Film Promotions and Social Media

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and an array of other social media sites have been on a steady incline over the past five years.  This increase has lead to many directors, producers, and studios taking full advantage to reach out to the multitudes of users and their friends to advertise and market their projects without a high overhead.  In most cases, the use of these media outlets can help to substantially reduce an advertising budget.  The reduction in the budget allows companies to focus additional revenue towards making a better product.

Matthew Cherry, of Transparent Filmworks, has become an industry pioneer in using social media outlets as his main source of advertising and introducing his company to potential investors.  Before resorting to traditional media such as radio and television, Matthew seeks to utilize a strong social media campaign for his projects. Typically, these campaigns are geared towards the sites that he is using.  Matthew uses Facebook Twitter to tweet and write about how production is going for feature projects. He allows his Twitter and Facebook friends and fans to view and be apart of the casting process by live streaming on USTREAM. Matthew does not only promote his films on social media sites, he also encourage future filmmakers to not give up on their dream, and also gives insight about the process it takes to create a feature film. Matthew has gained a huge following on Facebook and Twitter by sharing his projects.

As a pioneer in perfecting this art of film promotions, Matthew has set the bar and serves as an excellent model to follow to ensure ways to reach millions of people without spending million on advertising.  In an era where every penny counts towards something, Matthew is showing us that these pennies can become substantial dollars that a company can invest into other projects.  

Social media plays a crucial part in the success of a film because media marketing is becoming one of the main marketing strategies used to attract viewers to different film projects. Social media sites create new opportunities for exhibition for independent filmmakers, by allowing them to show and promote their short film projects. 

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUoiT2Kp1I0&feature=related

The Evolution of Marketing for Film

The days of radio ads and newspaper ads as the main form of marketing are long gone.  Now, we live in an era of blog sites, Internet advertising, social networking sites, and corporate websites as the leading forms of marketing.  If your company leadership isn’t well versed in digital marketing techniques, your company and its possibilities of great fortunes can be left behind the rest of the corporate world.

Digital marketing has helped many movies break the box office. Movies are advertised as backgrounds on blog sites such as TMZ, there will be a page set up for the film on Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking websites, trailers are posted on YouTube and other websites, and promotional website is set up for the film to draw interest. Hollywood studios knows how to reach an audience and using digital marketing has helped them to get attention to their films.

Avatar is a great example of how digital marketing helped this movies break the box office records. August 21, 2009 will go down in history because it was celebrated as Avatar Day. On this day 100 IMAX 3-D theaters worldwide watched 16 minutes of a new movie James Cameron was debuting, that movie turned out to be Avatar. Also, on this day Ubisoft debuted a trailer for the videogame based on the film, and Mattel introduced action figures based n the movie (Mendoza, 2010). This aggressive marketing campaign helped develop support for the film.

Social Media Marketing

Social media has helped Avatar’s marketing team reach millions of people. The marketing team used Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter to build interest in and spark conversation about the film. The Avatar Facebook page had over 1.3 million fans, the film’s MySpace page had 800,000 friends, and the film’s Twitter page had over 25, 000 followers (Mendoza, 2011). I have never seen a film draw this much attention on social media sites. Once the marketing team saw the success of the social media sites the media strategy moved on YouTube and Flickr, the two websites had a combined total of 12 million video and photo views. Marketing for Avatar did not stop at social media sites; interactive trailers were made where viewers can be apart of the film.

The type of digital marketing strategies that were used for Avatar helped the film become the biggest blockbuster movie of all time. Avatar grossed over $77 million during its opening weekend, and over $2 billion worldwide.

When I produce my first blockbuster movie I will utilize every aspect of digital marketing because I will not only reach millions of people around the world. I can also create interactive trailers, games, and websites that will give the audiences an experience of their life.

Mendoza, N. (2010) How Digital Marketing Helped 'Avatar' Break the Box Office. Retrieved on July 3, 2011 from http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/02/how-digital-marketing-helped-avatar-break-the-box-office039.html