Brief:
- Sony Pictures is promoting the July 13 release of "Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation" with a campaign that lets Alexa users listen to a new story, nursery rhyme or joke voiced by characters from the animated feature every day, according to a press release.
- There are several ways for Alexa customers to open story time related to the movie, but the process has to begin with a parent saying, "Alexa, open Hotel Transylvania." They can also say "Alexa, ask Hotel Transylvania for a joke," "Alexa, ask Hotel Transylvania if you are a vampire" or other commands.
- In addition to bedtime stories, customers can also set up a custom Hotel Transylvania alarm through the Amazon Alexa app.
Insight:
Sony's Alexa-powered promotion for "Hotel Transylvania" combines content related to the movie with Amazon's voice-enabled technology. The storytelling and jokes features can help to endear younger audiences to the characters in the movie series, especially if they were too young to remember the first two animated films. "Hotel Transylvania" premiered in 2012, literally a lifetime ago for its target audience.
Sony's campaign follows an Alexa-based campaign that Universal developed for "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom." The campaign also included original content in a choose-your-own-adventure story that runs parallel to the events of the movie. Similarly, HBO promoted the season two finale of sci-fi drama "Westworld" with its first voice skill for Alexa that also had a voice-activated game.
Amazon introduced Alexa to help people shop its e-commerce platform, but the company is also looking for ways to monetize the technology as more consumers use Alexa-powered mobile apps and Echo devices. In providing content for kids and requiring parents to launch the games, the company appears to be mindful of the objections by children's rights groups to voice-enabled devices over privacy concerns. Toymaker Mattel last year canceled plans to sell a voice-activated device for children after pressure from parent and privacy groups.
