Universal: Dream Big Dreams with Sing 2

In January 2022, despite UK cinemas having returned to strength, audience behaviours remained unpredictable. Sing 2 was the biggest animated release since cinema doors had re-opened post-pandemic, and expectations were high. It is also rare for sequels to outperform originals meaning media had to work doubly hard to deliver our commercial objectives.

One expression of the Sing 2 film positioning, Dream Big Dreams, was an audio partnership on the UK’s number 1 commercial breakfast radio show – Heart FM with Jamie & Amanda. Despite reaching around 4M listeners weekly, the ambitions we’d set for Sing 2 meant we had to push this promotion beyond its audio constraints. We harnessed ground-breaking outdoor technology to supercharge the Heart FM “Sing-2-Gether” promotion and bring interactive visual elements to our radio messaging, letting consumers receive audio and visual simultaneously across different touchpoints. We executed a media-first sound synch on Piccadilly Lights, allowing consumers to listen to the iconic Sing 2 soundtrack in real-time via mobiles, without an app. Participants could watch the full trailer in AR and were served a “book now” link for a seamless consumer journey to buy tickets. Heart on-air trails were synched with large-format DOOH to increase cut-through, and the first ever DAX and Bus T-Side geo-sync meant anyone who passed the loveable characters on T-Sides was served Sing 2 audio across DAX. Additionally, we invited people to play a show-stopping 4.5 metre piano with their dancing feet at Westfield and saw their efforts broadcast on the jumbo digital billboard opposite, alongside film characters, for their own moment of fame. Our technology-enhanced campaign pushed the boundaries of possibility, brought families together and re-ignited a love for big-screen viewing; we outperformed the original film’s box office by 12%, becoming the 2nd biggest animation of 2022.