It was the summer of ‘23.  Both Barbie as Oppenheimer, two blockbuster movies also known as #Barbenheimer, concurring for the spotlight. As one of our longest-standing and favourite clients, Universal Pictures entrusted us with bringing Oppenheimer to life in Belgium. So thanks to our expertise that’s exactly what we did! 

The cinema industry is highly competitive especially when major movies are released together. But when two of the year's most anticipated movies became a viral online sensation at the same time, it would not just be another movie release for Pivott. So, how did we take part in this epic battle?

Our media strategy for Oppenheimer in Belgium leveraged platforms like broad reach platforms Meta and TikTok, using video content that highlighted the film's essence and copy highlighting the plot, history, cast and critically acclaimed reviews. During the awareness phase we decided to work in two waves. Wave one focussed on qualitative views  where the videos were strategically sequenced to build both anticipation as excitement. To maximise awareness close to the release date, wave two focussed  on reach to increase the number of unique people reached . This combination led to an overall campaign reach of 4,411,567 Belgians. Yes, you read that right—4,411,567.

At Pivott, we transform data into sales. Our long lasting partnership with Universal Pictures enabled us to create over time strong audiences consisting of viewers from similar films and hence target interested individuals from the very start. As we focused exclusively on retargeting, the quality of clicks post-release improved significantly, resulting in a total of 51,232 clicks during the whole campaign. This also translated to exceptional results in cinemas where director Christopher Nolan has beaten all viewing records in Belgium, which we were very proud to have been a part of!

Oppenheimer won many awards but also many Belgian hearts! You might say Barbie did too but while Ken is just Ken, Oppenheimer wrote history.