Meta's Omar Zayat on Preparing for the Future of Entertainment Marketing

Omar Zayat, senior director, head of industry—Entertainment, at Meta tells Muse what’s ahead in entertainment marketing and what he’s most excited about.

There are two important factors that embody the transformation of our industry and the vast possibilities that lie ahead. Entertainment marketers can take advantage of them today.

First and foremost, the fan-content relationship is experiencing an incredible evolution. No longer confined to one-sided consumption, fans now have the power to engage in a dynamic, two-way interaction with the content they love. With new technologies like Messenger, AR and VR, coupled with the immersive experiences offered by physical installations and pop-ups, this two-way connection is rapidly becoming more accessible than ever before. We are witnessing a shift toward a more engaged and participatory fan experience, where fans can actively shape and influence the content they love, without the need to travel to theme parks or other physical locations.

To give an example of this, Universal Pictures recently partnered with Meta in a strategy that combines an innovative fan-content relationship to achieve exceptional results. Universal Pictures wanted to build buzz before the January 2023 release of the Blumhouse killer doll thriller M3GAN. Understanding that it had a viral sensation in the titular character, the studio was eager to sustain relationships with fans by creating multimedia experiences that inspired word-of-mouth recommendations to encourage ticket sales.

The studio partnered with digital storytelling firm Addison to create a unique multimedia campaign centered around the lethal doll. Addison Interactive partnered with a third party to create a multi-phase approach to fan engagement over marketing messages in Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp that mirrored themes from the film. Based on the viral success of the film’s first trailer, fans that liked posts featuring M3GAN doing her signature pinwheeling dance received the creepy delight of a direct message from M3GAN herself.

Universal also partnered with Meta to measure the effectiveness of its ad campaign. A brand lift study determined that the MeetM3GAN Ads that Click to Messenger campaign delivered results significantly higher than industry average: a 20-point lift in ad recall, 14.1-point lift in awareness and a 5.1-point lift in intent to see the film in theaters on opening weekend. The entertainment company also found that the Messenger ad strategy—combining “business as usual” campaigns with Ads that Click to Messenger—drove 1.7 more conversations about the film and two times the conversations about the cast among people who’d seen the ads.¹

“With the scalability of marketing messages, we shared over 20 customized ‘bedtime’ stories localized in at least 10 languages,” says Scott Addison Clay, founder and CEO of Addison Interactive. “The versatility and multimedia capabilities of marketing messages allowed us to deliver one-of-a-kind content right in fans’ favorite social media channels.”

Secondly, and in addition to evolving fan-content relationships, the reinvention of the movie trailer is inspiring. The traditional formula of a static, sit-back-and-watch trailer has been revolutionized in the era of Reels and short-form videos. This shift has breathed new life into the art of trailer creation, offering an exciting and fast-paced medium to captivate audiences where they are consuming content today. For example, we know that people are spending more than half of their time on Instagram and Facebook watching video content.² Not only that, they are interacting with videos (likes, shares, comments) more than 19 billion times per day.³ The potential to use your mobile device as a video editing studio to craft engaging, bite-sized content that leaves viewers craving more is a fertile ground for creativity. By embracing these new formats, we can seize the opportunity to connect with fans in novel and captivating ways, ultimately driving greater excitement and anticipation for upcoming releases.

To tie this all together, the dynamic fan-content relationship and the reinvention of movie trailers are the catalysts propelling us into the exciting future of entertainment marketing. By embracing these opportunities, we can create immersive experiences, captivate audiences and drive profitable growth within the ever-evolving entertainment landscape.

¹Source: Client-approved measurements, Universal Pictures Marketing Messages Success Story, June 2023. All results are self-reported and not identifiably repeatable. Generally expected individual results will differ.

²Source: Meta Internal Data, Feb. 2022.

³Source: Meta Internal Data, March 2023.