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November 2006 - Strategy Magazine
Upfront

After Dark Fest gets Extreme characters

by Annette Bourdeau
page 9

The launch of last month's Toronto After Dark Film Festival had an impressive online social network presence, thanks to Halifax-based agency Extreme Group.

"We built a character to represent each genre [horror, sci-fi and kung fu] and treated them like they were real people," explains Shawn King, Extreme's VP/CD, adding that as "real," it made sense to set the characters up with their own websites with "webcams," as well as MySpace, YouTube and even LavaLife accounts. "It's quite an elaborate little web."

The campaign held up in the court of online public opinion: User ratings and feedback on YouTube are all positive. For his part, King wasn't worried. "If we thought the work was horrible, we wouldn't have put it there."

All efforts drove users to www.lookingforroommate.com, linking to all of the related content. And, offline, posters around Toronto advertised, "roommates wanted" to live with the characters, and also drove to web. The campaign also includes banner ads on social networking and film-related sites.

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