As the centerpiece to our integrated campaign, the HP-funded documentary enabled perfect integration between the brand and the message. We used Michael’s story to underpin the message that when it comes to printer security, there’s no such thing as being too safe.

Michael ‘MafiaBoy’ Calce is Canada’s most notorious hacker, a person who is listed as one of the top 10 black hat hackers of all time by listverse.com. When he was 15 years old, infiltrated Amazon, CNN, Dell, eBay, E*Trade, and Yahoo!, which at the time was the world’s largest search engine, causing an estimated $1.7 billion in damage. Through his own words, Michael convinces viewers why the threat to everyone is very real. We specifically chose the documentary format and enlisted Academy Award nominated director Hubert Davis to help us tell an engaging story and to become the springboard for a full film promotional effort.

Our fully integrated approach included creation of a Trailer to tease the launch of the Documentary one month prior to the World Premiere at the Hot Docs Festival on April 28th. As part of the film promotion, we created a movie ad that appeared in the national newspaper The Globe & Mail, a movie poster that ran as a Wild Posting in Toronto through the Film Festival as well as on digital screens during the 3 screenings of the movie, and built excitement for the world premiere launch of the Documentary through a press junket.

In addition, as a World Premiere stunt, we hacked moviegoers, obtaining basic information and surprising them after the screening with highly personalized messages.

We also engaged media not only in Canada but throughout the world as Michael became a sought after international speaker.

‘Rivolta’ became the first brand-associated film to be selected for Hot Docs, North America’s most prestigious documentary film festival. Within days, all 3 screenings of the film were sold out and the movie Trailer was viewed over 500,000 times. In addition, there were 12,590 clicks to www.rivolta.ca.

Overall, the campaign generated over 10 million impressions, including in-depth stories by Vice, the Financial Post, ‘Your Morning’ – Canada’s #1 morning show, and CBC. The press junket for the film spanned TV, print, radio, and online media.

Based on the success of the campaign, Michael became an in-demand international speaker, sharing his story and thoughts on printer security during headlining talks in Toronto, Montreal, London, Boca Raton, and Palo Alto. This led to media in 8 different countries covering the story. In Canada specifically, double-digit new business leads were generated as a direct result of his keynote speeches. In the words of one of those key leads, David Hitchcock, Information Security SME/Architect, Toyota Canada, Inc., ““Fantastic…It was exceptional to hear it from a hacker perspective.”

It’s safe to say that once you've heard Michael Calce explain what motivates him and other hackers, our target audience will never look at a printer - or any piece of connected technology - in quite the same way again.