Case Study: IT (the movie) achieves record-breaking social buzz and box-office success with Awario

IT the movie and its freakishly good marketing campaign

IT — the 2017 movie remake — faced the challenge of relaunching a well-known Stephen King property while standing out from a prior adaptation and driving massive pre-sales and box-office demand. Awario analyzed this marketing challenge, focusing on how the campaign built broad awareness across demographics through trailers, social accounts, influencer engagement, guerrilla/experiential stunts and tightly integrated offline–online tactics.

Awario used social listening and analytics to track official and influencer activity, measure UGC virality and quantify campaign reach, highlighting metrics such as the teaser trailer’s 197 million views in 24 hours, Instagram (1.5M) and Facebook (2M+) audiences, and strong Twitter engagement (251K). Awario’s analysis showed the campaign’s integrated strategy translated into record-breaking pre-sales and the highest-grossing contemporary horror release, with social-driven stunts and influencer endorsements proving measurable drivers of ticket sales.

IT