In the movie Focus, Will Smith plays a seasoned con man who takes a sexy, young amateur under his wing. To rope younger audiences into this sophisticated, high-stakes world, AvatarLabs was asked to create an equally sophisticated official site on Tumblr and populate it with stylish content that could also be deployed across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Con men and women aren't typical street criminals. Their weapons are charm, intellect, and sex appeal; their world is built on fine wine, designer clothes, and expensive cars. Using this backdrop as our inspiration, we set out to create a Tumblr and social content that dripped with intrigue and class while leveraging the sex appeal and charm of the film's two stars.
AvatarLabs surveyed the social landscape and dug deep into the world of confidence men to create a complete content strategy and execution plan designed to catch the biggest whale out there – the general, movie-going audience (with a female skew).
Because diamonds are a con girl's best friend, the official site for Focus featured a sleek design of stacked diamond shapes filled with images and GIFs. Navigated through a horizontal scroll, the diamonds slid over the film's key art in a parallax effect that resolved to a persistent title treatment. On click, each diamond expanded to showcase the full asset. A share button revealed Tumblr notes and icons to easily reblog or post to Facebook or Twitter.
Like the best confidence games, the site was completely seamless for the user and for the team at Warner Bros. Built to be easily updated and managed, we provided our partners in crime with creative templates to house their own content for both the theatrical and home entertainment windows.
The content of the site would be repurposed on all social channels, which AvatarLabs managed; creating considerable efficiencies in the engagement.
For the long con to work, it has to remain credible for an extended period of time. To keep Focus in front of the public from early February to March 15, we created and distributed (via Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) over 75 original images and GIFs that fell under a variety of buckets, including two unique categories. "Rules of the Con" revealed tricks of the trade and movie quotes that opened a window into how Will Smith and Margot Robbie's characters operate, and "The Pros of Cons" brought to life the stories of legendary confidence schemes with incredible trivia, quotes, and infographics.
Finally, we rounded out the social campaign with countdown graphics, GIFs, videos, promotions, and other assets that positioned Focus as a sleek and sexy crime drama.
The film was #1 opening weekend, and went on to make over $150 million worldwide.