Sandoval Studios + Sandoval Agency The Case for Heaven Case Study

The Story

Best-selling author Lee Strobel and Director Mani Sandoval take viewers on an investigative journey to face the biggest fear known to man: Death. Inspired by Lee’s own near death experience, he seeks to discover the answers of why as humans we seek to be immortal in the race of time for success, purpose and faith. If there is a heaven, can we prove it?

“The pandemic has a lot of people pondering what happens after people close their eyes for the last time in this world, this film provides compelling evidence from both inside and outside the Bible to show that we will, indeed, continue to live on.”

– Lee Strobel

The Strategies

Drive people to purchase tickets for the Fathom release by creating excitement and urgency for the 3-night event.

Test audience behavior and engagement to determine which audiences resonate most strongly with the movie (paid and social).

Strengthen the audiences interested in the documentary on social platforms, driving engagement and building towards conversion (paid and social).

Highlight the beautiful imagery in the documentary, to differentiate it from other documentaries (paid and social).

Leverage the resources of our partners and influencers to broaden our reach.

The Execution

Social Graphics

Website + BTS

The Results

Box Office Success: $1.5M (3-Day Event)
Over 115K Tickets Sold

Fathom’s #1 Faith Film of 2022
The #2 Faith Film of all of 2022 (theatrical releases)
Sold-out theaters in key markets including: Chicago, LA, Cleveland, Nashville, San Francisco, Denver, Phoenix, and Houston

Marketing Success

Drove a total of 425K social impressions and over 12k social engagements
Created a huge Hispanic marketing campaign, including a Spanish press tour, all marketing assets in Spanish, and social support from Hispanic partnersPaid Media Success

Paid Media Success

Ran over 570 ads on various social and digital paid media platforms, targeting more than 25 different audiences both in English and Spanish.
At the end of our theatrical campaign, we collected the following results, surpassing every KPI that we established up front:
- 20.2 Million Impressions: Almost 35% above the goal (15M Impressions)
- 1.42 Million Ad Clicks*: Double the goal (700k Ad Clicks)
- 431K Link Clicks* to buy tickets
- 1 Million Trailer Views: Matched our goal using only 60% of the budget allocated for trailer promotion.
- 10,500 New Followers on social media: Surpassed our initial goal by 5%

The Case for Heaven

The PROJECT