The Brief

This film was created to celebrate the release of Fantastic Beasts 2: The Crimes of Grindelwald and the merchandise partnership between Warner Bros and eBay. As with other eBay projects of this scale, there’s always a desire to ‘surprise and delight’ and create a real world experience like no other, integrating exclusive products throughout the film.

The Creative

I wrote and created the concept, playing with the themes of the movie to make the kids believe they were immersed in something fantastical and that their wands held genuine power.

To ensure we got some truly magic reactions, the project was all staged for real on a chilly Autumnal evening. We chose National Trust site Lacock Abbey as the setting, known for its appearance in the first Harry Potter movie. With a handful of super fans, under the expert guidance of Cherry Wallis, (a Wizarding World expert influencer) we staged a magical masterclass. Everything was timed to be triggered by the kid’s spellcasting and with rigging by top lighting designer Tim Routledge (Beyonce: Formation World Tour) their magic was brought to life before their eyes.

The Results

The project resulted in a full suite of social assets, from a full length 3 minute film which captured the whole experience for social channels (gaining 5.3 million views on FB, Instagram and Snapchat) as well as bespoke landscape, square and portrait video content for separate Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter campaigns. Additional supporting versions were run on VOD platforms Teads, Fandom, Mobsta and Captify to an audience of 3.9 million. It also delivered 87,000 clicks through to the merchandise hub on eBay where viewers could purchase toys and costumes shown in the content.

On top of this, a 30 second cinema spot was created using the most epic moments, and run UK wide in all cinema’s in the run up to the release of the movie, resulting in 3 million additional views of the magical experience.