Transformers: Age of Extinction was the highly anticipated fourth installment in The Transformers franchise. The campaign's look and feel featured Cade and Grimlock front and center to help appeal to a wider and older audience and distinguish it from the franchise's past films while including enough of the International favorites, Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, as to not alienate prior fans. To satisfy the expectations of fans worldwide, we knew we would need to create an innovative campaign that felt bigger and bolder than ever before as well as break through the clutter of competitive advertising in the summer release window.
The World Cup finals in Brazil offered the opportunity to connect the film to the fervor our target audience felt over the games. We were aware of our target demographic's co-viewing habits, so Paramount Pictures International and AvatarLabs created ads that would dynamically react to what was happening live during the playoffs. We created a number of creative versions that would be dynamically served in a first-ever multi-market Yahoo Billboard. Depending on what was happening in the game, fans viewing the ad would be served one of a series of motion-based impactful creative units that called out specific plays and milestones.
For example:
The week of release we executed a large campaign over a variety of sites. One of the most impactful takeovers was on male-targeted site Yahoo! Sports Formula 1 section (https://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/formula-1/). The page opened with what looked like a Transformers 4 video rich media ad on the left, with a companion ad for a car rental service on the right. The Camaro featured in the ad is the "disguised" version Bumblebee. When fans clicked the rich media ad to expand, to their surprise and delight he transformed in plain view! The publisher page crumbled and fell and the car rental ad elements flew from the page as Bumblebee rose to his full height and presented the user with a full page takeover that contained film content. The content of each of the four panels was introduced with a motion piece of one of the transformers from the film including Optimus, Bumblebee, and Grimlock.
Another impactful takeover was executed on the homepage of Yahoo! A horizontal masthead and 300x250 kicked off the experience with high-octane action video. When fans clicked to expand, the entire page shook... and shook again... as though something large was approaching from behind the page... A moment later, Optimus Prime riding Grimlock SMASHED through the editorial content, taking over the entire homepage of Yahoo with a fire-breathing Dinobot, resolving to the motion-based rich media ad unit.
Transformers: Age of Extinction was the #1 movie in the US two weekends in a row and went on to make over a billion dollars worldwide as one of 2014’s top 10 highest grossing films.