Two agencies compete in a head-to-head pitch for a fictitious project based around the film “Casablanca.”  live in front of several hundred people at iMedia’s Entertainment Marketing Summit

Doug Schumacher and his badass team at Basement, won the pitch. Here is  the marketing strategy and creative thinking that won them the fictitious gig. Pay attention especially to the social media plan within the slides.

Here is the premise for the pitch:

“Shortly after winning the 1943 Academy Award for Best Picture, all the prints of ‘Casablanca’ were mysteriously lost. Although many stills, newspaper accounts, magazine articles and subsequent interviews with the stars of the film have long been available, nobody has seen ‘Casablanca’ since 1943.

“Then, in January 2008, an archivist stumbled across the prints in the Warner Bros. Burbank, Calif. lot. Excited by this discovery, Warner Bros. has chosen to do a limited theatrical re-release of this great but long-missing film.”

The mission:

The hypothetical re-release would be for Valentine’s Day weekend, 2009. The budget to work with was $350K-$500K for creative development and non-paid media, and $1,000,000 in paid media.

Here is the competitive landscape:

• A Matthew McConaughey/Kate Hudson romantic comedy opening on the same day and date
• A Michael Bay war-action-adventure flick, set in Iraq in a bit of counter-programming; same opening day and date
• A long-awaited two-part “More Sex and the City” is airing on TNT, part one on Valentine’s Day eve

Here are the slides: