The World’s Last Blockbuster needed all the brand awareness they could get their hands on to increase foot traffic and lift online merchandise sales.

To achieve that with a small budget, we created a Super Bowl commercial on VHS, directing it to the store's die-hard community of fans, knowing that they would help to spread the story to a much broader worldwide audience.

The plan worked and generated over +2 billion global impressions, with an audience 9x larger than the Super Bowl, ultimately resulting in 1700% uplift in online sales.

All with a commercial firstly directed to Blockbuster's fanbase.

The world's last Blockbuster in Bend, Oregon has achieved cult status amongst cinephiles worldwide. This rabid audience of VHS collectors, movie enthusiasts, and cinema geeks flock to the store yearly to watch old films, rent VHS Tapes, and purchase merchandise.

To the general public, however, Blockbuster is a forgotten relic of the late 20th century. And as such, this single retail location had been struggling to make ends meet.

To stay in business, Blockbuster needed to sell merchandise, and increase rentals and foot traffic — but they could no longer rely on just their hardcore fans to happen.

The goal would be to create a call to action that reached hardcore fans but created enough buzz, excitement, speculation, and intrigue that a more general audience would tune in.

And what better time to drum up excitement…than Super Bowl.

Like the cockroaches that inherit the end of the Earth after us — the world's last Blockbuster will be standing long after we're gone. And they remained that way by outwitting, outlasting and outsmarting their competitors.

So instead of spending tens of millions of dollars to appear at the Super Bowl, Blockbuster would pay just $6 to make a Super Bowl commercial on VHS tape.

The first piece of communication from the brand in decades, the film positioned Blockbuster and a cockroach as the last remaining survivors on a post-apocalyptic planet. The film would play in-store at a Super Bowl watch party and live on Instagram.

We would collect data in the physical and digital spaces die-hard Blockbuster fans congregate around, starting with the store itself, Blockbuster's social channels and then exploring more niche film subreddits, comic book shops and even VHS collecting communities.

Across gender, age, income and race several learnings stood out. Fans craved an analog movie experience where they could interact with fellow community members. Fans missed those spaces where those interactions were possible. And fans feared for these spaces that were left.

The message we created was a simple one: Blockbuster will fight for its existence until the bitter end. And the call to action was that as long as there was still sentient life on earth you could join us for a personal experience where everybody knows your name, and your favorite films are still on hand.

Blockbuster shot their commercial on-site in Bend, Oregon using a robot cockroach purchased off the internet for $19.95. VFX were applied to make various locations around town appear post-apocalyptic and the film was transferred to an $6 VHS tape.

In the week preceding the Super Bowl key images from the film were shared on instagram and TikTok leading to speculation from fans online and inquiries from the local, national and even international press.

On the day of the Super Bowl, the VHS tape was streamed live from the store and made available for rent. After the game a digital copy was shared with fans and press.

Until this campaign, the last Blockbuster relied on the patronage of die-hard fans to make ends meet. But attention and speculation from these very snowballed into attention from local, national and international media outlets.

The campaign garnered over 2 Billion Media Impressions in over 100+ placements; all accomplished with $0 media spend - becoming the highest ROI of Super Bowl 2023.

The film was played on dozens of local and national TV news, during prime time, ultimately reaching 9x the audience of the actual Super Bowl. The spot also made multiple appearances on lists such as “The Best Super Bowl Spots of 2023”, without actually being aired on it.

The store saw a historical 1700% lift in online sales. In fact foot traffic, merchandise and rental orders would increase so much, the store had to double their staff to fulfill orders in one of their busiest weeks in the store’s history.