What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
By and large, the impact of their engagement with us was positive from a content perspective, an engagement perspective, and a follow-through perspective. If they said they were going to do something, then they did it. They organized and executed what they said they were going to do very swiftly and efficiently, which was awesome.
Unfortunately, there were several elements of our results that weren't positive, meaning the film opened very soft financially; it didn't meet expectations. That was a challenge because you look at an investment level of what we were talking about and
Our ROI was great from a sense of, how much were we paying per view of a trailer or video? How much were we paying per view of our advertising? That didn’t parlay into action, however. Everything Project Bionic did to get our brand out there was successful, but actually having people go to the film was not successful. We identified, through both their help and our own analysis, a bunch of variables to correct and navigate as we move forward.
We went over budget by 25%, but I wouldn't put the accountability for that on them. We identified a couple of opportunities near the release date where we said, "Oh hey, let's invest additional money in here. Let's invest additional money into this particular channel." Then, that's what we did.
How did Project Bionic perform from a project management standpoint?
There were generally 5–6 people in every meeting we had, which was pretty much on a biweekly basis. We met every two weeks. Then, they had an analysis team after the film came out and did a final analysis where we had a big meeting to measure and discuss the data and so forth.
Project Bionic is very well known for its incredible account management, account executives, project management, project directors. Even though our marketing runway for the film was very short, (60 days versus the Hollywood average 150 days) and the size of this particular film, not having movie stars.
The project managers at Bionic really took it upon themselves to make sure things stayed organized and efficient. Their project manager and account executive communicated with us, essentially, on a daily basis via email. We always had a very strong sense of where the project was as we moved towards a milestone. That that aspect of things was very successful. I would work with those project managers again in a heartbeat.
What did you find most impressive about them?
I think that it was a very tall order to take on a film that was going to be released 60 days from the day they started their work. They needed to see the film and ingest its creative essence, its story. They basically needed to become experts in the entertainment vertical without ever having done a film before. Opening an independent film in August is also very difficult since you’re going up against studio pictures at that time.
Something else they brought to the table was consistent, frequent, project management. Media strategy is really a numbers game. You're trying to get a strong ROI and engagement, and the factors for success there are driven by numbers.
Creative, copywriting, and artistic decisions have to be really on-brand and related to the film. Both media and art are pretty aligned with setting up the film for success based off following a pretty clear sense of parameters. The real variable is project management: how well were they going to communicate with our team? How much information were they going to give to us? Was the information they were giving us accurate? Were they available?
They really wanted to take care of us and give us peace of mind—put us in a place where we’d feel really comfortable. They gave us a sense of confidence moving into releasing our first film, which is a tremendously insecure endeavor.
Are there any areas they could improve?
I can't think of anything that really comes to mind as far as improvement goes. Whatever results we got, were great. Whatever results that didn't meet expectations were not because of Bionic. They were due to the short timeline and the lack of a major star in the film. We felt that they cared about our film the whole time; they wanted us to be successful? We weren’t just another account for them.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
First of all, I would say hire them. The second thing I would say is to give them as much information as soon as possible because they have a lot of smart people. We were always catching up to giving them information from our side of things, so I would tell people to give them strategy and information as soon as possible.
The return on investment for the paid advertisements run by Project Bionic wildly exceeded customer expectations, delivering an 8x monetary return for the client and increasing brand awareness and engagement significantly. Their team was professional and communicative throughout the project.