Best Movie Online Video

To promote its horror film The Last Exorcism, Lionsgate teamed up with digital agency The Visionaire Group to spread word of the film’s August 27, 2010 theatrical release.

Arguably the campaign’s most unique component was the Chatroulette reaction video on YouTube. Heralded as one of the best marketing uses ever of Chatroulette, a social site normally off limits to marketers due to its sometimes graphic nature, the Chatroulette reaction video on YouTube was a huge success -- receiving over 1 million views within 72 hours of posting!

YouTube was the platform of choice from the very beginning as it was vital to leverage the site’s huge audience to push this piece viral a week before release. Great care was taken in tagging the video and seeding it as a response to other similarly-themed videos (Chatroulette, scare, etc.). The ease with which anyone can embed the video from YouTube was key in spreading the word at lightning speed.

The Last Exorcism Chatroulette campaign made expert use of an actress, green screen video, classic special effects editing and programming wizardry to swap out the webcam feed for a video loop. Users thought they were getting a treat when the cute girl chatting with them teasingly unbuttons her blouse, but it proved to be more of a trick when she suffers what appears to be a complete demonic possession.

Contributors:

Creative Director:	Dimitry Ioffe
Producer:	Maria Chung
Video Animator:	Michael Beynart
Sound Designer:	Christophe Eagleton

THE VISIONAIRE GROUP

Location: USA