Ever heard of that movie The Fasting and the Furious? Didn’t think so, but the play on the Fast and the Furious series is part of a broader creative effort behind DDB Canada and Tribal Worldwide‘s new advertising campaign for the upcoming Toronto Jewish Film Festival (TJFF).
The integrated campaign, which launched last week in the Greater Toronto Area, features a series of silly movies that wouldn’t be up to the high standards the the festival has for the films it selects.
“To demonstrate the quality of films screened [at the festival], the campaign’s creative shows absurd titles of the rejected films that didn’t make the cut,” said DDB Canada Toronto creative director David Ross, in a release.
TJFF received more than 500 submissions this year and hundreds of hours were spent reviewing them to build a lineup that shares fascinating stories that reflect the rich diversity of the Jewish experience, said TJFF artistic director Helen Zuckerman.
The campaign’s tagline, “It has to be good. Real good,” enforces the idea that only the best films submitted are approved to be featured.
This is the 22nd year of the festival, which offers an assortment of global feature films, documentaries and short films that explore ideas around Jewish culture. From May 1 to 11, TJFF will be playing more than 116 movies from 23 countries in select Toronto theatres.
Part of the objective of this year’s campaign – which includes TV, print, OOH, radio, digital and in-restaurant advertising – is to attract a younger Jewish and non-Jewish demographic to the festival to help expand its reach and boost ticket sales. The festival has traditionally had an older Jewish audience.
Each of the campaign’s executions point to the festival’s website, where film fans can buy tickets and find out more about TJFF.
The campaign runs for four weeks, with creative appearing on Rogers Media properties and elsewhere. TJFF negotiated the donated media buy through its sponsors and media partners.
This campaign marks a sequel of sorts for DDB Canada and TJFF in that they also partnered on a campaign for last year’s festival. The Cassies and CMA award-winning “Film. It’s What Jews Do Best” campaign helped grow TJFF’s box office sales by 14% over the previous year.
DDB Canada also created an online tool for TJFF last year called “J-DAR” that helps users identify how many Jewish actors, directors, writers and producers were involved in creating various popular Hollywood movies.
