The brief here was simple. To raise the profile of the independent festival within New York City’s artistic community, and to sell tickets to the film festival itself.

Ever stood in an art gallery and thought to yourself “I’m not quite in the right mood for this”? Well the Brooklyn Film Festival has the answer: allow gallery goers to turn any art into an award-winning movie. This year, the independent film festival, now in its 27th year of operation, created a holistic brand campaign around the theme of 'art being better when it movies'. The tongue in cheek campaign ran through film, outdoor, and most potently in its mobile experience. The experience allows gallery goers to take a photo of a piece of art, upload it, and through an AI algorithm that analyzes themes, colors and motifs, be paired with a matching, award-winning movie. This meant that we turned all the art in the city into a permanent archive of Brooklyn Film Festival movies.

Our target audience is the artistic community in and around New York City. Our approach was simply to create a conversation within this community by creating a campaign that used a relatable truth and insight. New York City is home to some of the world’s best art, but everyone, whether an art enthusiast or not, can relate to the feeling of being in an art gallery and not being in the right frame of mind to appreciate the art. We leaned into this truth to create a holistic campaign across online films, outdoor, and a mobile experience which literally and physically helps unenthusiastic gallery goers to use art to watch a movie instead. Our mobile experience carries across our brand language of ‘Art is Better When it Movies’ which applies a playful lens across the idea of going up against high art.

Using the power of AI, Brooklyn Film Festival built an interactive web experience that analyzes the thematic elements of an uploaded image and matches it to a film from the Festival’s archives that contains similar thematic elements. Playing with color, shape, and form the mobile activation creates a playful interface that never stops moving, drawing in the user with witty copy as they’re asked to upload an image of a static piece of art. As the image is analyzed users will see the AI ‘thinking’ as it analyzes different films, and the result screen provides an AI-powered film summary - highlighting the connections between your art and the BFF selection. Then, in the same tongue-in-cheek tone of the campaign. Users are offered a matching movie and a link to buy tickets to this year’s festival - all within the confines of a mobile screen overflowing with bold gradient color, dynamic interactivity, and engaging content. The site allows users to experience technology in a new and playful way.

Ultimately, the mobile experience was created not only to provide some playful relief in a gallery, but also to drive users to purchase tickets to the 2024 Brooklyn Film Festival. It has proven very successful in getting more traffic to visit brooklynfilmfestival.org.

86% engagement rate on the activation site.

82% of all site traffic to brooklynfilmfestival.org now comes through our mobile activation site.

37% of all users of the activation clicked through to purchase tickets.