• by Larissa Faw , March 13, 2015

Universal Pictures' Fast and Furious franchise has an enormous social media fan base. The film's star Vin Diesel, for instance, has over 90 million Facebook fans, while co-star Jason Statham has 48 million, and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has 46 million. 

Now, the film studio and its agency TVGla are leveraging these fans in order to support the upcoming release of "Furious 7," out April 3. 

The campaign's concept plays off the fact that many filmgoers love to repeat their favorite movie lines by using the Dubsmash App, which allows users to record a video selfie lip synching a preselected sound clip. 

Now, for the first time, a movie studio has licensed its footage to be used in this manner so Furious fans are invited to visit a microsite to select from nearly 20 different lines spoken by the film’s favorite stars, including the aforementioned three as well as Ludacris, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson and the late Paul Walker. They are then able to create video selfies reenacting these lines from the film that they can share with friends and their own social channels.  

While video selfies can be enjoyable on their own, the campaign incentivizes participants through a contest where they can win prizes and the chance to be featured in an official compilation video that Universal will feature on its social channels.

Entrants can post their video to Instagram, Vine or Twitter using the hashtag #Furious7Dubs or directly through the Furious7 Dubsmash contest. Entries can be viewed at the Dubsmash contest page, which will aggregate hash-tagged content through Instagram, Vine and Twitter.

The contest runs through March 27th. Seven contest entries will be selected as winners based on the quality of the video and category they represent, such as Best Male Performance and Best Female Performance. 

In two days, 250,000 dubs have been created and 45,000 shared via social networks. In addition, the lines featured from the movie were listened to 2.8 million times.

Meanwhile, this campaign is heavily active across social media. The contest site also aggregates all the social media feeds associated with the film. The aggregator segments the social posts from Facebook, Twitter, Vine and Instagram by cast members, crew members, the fans themselves and the official feeds from Universal. 

“The social reach of the Fast and Furious cast and crew is the largest for any movie franchise, and because of that we are always looking for new and innovative ways to engage our audience,” explained Doug Neil, EVP of Digital Marketing, Universal Pictures. “The Dubsmash partnership leverages the best of both worlds and allows fans of the franchise to have fun while sharing this unique experience with their friends.”

Universal has been a client of TVGla since its founding in 2008. Their first project was Fast & Furious Tokyo Drift, the franchise's third movie.