• by May 31, 2006

Media Category: "Anything Goes"
Agency: McKinney
Client: Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Durham, NC
Campaign Title: "Realitywood"

Marketing Challenge: If you're a documentary film aficionado, chances are you've heard of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, the Durham, NC, event where documentary filmmakers get to hear the likes of Martin Scorsese and Ken Burns speak about the craft. If you are not documentary buff, chances are you've never heard of the festival. And while the festival's ticket sales have been growing at an annual rate of 6 percent based on interest from the documentary crowd, it needed to expand its market another 15 percent in 2005, and to do that with virtually no budget.

Creative Solution: McKinney tapped Hollywood's penchant for the melodramatic and created "Realitywood," the fictional home of the documentary festival and a town where real-life stories are celebrated and the conventional rules of Hollywood do not apply.

Media Solution: The Full Frame festival had big goals, but no money, so McKinney took the "anything goes" approach to generate awareness, bartering its heart out to get donated TV time (a.k.a. PR) on MTV, E!, and Comedy Central. Regional papers and alternative newsweeklies also kicked it, as did cinema teaser campaigns playing off clichéd Hollywood quizzes that run during movie trailer pre-shows. McKinney's TV spots also ran in movie trailer positions, and its team convinced local retailers such as coffee houses, restaurants, film houses and bookstores in the area to display three-dimensional posters promoting the festival.

Results: Ticket sales jumped 24 percent - 1.6 times higher than the campaign's goal and four times the rate of each preceding year's sales, ensuring the festival would return for another year in 2006.

Winners of all 2006 winners will be presented June 7 during the 2006 EFFIE Awards gala in New York.