Fifty Shades of Excitement as new movie suits the big screen, small screen and the mobile to drive ticket sales

by Benson Agoha | Entertainment

So how has the much famed, much hyped 50 Shades of Grey movie been performing since its valentine day release?  To say the least, the new movie has broken expectation from the box office and has not stopped since.

Released on the 13th of February, 2015, in the United Kingdom, Odeon Cinema has describes 'Fifty Shades of Grey', as the biggest UK and Ireland Valentine's Day Box-Office of all time. Across the pond, in the United States, it is no different.

Part of the reason for the huge success being recorded was because the movie makers - Universal  Pictures - left nothing to chance.  In fact, besides the premiere, Universal also embarked on a social media campaign which drove users to a mobile application.  That in itself, garnered hundreds of thousands of users while, driving record-breaking, pre-release ticket sales through Fandango.

Fandango alone is the go-to destination for more than 30 million moviegoers each month, according to information on their website. It did not disappoint this time too.

Writing for the Mobile Marketer, Caitlyn Bohannon, said Universal Pictures campaign helped to collect the `highest pre-release ticket sales of all time for an R-rated movie'. This was reportedly even higher than `The Hunger Games and both The Hangover Part II and Part III.

Besids, "in regards to app engagement, the Fifty Shades app generated more than 2.7 million API calls per day, all routed through Kinvey, a backend-as-a-service provider, instead of burdening NBCUniversal’s infrastructure with a transient app" said Caitlyn. Picture that.

So is the power of the big screen done now? Not yet, but the power of the mobile continues to gather strenght as the future for audiovisual displays and accordingly, as consumers embrace it, advertisers chase after them.

Sravish Sridhar is the founder and CEO of Kinvey, Boston.  He said “There were so many fans of the book that a mobile app was a natural way to extend engagement digitally and build hype/excitement for the movie premiere,” adding “With the many devices used by consumers, and the vast amount apps that exist in App Stores today, an aesthetic and consistent user experience is necessary to attract – and retain – mass volumes of users."

Continuing, he said “By leveraging back-end services, content from the internship app was available across iOS, Android and Kindle apps, as well as optimized for seven different types of platforms,” and that “This streamlined development was key to saving budget and time and ultimately obtaining app users.”

The power of the mobile, just continue to grow from strength to strength, but we aren't leaving the big screen behind - not just yet.

* With additional reports from Odeon Cinema and Mobile Marketer.