To stay ahead in a crowded summer market, Nickelodeon and Paramount partnered with advertisers to help make M. Night Shyamalan's "The Last Airbender in 3D" the film event of the summer. With the help of the Click 3x Entertainment team, they have succeeded in creating one of the most aggressive and prolific integrating marketing campaigns in recent history.
The movie has proved to be an instant success standing at #2 in total ticket sales, and earning $70.6 million at the North American box office in its first five days. More importantly it is illustrating to the industry that an Integrated Image campaign, when tied successfully into promotional machine of networks, studio, and the Internet, has unprecedented strength in lifting up a brand.
Our first involvement came in early April, when we were approached by Cartoon Network to create three live action and animated promos that cross-promoted the film alongside Topps' candy products, including Topps' Push Pop, Baby Bottle Pop, and Juicy Drop Pop, as well as shots of an original online game on Candymania.com, entitled Candyquest.
The live action portion, directed by Creative Director Ders Hallgren, featured a young boy seated at his computer who is brought into the Airbender world via a wind effect transition from the film. This animation was created by the Click team with the help of ILM's official The Last Airbender VFX and CG tooklit.
Integrated Cartoon Network and Topps Candy spot by Click3x Entertainment from Adam Coleman on Vimeo.
Later on, we enjoyed teaming with our friends at MTV on a new series of network interruptions. For this set we used the Airbender theme of controlling the elements, in this case water and fire, to transition from the network broadcast into the film's trailer.
Utilizing MTV's signature M Moment device we gave The Last Airbender a significant presence on MTV for the week leading up to release date. This was accomplished specifically in two ways, through programming transitions, as well as standalone moments.
For the programming delivery we customized the M Moment to transition us from the end of a show segment (such as The Hills), directly into a :30 TLA trailer. For the standalones, we created unique :10 - :15 spots that were simple M Moments with TLA footage that transitions us to an In Theaters page.
The Last Airbender Interruptions by Click3x from Adam Coleman on Vimeo.