ParaNorman, a weird little stop-motion animated feature film from LAIKA Studio, tells the story of an outcast kid shunned by his classmates and neighbors for his ability to speak with the dead. But in the end, it’s precisely what’s weird about Norman that makes him able to save his town from a horde of zombies and a centuries-old curse.

To market a stop-motion animated zombie kid’s movie to a mass audience, we needed to find a theme that could resonate with anyone. To do this, we built our campaign around the idea that we’ve all felt like outcasts at one time or another and that what’s weird about us is what’s great about us. In short, we made ParaNorman a cross-platform, interactive celebration of how WEIRD WINS.

To get the Weird Wins conversation started, we engaged influencers and their communities early with a combination of entombed, handcrafted zombies, weekly shorts about the weird and wonderful creators of ParaNorman and limited-run peel-and-steal Mondo posters. The resulting conversations were aggregated on a Tumblr along with ParaNorman news.

With things buzzing in social, we embarked on more mass tactics. First, the award-winning ParaNorman site pushed the possibilities of mobile navigation while bringing fans a tool for creating their own stop-motion animations. Then the iOS mobile game 2-Bit Bub immersed users in the meticulously crafted world of ParaNorman. During the Olympics, we ran mysterious spots featuring amazing acts of undead athleticism. Then, during opening week, a contest for custom ParaNorman Nikes flooded Twitter with images of fans proving their weirdo bona fides.

All that and trailers, print, digital takeovers, undead glow-skin billboards, an Etsy treasury and zombie toothbrushes and slippers (obviously).

Going up against Frankenweenie and The Odd Life of Timothy Green, we knew we’d be outspent through traditional channels. Thus a major goal was to dominate conversation online. While we may have lost a battle here or there, we won the overall communications war by offering up an emotional connection with the film people could engage with via amazing content across multiple channels.

By connecting our theme with the makers of the film, the campaign grew LAIKA’s brand while making the creators feel like allies in the marketing of their film.

ParaNorman dominated social conversation in July and August leading up to launch, crushing competition with more than twice as many online mentions as Timothy Green and 10 times more shareable-content views than our competitors.

Pair that with our strategically and creatively aligned traditional marketing efforts and you get a weird little movie that won to the tune of $100,000,000 worldwide.