Two truths about Germans: They love Star Wars – and they are sceptical about everything. For example, about the first Star Wars spin-off movie ROGUE ONE. But Germany is one of the most important markets for the franchise after USA, with 2.8 million Star Wars super fans. Since this was a new variety of Star Wars movie, it had to resonate with this core group. With ROGUE ONE exhibiting a new cast of characters and a story line only tangentially connected to the Star Wars Episodes, die-hard fans and general cinema goers alike were left wondering: Is this really a Star Wars film? This scepticism resulted in a lack of excitement prior the release of ROGUE ONE. The challenge was clear—we had to get fans excited and talking about ROGUE ONE.

A film about rebels demands a rebel-like idea. We knew: live experiences spark conversation and have the power to change people’s minds. And drive sales: 65% of marketers see a direct correlation. On top, out-of-home is a top five awareness driver for movies in Germany. Combining both, we could harness the imagination and passion for Star Wars: WITH GERMANY’S FIRST EVER ANIMATED MURAL! Research we conducted for the release of Episode VII showed that Star Wars’ two main interest drivers are original characters and big-screen action with lightsabers, lasers and more. With the movie set to release in Germany’s darkest month, December, we would showcase the thrill of laser fights, spaceships and battle scenes in an illuminated, rough format.

The standard solution would be to use glitzy digital screens... but this was no standard Star Wars’ movie. We captured ROGUE ONE’s spirit of rebellion and made that the mantra of our OOH approach. We rebelled against the expected and went anti-digital—we painted the poster as a giant photorealistic graffiti mural. We chose the most rebellious location in Germany’s cultural hot spot overlooking the last remaining stretches of the notorious Berlin Wall. Lastly, we rebelled against the expectations of a static mural—we brought the critically important action features to life with eye-catching high end projections. A making of video on became an immediate hit among fans who scaled anticipation by sharing the mural among their followers.

The mural generated over 5.7 million contacts across all channels and earned media resulted in 95% additional media value of the initial invest. The making of video and PR coverage created ripples of excitement, scaling the effect beyond the borders of Berlin! What’s more, this excitement was just as high as on the launch day of the movie – something never before seen for a Star Wars release: With almost 4 million tickets to ROGUE ONE sold in Germany, our message resonated with far more than our target 2.8 million super fans! With those kind of results, it looks like we had more than just the Force on our side.