Seattle Story Award
Category
Destinations Council Destiny Awards > Special Projects
Description
Destinations Council Destiny Awards > Special Projects
Seattle Story Award
About This Entry:
Visit Seattle continues to forge new ground with their strategy of using entertainment-based content to share the deep and textured story of Seattle. As such, we saw the opportunity to take our drive to create this type of content into another entertainment-centric environment that also reflected the spirit of the city: The Film Independent Spirit Awards.
Rather than just talk about the city’s creative spirit, this was an opportunity to activate it. More than just being an event sponsor, we wanted to demonstrate our commitment to filmmaking by giving an emerging director not just the opportunity, but the funds, to actually create a film.
For the first time ever, Film Independent partnered with a brand to commission a custom filmmaking grant. The Seattle Story Award was awarded to a filmmaker who exhibits innovation, diversity and uniqueness of vision while having a history of transforming perspectives through rich stories; because that’s what we believe Seattle does itself for anyone who has spent time here.
The recipient would use this grant to create a short film inspired by Seattle’s deep textures and independent spirit.
Our goals are to generate conversation and earned media coverage about Seattle amongst an influential, and frequently traveling audience. We also want to drive ‘time spent with the brand’ via a new film that celebrated the city; measured by views and overall watch time. We would also like to drive overall visibility and consideration for Seattle as an innovative city worth visiting.
Campaign Strategy:
In partnership with Film Independent and their broadcast partner, IFC – we designed an integrated program that put Visit Seattle squarely in the center of conversations amongst an A-List influencer audience.
In November, the Seattle Story Award launched– a first time grant by Visit Seattle that allowed a filmmaker the opportunity and funds to produce and distribute a film.
Through Film Independent, we convened a nominating committee comprised of leading members of the independent film community. From a long list of candidates, director Matty Brown emerged as the winner of the award at Film Independent’s Nominee Brunch event, hosted by actors Alia Shawkat and John Cho on January 9, 2018.
As the committee noted: Matty’s background, vision, and diversity of style and subjects exemplified not only the independent spirit of filmmaking in the world abound, but more enigmatically that which is found in and fostered by the city of Seattle, Washington. We are excited to support this emerging voice and thereby the Seattle filmmaking community with this opportunity.
From there, Matty was given the freedom to create a short film inspired by Seattle. Through our partnership with IFC, we provided the opportunity for his trailer to premiere during the live March 3 broadcast of the Film Independent Spirit Awards on IFC and simulcast on VISITSEATTLE.tv and IFC.com.
On the day of the event, Visit Seattle brought a taste of Seattle to LA to celebrate the film premiere of Dreamcatcher – Matty’s personal love letter to the city. Through a branded experience, attendees of the Film Independent Spirit Awards were treated to fresh oysters flown in from Seattle, savory grilled cheese sandwiches from Seattle’s Beecher’s Cheese, Seattle Mules featuring Rachel’s Ginger Beer and the taste of chocolate popcorn from Seattle’s iconic Cinerama theater. As part of the event, in-room attendees shared in witnessing the premiere of the Seattle Story Award film for the first time as viewers from around the world also saw it on TV.
Post-event, Dreamcatcher ran nationally in broadcast across IFC and other AMC Networks partners and across digital platforms such as YouTube, Vox Media and AMC placements.
Results:
This project generated over 1 billion earned impressions for Visit Seattle (1,008,370,548 to be exact); more than delivering on our goal of gaining visibility among an influential and travel-minded audience. In fact, the people we reached were 90 times more likely than the average person to be a ‘vacation travel category influential’ based on audience and event data.
#SpiritAwards was the most popular hashtag nationally on show day. And on the ground, Seattle’s brand activation was one of the most talked about - and visited - experiences during the Spirit Awards.
The film that came from Seattle Story Award winner Matty Brown – Dreamcatcher –garnered the most views and watch time of any content piece on our channel in Q1’18. This one film delivered over 1.4 million minutes of watch time in less than one month. That’s literally 3 years of time spent with content about Seattle in less than 30 days.
Why This Is A Finalist:
Placing artistic creative in front of old-fashioned promotion can be risky. In this case, the filmmaker, Matty, truly executes the vision of how art works by tapping the imagination and cultural roots. Focusing on Seattle’s natural elements from the perspective of the "native American" experience is brilliant. Ageless in its approach, the audience must be mesmerized from the first frame onward. Objectives were well stated, and the strategy was well executed. This was a totally innovative approach. It is a sticky film that you see to the end, mostly because the filmmaker gets in your mind in an inspiring way. Supporting the arts by granting funds to create a film is one thing, but to strategically bond and partner with IFC AMC branding and their global audiences is genuine marketing.
Winner Status
- Category Winner