We created Plaza Studios, a film contest that gave three students a scholarship to shoot their first movie, with one condition: they had to find everything they needed for their films at Plaza. We launched the project during Oscar season and provided the students with the mentorship of an Oscar-nominated director. The students had more than 300 stores at their disposal to find everything they needed. Their search became our TV campaign; our spots invited our target to follow the contest online, where we showed the process and the movies as well as the stores behind the scenes. The public voted for their favourite film, which was premiered at the mall’s movie theatres. At the conclusion of the project, the three films became part of a TV show about the process.

Plaza Studios generated a year’s worth of branded content including commercials, webisodes, three 3 short films, a sweepstakes, a movie premiere and a TV programme. Traffic to our web site tripled, page views quadrupled and time spent on the site went up 27% due to the content created by the project. All with a production budget of less than $180,000.