Being different is often scary. It was a brave move to shift budget from traditional channels towards a major newspaper initiative. But to us it made perfect sense.

We created the “Springfield Shopper” Sunday newspaper; a completely new channel HU-DIDDLY-UGE enough to carry The Simpsons Movie message into the heart of Sunday mornings. The newspaper layout lent itself perfectly by mirroring the vignettes of humour from the movie. And because it existed in the Simpsons world, it brought to life the movie experience for all the family with richness and breadth of content.The unique newspaper featured articles on the film, original Simpsons content, interviews with the characters, games, puzzles and listings of where the movie could be seen. The “Springfield Shopper” newspaper was also re-created online with interactive features, more games and a pre-booking facility, all of which worked to drive opening weekend sales.

Distributed the weekend prior to The Simpsons Movie release, the “Springfield Shopper” drove the biggest EVER animated movie opening weekend in Australian history. It went on to be the third biggest movie of all time, achieving 18% of the US box office (target of only 10%), making some serious “d’oh”!