'TED’ the Movie and its Genius Social Media Marketing Campaign

Ever since Seth MacFarlane created the movie Ted, he knew he wanted everything and anything that had to do with the movie to be uniquely done in Ted's style. Universal Pictures marketing campaign specifically focused on social media. Their concept was to take Ted to the next level and make him a trend and part of the social media phenomenon.

The movie’s social media channels were produced by writers on MacFarlane’s team who wrote, talked, and expressed like Ted would. People who are familiar with Universal’s marketing strategy but weren’t supposed to speak publicly, said that the studio was using social media to hype and excite “Family Guy” fans who have been interested in “Ted” since it was said it was Seth MacFarlane’s first film. Since “Family Guy” fans are involved with social media heavily.

Ted cards

            
Some awesome things about this campaign:

1) Genius social media marketing campaigns are created on understanding how people behave. Jetsen Studios was behind the social media activity of Ted on Facebook. Clearly they researched and knew exactly how people behaved on the network. There’s a trend on Facebook with e-cards. The team decided to use this as an advantage and part of Ted’s Facebook presence was ted e-cards to fit the trend “Ted style”. You were also able to add Ted to any of your Facebook pictures and title them MyWild Night with Ted. Ted has over 2.2 million likes. 

Fists of Furry 

2) Part of the campaign had a game called “Ted presents Fists of Furry”, created by Jetsen Studios as well. In the game Ted has to fight different bear opponents such as fogey bear, smoggy bear, care bear, etc. to get his title as the one and only famous talking bear. In moments, everyone was playing it, entertained and humored at the fact that Ted can beat this long time popular bears.

3) Ted has a Tumblr that was created to entertain its audience with pictures and creative content hinting that Ted likes to party, drink, and enjoy the company of females. You were able to leave comments for Ted and he would answer them.

4) Ted has apps where you can play with him and do different activities for entertainment purposes. This would keep the audience anxious for the movie.

Ted's Twitter

5) The one that stood out the most was Ted’s Twitter 

interaction with its fans and everyone on the network. Ted tweet feeds were full of humor and the followers would asking him questions and Ted would answer gladly. Ted has over 320,000 followers, 12 times as many as “The Amazing Spider Man”.

It may seem like a completely simplistic social media campaign but it was a genius campaign. It cost $50 million to produce the movie and on its opening weekend, its box-office made $54.1 million. Most of the times the simple things are the most brilliant and the most successful ones. Their social media cost nothing and it was as effective as if Universal Pictures would have spent thousands of dollars on a campaign. Ted’s marketing team took traditional trends and made them their own to entertain everyone in a way that they’re entertain on their everyday routine. It may be difficult for other brands to utilize these trends but there are no reason trends and memes can’t be used in related ways.

           

-Jess!

"Creating Memories, Building Characters".