TURNING ALIEN CHESTBURSTERS INTO CHEST-BURSTING ADORATION
Marketing and Social Campaigns
ALIENS OWN SPACE. NEXT UP? THE SOCIAL MEDIA SPACE.
With the Alien Universe approaching its 40th Anniversary, Armed Mind was tasked with crafting video, website, and social campaigns for Alien: Covenant and stewardship over the Alien IP with a badass-ness worthy of Ellen Ripley.
Embarking on years of content, we knew we had to go where no man, android, or Xenomorph had gone before (without putting fans into cryosleep).
Taking a cue from the Xenomorphs, we took over each channel, immersing fans through a barrage of tactics -- slow burn short-films, a YouTube Studios Influencer series, and enough jumpscares and nostalgic looks back to deliver a campaign as calibrated for core fans hungry for lore as new ones ready to discover it.
Call them “sister species,” but our work over the last few years on Alien: Covenant and the broader Alien franchise has demanded different strategies, each tailored to the IP’s goals during the successive campaigns.
ALIEN: COVENANT:
- 1) Drive ownership interest in the Prometheus prequel amongst core and lapsed fans
- 2) Catalyze chatter through organic earned reach
- 3) Bring David’s Lab to life through digital and video activations at YouTube Studios
ALIEN FRANCHISE:
- 1) Continue to generate fan growth and engagement, despite no new major theatrical releases
- 2) Drive engagement for two audiences: long-time fan experts in lore, as well as first-time newcomers
- 3) Sustain brand by authentically rooting all content in the Alien IP’s voice, tone, and visual ID
ALIEN 40TH ANNIVERSARY CAMPAIGN:
- 1) Celebrate the greatest fans in the universe all year long, culminating on Alien Day
- 2) Promote North Bergen High School’s Alien production and encore performance
- 3) Support USC’s “40th Years of Alien” exhibit with exclusive content
While tough eggs to crack*, we approached each of these challenges through tailor-made strategies and content beats that celebrated the Alien franchise through social-savvy tactics that colonized fans new and old in ways any Xenomorph would appreciate.
*Thankfully, none of those eggs had Facehuggers inside them.
Client Fox Franchise
Project Alien Franchise Social Campaign
What We Did
- Branding and Strategy
- Campaign Ideation
- Social and Digital Content
- Original Video Content
- Cinemagraphs
- Original Short Film
- Influencer Campaign
- Fan UGC
- Website Content
- Social Stunts and Takeovers
CAPTAINING THE SOCIAL CHANNELS
With no theatrical Alien film in orbit, Armed Mind develops social strategies each month that sustain buzz amongst the core while generating interest amongst new fans. Through a mix of nostalgic content beats that look back and social-savvy moments that connect with today's memes and trends, the Alien franchise has continued to grow and prepare for future IP hatchlings like comics, interactive games, and more.
THREADING THE FAN-NEEDLE IN ZERO-G
Staying true to the franchise’s sense of mystery, we create authentic content that capitalizes on Alien's beloved world by utilizing every avenue for engagement available. Video content, disruptive content, cinemagraphs, specialized social media takeovers, "true fan" debates to generate conversation – each tactic sustains the franchise and keeps compelling content right around the corner (hopefully less around-the-corner than a hungry xenomorph!).
FANS ENTER DAVID'S LAB
We teamed with Fox Home Entertainment, Think Jam and Mt. Vernon to help shepherd influencers and film-makers into a faithful recreation of David's Lab at the lot of partner YouTube Studios. As the influencers created original content, Armed Mind created a series of vignettes and cinemagraphs that would activate the campaign, immersing fans into lore-rich nuggets like sculptures, specimens, anatomincal drawings, and other items in David's Lab through the eyes of their original creators -- David himself, and the crew and creators of Alien: Covenant.
ALIEN DAY ACTIVATION ON FACEBOOK LIVE
Populated with new announcements and reveals, fans who revel in Alien Day know it as the hallmark annual event for the franchise. To celebrate and activate this year's event, we created a Facebook Live video that immersed fans onto the ship [Name] for a slow-burn video in which surveillance footage and metadata not only revealed the presence of a Xenomorph, or teased the relase of an all-new Alexa game, but gave those fans who hung on a healthy jump-scare conclusion!
INTERGALACTIC HOLIDAYS
The Alien Universe is a terrifying one...but it doesn't always have to be! Embracing the lighter moments of levity in the films, we use holidays and other trending social moments to inject humor into the social calendar. On Thanksgiving, that might mean social graphics that sell faux Alien "Chestburster" meat thermometers; on a cast member's birthday, that might mean a bona fide sing-a-long song. Nothing like a little humor to accent a lot of horror.
40th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION
To celebrate the franchise's 40th anniversary, we had to think big. Planet sized, even. Our year-long content campaign delivered nostalgia natively on every social channel, highlighted by behind-the-scenes content even die-hard fans hadn't seen. Anchoring it all, the release of six new 40th Anniversary short films helped remind a global fanbase why they're still tuning into this franchise 40 years later.
ORIGINAL SHORT-FILM
Capping off the 40th Anniversary celebration, our team wrote and shot an original "slow-burn" short-film at YouTube Studios. This film leveraged metadata and the slow trickle of information across an astronaut's user-interface to immerse fans more deeply into David's Lab and the world of Alien: Covenant, exploring ancient alien relics and antagonists' tools before a climactic discovery ends the mission.
