To achieve our goals, we brought all the things fans love about the franchise to the forefront by devising and executing an immersive hotel bar experience in tandem with the series premiere and rollout.

From Thursday, September 21 to Sunday, October 8, we opened the doors to The Continental Hotel in the building that serves as the façade for the iconic hotel-for-assassins in New York City, for fans, influencers and press alike. The objective of “Welcome to The Continental: The Hotel Bar Experience” was to give fans a chance to immerse in and explore the world of the series, which is different from the present day timing of the films, without getting too deep into characters or storylines, to create awareness of and intent to watch the series.

In the sold-out ticketed immersive event, fans could step back into 1970s New York and mingle with fellow “assassins.” From the moment they arrived, where they learned that someone had broken the cardinal rule of the Continental – no killing on hotel grounds - they interacted with a cast of in-world characters in their hunt for clues to find the assassin. At our full working bar, they indulged in "killer” cocktails purchased with Gold Coins—hotel currency, as part of the franchise’s lore—while they explored a fully realized version of the hotel lobby and bar. The experience also offered in-world, shareable photo opportunities–including a classic taxi cab and a room in which they could create their digital “Inimicus” poster–working phone booths providing easter eggs, and live music inspired by the classic rock soundtrack from the series.

Target Audience:

--“Big” Fans of the John Wick franchise - 50M

--Fans of Immersive Experiences

Strategy:

--Press push targeting broad entertainment outlets

--Targeted social campaign and advertorial on Secret NYC, a popular local events guide, to reach NYC based immersive experience fans

--Engaged entertainment and cinephile influencers to scale the experience nationally and surround entertainment audiences with the news of the arrival of our series as the prequel to the John Wick universe

From Thursday, September 21 to October 8, we opened the doors to The Continental Hotel for 6,000+ in the building that serves as the façade for the iconic hotel-for-assassins in New York City, for fans, influencers and press alike. The night before opening to the public, we hosted a plussed-up preview night party for press and influencers, who then organically helped promote the event and series to consumers for its three-week run.

The bar experience was open five days per week, from late afternoon to 10pm nightly, except for weekends when it was open from mid-afternoon. Fans pre-purchased one of two tiers of tickets online via our agency partner’s event website. Forty fans were allowed in every half hour and were given gold coins to purchase beverages and snacks. Inside, they were invited to sign up to receive in-world text messages to help move them through the two-hour experience.

We exceeded our investment with an ROI in earned media from coverage in top-tier national and local press, including national electronic coverage from TODAY, print and digital coverage from People, Time, The New York Times, Forbes, The Hollywood Reporter, Vulture, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal. with almost 80 total media placements. Additionally, through our influencer strategy, we received millions of impressions from organic social coverage.

We sold out of more than 6,000 tickets within a day of opening our first paid ticketed event and had representation from almost every major news outlet in attendance during the Press Preview night, which helped reinforce our position as a premium streaming service.

In conjunction with the paid media campaign and press outreach and event efforts, Welcome to the Continental: The Hotel Bar Experience immersive activation helped make The Continental: From the World of John Wick our biggest original launch of 2023.