For more than fifty years The Jungle Book has been a beloved children’s story and family brand. For the 2016 release of the live-action update of the classic fantasy adventure, The Walt Disney Company turned to AvatarLabs to deliver a marketing effort fitting for a franchise reboot with A-list talent and breathtaking visuals.
Our campaign reached across countries and mediums, beginning with a fan favorite 360° motion poster, expanding into a 3D 360° microsite, and culminating in a robust online media campaign that included our first 3D WebGL banner.
Drawing inspiration from the film’s seamless combination of live action and advanced CGI, Disney first looked to AvatarLabs to create a 360° motion poster based on the key art. Available on Facebook and YouTube, the resulting video allowed the user a musical 360° exploration of the enchanting jungle world. Character and landscape animations and ambient effects were created, bringing the scene to life. Exceeding expectations and fast becoming a fan favorite, the motion poster garnered more than 1.2 million views, 1,000 shares and 2,500 reactions.
Building directly on the success of the 360° motion poster, we were tasked with expanding the concept to create an interactive microsite with added immersive 3D effects. Going above and beyond the ‘bear necessities,’ the site, targeted to international audiences, gave viewers the opportunity to explore the jungle environment further with embedded hotspots that revealed character bios and film stills. The visually-rich 3D environment offered multiple textured layers, ambient effects and lens flares tied to the natural light sources in the scene.
Expanding further upon the positive feedback from the first two integrations, we were enlisted to pull the 360° 3D microsite experience into a masthead on the homepage of YouTube opening week. Leveraging our longstanding partnerships with DoubleClick and YouTube, our tech and creative teams were able to move quickly to ensure that the heavier content required from a WebGL ad could exist as a banner and still provide a seamless user experience.
The remainder of the online media campaign gave fans an up close and personal experience with the beloved film characters through a series of targeted takeovers, overlays and “3D” progressive ads. Each ad incorporated motion, including close up video footage of Baloo the bear’s nose sniffing the screen, Mowgli escaping from a giant ape’s grasp in a full page takeover, and visual effects that extended the video footage beyond the frame to create a dimensional look.
The Jungle Book broke box office records with the second biggest opening in April – ever – with more than $290M globally the first weekend, and held the number one spot in the US three weekends in a row. Worldwide, the film has grossed more than $500M.