Sometimes, an idea that takes a brand in a surprising and different direction, can get people excited… and sometimes excited people get cold feet. This was a fun concept developed for the Toronto International Film Festival that almost made it into production.
For the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival, we were asked to come up with a promotional campaign that would reach new audiences.
We developed a campaign that focused on having the audience self-identify as their favourite genre. The ticket mnemonic with “Admit one” tagline was a play on words, instructing the festival to admit films of that genre, but also giving the viewer permission to “admit” to their cinematic guilty pleasure. Rather than using strict “Academy” film genres, we opted to go for more colloquial terms, to make it feel more like a grass-roots campaign.
We envisioned a teaser campaign prior to the launch, asking the question, “WHO ARE YOU?” The campaign would then launch with an extensive postering campaign, with the posters being mounted using staples instead of glue, in order to encourage people to steal the ones they liked. T-shirts would also be available for every genre, allowing people to further “self-brand” themselves with the festival nomenclature. The campaign would have branched out into print, film trailers, the Web and social media.
The visual pun could even be extended to the festival volunteers’ t-shirts, which could read “I AM VOLUNTEERING.”
Ultimately, the festival directors couldn’t get past the “I AM” statement, believing it was too close to a long-extinct beer campaign slogan (despite a very different execution), so this concept unfortunately died before launch.