Paramount Pictures is one of the most iconic film and television distribution companies in the world, delivering groundbreaking, diverse stories and premium content in every genre to audiences globally .
In 1986 Paramount’s release of Top Gun captured record-breaking box offices around the world. Thirty-six years later, Paramount released a sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, which soared to even greater success. As of December 15, 2022, Top Gun: Maverick had achieved over $1.49 billion in worldwide box office revenue (a figure that continues to grow) and became the year’s top grossing motion picture—domestically and globally.
Helping to propel the film to its global success was Paramount’s very creative digital marketing organization. One element of its marketing campaign was to use artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR) to bring the film’s iconic imagery to life. With the power of advanced AR, Paramount was able to give fans around the world the ability to use virtual try-on to see how they would look wearing the movie’s classic aviator sunglasses and flight helmets.
A critical requirement was to find the very best AI/AR technical partner to work with in creating the virtual try-on experiences. Top Gun: Maverick provides such an ultra-realistic
Diving into Top Gun: Maverick. Paramount Pictures worked with Perfect Corp. to create immersive virtual try-on experiences for global fans of the movie.
Paramount chose to partner with Perfect Corp., which offers cutting-edge AI+AR-powered virtual try-on technology.
“We knew we wanted to work with Perfect Corp. again because we have worked with them before to create immersive virtual try-on experiences for other Paramount films, including Like a Boss,” says Brandon Nichols, Vice President of Digital Marketing, Paramount Pictures. They've been good partners. We've seen how well they’ve performed in our previous campaigns. Perfect Corp. also has a large global audience, which was a great match for the global release of Top Gun: Maverick.”
Perfect Corp. worked closely with Paramount to create a Top Gun: Maverick interactive AR movie experience using Perfect Corp.’s award-winning AR try-on app, YouCam Makeup, its photo editing app, YouCam Perfect, and its state of the art AI-powered virtual try-on technology for eyewear.
The Top Gun: Maverick virtual movie campaign features exclusive Top Gun-themed looks and animated effects that bring the iconic elements from the film to life, like stepping on to the flight deck at dawn, and a chance to get into pilot mode with Tom Cruise’s classic Maverick aviators.
Joining the Fun. Paramount Pictures used Perfect Corp. AI/AR technology to let fans see how they look wearing aviator sunglasses, a flight helmet, and makeup looks from its record-breaking film Top Gun: Maverick.
In addition to the AR aviator sunglasses and helmets, the virtual try-on campaign also offered animated logo stickers, and movie inspired backgrounds to further engage fans.
Paramount has enjoyed a number of benefits since deploying Perfect Corp. AI+AR-powered virtual try-on technology, including:
Paramount knew it had a great AR virtual try-on experience to roll out to the worldwide fans of the Top Gun franchise when Nichols and his team began exploring the pre-release virtual try-on experiences for themselves.
“Everyone in our office was very excited about the realism and fun of the virtual try-on experience,” Nichols says. “We all tried on the aviators and the helmet, the makeup, the complete virtual experience.”
Virtual Try-On for Eyewear. Top Gun: Maverick fans can see exactly how they will look wearing the iconic aviator sunglasses because Perfect Corp.’s AI-powered technology automatically measures the distance between pupils for a perfect, life-like fit.
“We knew that our virtual try-on experience had to be first in class,” Nichols says. “We couldn’t have anything that looked unrealistic. Perfect Corp. came through, so we were all enthused about the engaging experiences we could offer the film’s worldwide community of fans.”
The virtual try-on experience was one crucial element of Paramount’s expansive global campaign to build enthusiasm for Top Gun: Maverick, a masterpiece of film making. Nichols notes that the engaging and immersive virtual try-on experience added to the organization’s other efforts in creating the word-of-mouth excitement that drove the record-breaking box office success.
“This is the highest grossing film globally and domestically in Paramount Pictures’ 110-year history,” Nichols says. “Top Gun: Maverick remained in the box office Top Ten for 19 consecutive weeks. We saw all different types of audiences showing up to this movie. I think that has something to do with the different ways in which we approach marketing—along with the immense quality of the film—to stay in the Top Ten for that long. Top Gun: Maverick was a smash, by every type of metric.”
Paramount enjoyed having Perfect Corp. contributing to the effort. “They are collaborative, they're responsive, they have great reach, great engagement,” Nichols says. “Perfect Corp. virtual try-on technology was part of a marketing effort that ultimately resulted in a great box office. We like to think that every single one of these efforts help drive that success.”
The Paramount digital marketing team knew that if they could offer Top Gun: Maverick fans a super immersive virtual try-on experience, fans would be eager to share their images with others across social media. This happened on a global scale.
“We loved working with Perfect Corp. to create a global opportunity for fans to immerse themselves in captivating virtual try-on experiences,” Nichols says. “In the process, we created enthusiastic advocates for our film. We worked with Perfect Corp. to create multiple touch points within the app for fans to create content, and then share that content with others. All of this helped create word-of-mouth excitement for our movie.”
Nichols notes how important the precise AI/AR technology was in creating this sense of fun and excitement.
Global Excitement. Paramount’s Top Gun: Maverick is a global hit. Paramount used Perfect Corp. virtual try-on technology to help fans spread the word.
Nichols says his team was happy to see the way in which the Top Gun: Maverick virtual try-on experiences were shared on social media—including on Twitter and Instagram.
Monitoring showed that on the day Paramount Pictures announced availability of its Top Gun: Maverick virtual try-on experiences, Twitter users, enthused about the news, generated 231,878 posts in a one-day “organic impressions spike.”
“This demonstrated the beneficial impact we had from partnering with Perfect Corp. to utilize their existing technology to create something really compelling for our Top Gun: Maverick marketing campaign,” Nichols says. “I believe Perfect Corp. helped us engage fans that have an interest in makeup, beauty, and fashion, broadening our appeal. When you look at the demographics of our box office, we had all ages, all genders, all ethnicities. You don’t sell the tickets this film did without bringing in an audience from all walks of life.”
Paramount’s creativity in working with Perfect Corp. to offer fans a chance to immerse themselves in the world of Top Gun: Maverick through virtual try-on captured the attention of media.
News of the experience was carried in more than 35 global media placements across the U.S., Mexico, Taiwan, and Japan—generating more than 704 million global media impressions, and 24 million in-app impressions.
Looking back on the campaign, Nichols says he is proud of the work Perfect Corp. created with his digital marketing team, and he looks forward to working with them again when the right opportunity arises.
“From a technology perspective, their platform is intuitive and user friendly. I think the combination of our iconic IP with Top Gun: Maverick, a good creative hook for marketing, and then Perfect Corp.’s technology, provided the alchemy for a powerful marketing initiative.”
The fan feedback underscores how well the campaign performed.
“All the social chatter that we saw, all the fan chatter and fan feedback was super positive,” Nichols says. “The Perfect Corp. virtual try-on technology provided a positive and impactful experience and helped us to soar to new heights in terms of our box office performance.”
Perfect Corp. is the leading SaaS AI and AR beauty and fashion tech solutions provider, dedicated to transforming shopping experiences through empowering brands to embrace the digital-first world. By partnering with the largest names in the industry, Perfect Corp.’s suite of enterprise solutions delivers synergistic, technology-driven experiences that facilitate sustainable, ultra-personalized, and engaging shopping journeys, as well as equipping brands with next generation of consumer goods. Perfect Corp. offers a complementary suite of mobile apps, including YouCam Makeup and YouCam Perfect, to provide a consumer platform to virtually try-on new products, perform skin diagnoses, edit photos, and share experiences with the YouCam Community.