The Joker campaign was truly a labor of love. Having worked with DC Comics for years, we knew the challenge would be presenting this “grown up” version of a classic character essentially removed from the lore he was born out of, but how could we present this bold, compelling character to a new, cinephile audience without abandoning the built-in audience the film would already have going in? Our answer was to be BOLD — in creative, strategy, and execution. Starting with launch, we collaborated with Warner Bros on an Instagram trailer drop stunt that strategically hid the trailer launch date in six different videos, across both domestic and international WB accounts. Since we already had an active audience finely attuned to what was happening on the channels, the stunt immediately piqued audience interest and quickly had fans and press outlets piecing together the videos to find out the date of the new trailer’s arrival.

Heading into the release window for the film, we continued to leverage press reviews, while also highlighting the film’s captivating imagery and powerful score. By directing the focus to the rave reviews, both with iconic imagery and simple text-only graphics, our stylized creatives intensified fans’ excitement and the need to rush into theaters to witness the Joker’s origin story. We even took bits of less-than-kind reviews of the movie and used the positive lines as critic praise, all in the name of Joker-style chaos. The movie was of course a huge box office success, earning over $872 million worldwide to become the top-grossing R-rated pic of all time, while our social media campaign for Joker generated over 505M impressions, 38.3M in reach, and 121M engagements across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, growing their pages from the ground up into nearly 750K followers.