonder" campaign dovetails with a current marketing trend around positivity, a position brands like Tecate and 3 Musketeers have taken as the social and political environment become increasingly divisive. It's no coincidence that the film and its marketing support are being released during the holiday season, a time when marketers typically place a bigger focus on uplifting messaging.
Lionsgate's focus on kindness could resonate more deeply with consumers simply because they are drawn to positive messaging. One quantitative example is a recent list of the top ten Q3 breakthrough video ads from TV and digital video analytics firm Ace Metrix that found the highest combined scores based on attention and likeability were ads that featured compassion, kindness and ingenuity, putting those spots in the top 1% of all ads.
Evan Fisk, VP of digital marketing at Lionsgate described "Wonder" as “contagiously happy” and said the studio wanted to bring that positivity and kindness to social media feeds scrolled through all day, in an interview with Adweek.