Yahoo's Twilight Promotion Spans Its Network
A full week of content, promotions and sweepstakes.
In its latest big-media partnership, Yahoo is teaming with Summit Entertainment to hype the release of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 with a full week of content, promotions and sweepstakes that will span the company’s network.
The centerpiece of the campaign is a live stream from the red carpet at the movie’s Los Angeles premiere on Monday, November 14th. The stream will be featured on Yahoo Movies, and users will be encouraged to submit questions for the movie’s stars and crew through Yahoo’s Facebook page. Yahoo will also host a “Twi-Fi Lounge” at the event, where attendees can win prizes, meet cast members and have a photo taken with an Edward Cullen stand-in that they can instantly upload to their social networks.
Also starting Monday, the Yahoo home page will feature a countdown clock that will mark the time before the movie opens, as well as exclusive content from the film.
Yahoo Movies will host content from the film as well. Since October 31, the site has been accepting entries to a sweepstakes for a Volvo sports sedan similar to the one that the character Edward Cullen, played by Robert Pattinson, drives in the film.
Ads on Yahoo Music, Yahoo Mail and OMG from Yahoo (the network’s celebrity gossip site) will direct viewers to the Twilight content.
For Yahoo, the campaign is the latest in a series of large-scale partnerships that suggest the network, despite the company’s challenges, still holds significant appeal to marketers.
“We have the reach to get the message out to the largest audience and those big media partners know we will work with them in innovative ways to best showcase both of our brands,” said Sibyl Goldman, VP of entertainment at Yahoo. “We are trying to bring more exclusive great stuff to our audience and the Twilight [promotion] is another example of that.”
In October, Yahoo signed a deal with ABC News to share content and ad sales resources, and also hosted a Clinton Foundation concert that was streamed more than 22 million times across180 countries.
Goldman said Yahoo had no specific estimates of how many people might tune in to the Twilight live stream, but said the company is expecting it to be large. “I’ve got every technical person I work with ready to hold on to the servers with all their might,” she said.
