TouchIT

The goals of nearly every motion picture marketing plan are twofold: create buzz and get butts in seats. With Universal's latest romantic comedy, "Couples Retreat," we aimed to do both. Because the title had enlisted such stars as Jason Bateman, Vince Vaughn, Kristen Bell, and Kristin Davis, we had great talent to work with when creating the all-Flash site.

Leveraging much of the keyart, production stills and rich imagery, we created the site as a destination (of sorts) that places the user on location in Bora Bora with the characters—not a bad place to take an Internet break during a hectic day. As a means of adding subtle humor we added ambient animation within the various subsections: beach-creeping crabs, seafaring sharks and the romantic reflection of a nightly lit lagoon.

Like most EPK sites, it includes cast bios, the movie's trailer, downloads and a gallery. However, as a means of gaining more traffic to the experience we created a humorous quiz that poses the question, "What's Your Animal Relationship Totem?" This is a theme pulled directly from the script and asks users a few simple questions to help them determine their intrinsic animal quality as it relates to their verities of affection and romance. After taking the quiz users are able to share their results with friends using Facebook Connect—a powerful device that has helped attract more eyes at a lower cost than more traditional ways of advertising.