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Universal promotes thriller Ouija with photo competition on PicCollage

Universal Pictures is integrating its upcoming thriller Ouija with mobile application PicCollage to engage users in a photo-collage competition while driving awareness for the film. 

Partnering with mobile advertising company MediaSpike, PicCollage is enabling users with a sticker pack to participate in the competition. Ads for the film will also be visible on the platform, and users can click on the direct link to watch the movie trailer.

?PicCollage was a great vehicle to support this campaign for Ouija because it enables deep engagement around the core elements of the movie via a branded sticker pack and collage contest,? said John McCrea, CMO at MediaSpike, San Francisco.

Picture perfect
Timed conveniently with Halloween, the premiere of the film and the corresponding competition will allow users to share photos of their Halloween costumes and use the sticker pack to amplify those photos.

Universal encourages users to submit as many times as they want and can submit photos through Oct. 31. The hashtag #apparitions is being used in the campaign, which is encouraged to be used when posting submissions.

PicCollage will shout out to the winner of the competition on its platform.


The campaign is targeted towards teenagers and young adults, specifically females, and aims to drive trailer views and awareness for the film.

The film hits theatres Oct. 24.

Second screen interactivity
Universal Pictures has found success in mobile involvements before.

Earlier this year, Universal leveraged a photo-editing application to target a specific audience of younger females for its movie Endless Love, and the campaign resulted in more than seven million engagements and more than 10,000 hours of total brand-engagement time.

The romantic drama particularly appealed to the segment of consumers who use photo-sharing apps, so Universal leveraged the Aviary app to hit the right audience. The app lets users edit photos, and for this campaign users could add Endless Love themed stickers, frames and filters to their photos (see story).

Television networks are also using mobile in similar ways to promote their shows.

CW?s campaign promoting the premiere of ?The Flash? put on a burst of speed for mobile consumers as a large number of them played a game that followed a video ad and engaged with calls to action. 

Besides engaging with a rich-media end card that included a "Catch The Flash" mini-game following a video ad, users were invited to tap as fast as they could to catch The Flash on the screen and could tap to watch longer-form video from the show and add the inaugural episode?s data and time to the calendar on their mobile device. The AdColony-engineered campaign, which averaged an overall engagement rate of nearly 40 percent, underscores the importance of developing mobile-first executions and targeting them accurately (see story).

The use of a photo-sharing app gives the film an extensive social presence given its large user base.

?This is a 100 percent mobile execution, leveraging PicCollage, because it is a hit mobile app with 70 million downloads,? Mr. McCrea said.

Final Take
Caitlyn Bohannon is an editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer, New York