At the heart of Captain America: Civil War, the Avengers were forced to choose to stand with Iron Man or Captain America. To extend the narrative, Disney aimed to create an industry-first activation that tapped into the Marvel fandom in a personal way. It wasn’t enough for fans just to share their opinions on the upcoming cinematic feud, so we developed a concept that provided personal validation (or disappointment) directly from the films stars -- Chris Evans, Paul Rudd, Robert Downey Jr., and the rest of the cast -- as a one-to-one activation using unique personalized replies, dependent on the fan’s team choice. The Twitter-based experience incentivized consumers to opt-in, become active ambassadors, and enthusiastically share their allegiance for #TeamCap or #TeamIronMan.

Producing the activation in only two weeks, we took advantage of existing talent shoots, sending our team to capture video in the stars’ downtime. We prompted the cast to record specific responses addressed to the 1,000 most popular names on Twitter. For less common names, we created graphic overlays for talent video. We also created over 70 key influencer-targeted videos to entice earned engagements from famous Marvel fans. In total, 1,108 videos were created; 700 of which featured personalized names.

Once fans tweeted the hashtag #TeamCap or #TeamIronMan they were delivered real-time personalized cast videos using Twitter’s Auto-Reply capability via IC Group.The functionality and novelty created a wave of momentum that expanded awareness beyond Disney and Marvel’s core fans –– overcoming the challenge of appealing exclusively to the brand’s existing Twitter following.

The innovative use of the Conversational ad completely redefined its functionality, blowing away previous use-case benchmarks. It not only allowed Captain America: Civil War fans to connect with their heroes from the film, but enabled others to engage in conversations across the Marvel Universe and beyond; developing into a cultural moment that transcended the film itself.

At launch the activation generated 83 tweet replies per second, with 437,000 opt-ins, an increase of 80K Twitter followers, and 5.3 million views during the first 2 weeks. Collectively, these videos garnered 13.5 million total campaign views, and generated an additional 6 million mentions for the campaign overall.

Above all, this execution contributed to brand penetration that helped lead Captain America: Civil War to become the first film to cross $1B at the box office in 2016-- the ultimate testament to our creative execution.