BREAKING NEWS! SRH wins Ad Age Small Agency Award

Winning is fun. Let’s do some together. 

We interrupt this week’s SRH Empirical Marketing Dispatch to bring you an important news announcement!

SRH has won Ad Age’s Small Agency Award — Experiential Marketing, Silver — and we could not be more thrilled! What did we win for?

We turned Hundreds of Beavers — a micro-budget, black and white indie film with no dialogue, no stars and no distribution deal — into the surprise cult hit of 2024. 

“Hang on,” you might say. “Hundreds of Beavers is a beautifully crafted and brilliantly bananas film. It’s got a really sticky title. It’s funny. It’s got beavers! They’re a bit megalomaniacal and murdery, but that just adds to their charm. What does it matter that you didn’t have a distribution deal? Surely Hundreds of Beavers was destined for worldwide commercial success.” 

You’d think so, but no.

Without a distribution deal, movies do not get seen. By anyone. Ever.  They vanish to the place where lost socks and dreams go. We weren’t going to let that happen to our film.

In five simple steps that absolutely did not seem simple at the time, we turned Hundreds of Beavers into a can’t-miss cultural experience. 

Step 1. Build the campaign on a Category Entry Point

You know that moment when you’re sitting in a darkened, crowded theater absolutely laughing your ass off with hundreds of the best friends you’ve never met before? Hundreds of Beavers delivers that moment over and over again, and we built our campaign around it.

Step 2. Grab Attention — The Great Lakes Road Show

We put five filmmakers in a van full of beaver and bunny suits and set off on a whirlwind tour of 15 cities to entertain thousands of fans. We sold 85% of all the available theater seats, which really got the ball rolling. 

Step 3. Break into Culture

Through a series of gleefully deranged parody movie posters, rogue costume appearances, and an ever-expanding merch lineup, Hundreds of Beavers evolved into a grassroots phenomenon. People even got Hundreds of Beavers tattoos. Permanent ones. Which? Awesome.  

Step 4. Leverage Initial Fame 

Our on-stage shenanigans and PR efforts somehow caught the attention of major critics and top-tier outlets, including The New York Times, LA Times, Variety, The Washington Post, The Guardian, NPR, AV Club, Filmmaker, Hollywood Reporter and IndieWire, among others.

Step 5. Amplify Word of Mouth to Build Mental Availability

We collaborated with artists on posters and other merch. We sent merch to influencers. Anytime anyone famous said anything nice about the film, you bet we reshared it. And we took to social media to engage with hundreds of thousands of fans from around the world. 

As the buzz spread, independent theaters across the country began booking the film without a distributor, purely from fan demand and earned media.

With a not-whopping $37K media spend, our campaign generated $5.1M in earned media with 11.7M organic views and a 4.6% blended engagement rate.

A bunch of people saw our movie, and we made a bit of money.

So far, Hundreds of Beavers has grossed nearly $2.5 million in ticket sales, merch, downloads, and Blu-ray sales, returning a tidy little profit to investors. 

We took our own Empirical Marketing toolbox and created both a successful campaign and a new business model for other indie films to follow. 

So what does any of this mean for you? 

For a few years now, we’ve been putting the principles of empirical marketing into practice, and we’ve had great results for our clients. The Hundreds of Beavers campaign allowed us to test nearly all of them  — category entry points, distinctive brand assets (you definitely need a mascot and a jingle), fame building, creative effectiveness, the long and the short of it, etc. — for ourselves.

So the next time you’re faced with a big, hairy, intractable business problem (or hundreds of ‘em), give us a call. We made a weird little movie famous, and we can help you take bigger, smarter, more effective swings. 

We are incredibly grateful to Ad Age for the award. 

The regular SRH Dispatch is back next week! We’ll see you then!