The activation started on Presidents’ Day, one day before release, with a message from Panem’s Capitol on Facebook that was hacked with a “secret message” from the film’s District 13 rebels. The cryptic message required users to translate a binary code directing participants to homepages of 19 publishers. Participants were editorially driven to access each site’s HTML source code which contained unique ‘Hunger Games’ images with a special #hashtag; this drove a Twitter “Flock-to-Unlock” to release a highly coveted deleted scene. Once the 100K tweet threshold was reached, the exclusive video clip was unlocked for users to watch and share.

Within 45 minutes of launching, #UnlockMockingjay was trending worldwide on Twitter. In addition to high response rates to the social ads, nearly 50% of users who watched the initial video watched the full deleted scene reflecting fans’ excitement. 40,000 mentions of #UnlockMockingjay and over 3,000 retweets contributed to the effort’s virality. The film debuted at #1 on iTunes and Google Play coinciding with the activation and became the all-time top-selling live action movie in 1st week sales. Upon its subsequent Blu-ray/DVD release, ‘Mockingjay Part 1’ generated sales of 2.1 Million units in its first 3 days.