It's Buddy! was supposed to be a friendly 90’s children's television show, until it wasn't. Directed by Casper Kelly and distributed by Roadside Attractions and Saban Films, the film follows Buddy's turn from singing orange mascot to unhinged monster who traps his young cast inside a bloody nightmare. Carrying that turn beyond the theater is exactly why the team came to Community.
The team behind the film had already built a socially engaged fanbase with more than a million followers across social media. But they wanted a way to turn that following into a fully owned, direct line to the most engaged fans where Buddy could actually talk back to his audience.
So they gave Buddy a phone number.
Challenge
Expectations were low. Nobody on the team had personally run a text campaign before, but had seen other movies do it successfully. With a smaller budget than most movies, the goal was to generate enough buzz leading up to the film’s release to create engagement with the main character and sell some tickets. They weren’t sure what the response would be like, but they certainly knew the opportunity to deliver a cool experience was there!
The team had a lot of creativity, digital content and word of mouth to work with. Social platforms gave them reach, but they were looking to give fans, especially the most engaged ones, something that felt personal and conversational to create enough momentum in the days leading up to theatrical release.
Campaign
Buddy’s phone number launch
The campaign kicked off with two moves: a 90s-style fake commercial for Buddy's show, built around the phone number, and a photoshopped image of Buddy in Times Square with that same number on a billboard. Both ran on social media, backed by a bit of paid media and a handful of influencers. From there, momentum took over.
Buddy texts back
A dedicated team member answered texts personally, as Buddy. Early messages were warm and a little cuddly. As the campaign went on, Buddy's tone got more menacing, mirroring the character in the film. Fans started posting proof on social media that they'd gotten a real, personal reply, and that became organic content in its own right. It snowballed from there: two thousand members signed up in the first 12 hours, and the number kept climbing.
First access
Text subscribers were the first to know when the team dropped a new promo video, with general release taking place later. The text fan club was designed to reward the most engaged fans with exclusive content that made them feel close to their beloved character.
Using text to sell, strategically
The team didn't treat texting as a sales channel. Most messages were in-character and conversational. But a few days before theatrical release, they texted one straightforward link to buy tickets. Ten minutes later, ticket sales had jumped by roughly $2,000, attributed entirely to that one text. The team followed the same playbook after release with a BOGO ticket offer sent only to fan club members, unavailable anywhere else.
“Community became a way of keeping the conversation going. We didn't use it as a hardcore sales platform. Not making people feel like they were being sold to carried a lot of weight.”
Impact
What started as a campaign expected to draw a couple hundred members grew to nearly 75,000. A single text with a ticketing link drove roughly $2,000 in sales in about ten minutes, and that kind of early signal mattered beyond the sale itself.
Big productions can lock in three thousand screens, simply because of their size and standing with exhibitors. A movie like Buddy doesn't start with that advantage, so early proof that people were showing up carried real weight. Buddy went out on more than 1,700 screens, a count the team credits in part to the momentum text helped drive in the days before release.
“The ticket-sale window is crucial to getting screens. Being able to show early ticket sales is essential to getting the screen count where you can get the kind of gross that we did.”
Buddy grossed an estimated $5.3 million during the opening weekend, and went on to reach $21.2 million in domestic box office within the first three weeks of release.
The plan is to keep engaging the most loyal fans as Buddy moves into its next release windows: on demand and eventually, for purchase. Fans have already started texting in asking for a sequel. Whatever the future holds, this fan club is the group most likely to show up for it.
