Movies and production houses

The movie industry consists of various establishments whose major engagements are the marketing and circulation of audiovisual pieces to TV networks and movie theaters. In addition, the movie industry can market these works to stores. The film industry is made up of the commercial and technological filmmaking companies. These film industry companies may include production, screenwriting, film studios, and cinematography, among other endeavors. The biggest motion picture studios are typically a part of larger media institutions. Due to the great expense required to produce a movie, the making of a film usually has to be done in conjunction with an already established production company. However, the production of independent films has begun with the advent of more affordable equipment and more sophisticated technology.

Revenue sources:

In the movie and film industry, movie rentals, broadcasting, and licensing rights all provide sources of revenue. Companies may also retail merchandise, or make a profit through the licensure of brand names to other manufacturers. Previously released movie and film material are distributed through many sources, including theaters, television, the internet, and others. Unfortunately, movie marketing is not a science, but there are lots of lessons to be learnt from those who have successfully marketed films & shows. Below are some strategies, tactics, case studies & ideas for creating an exceptional online marketing campaign for your next movie or TV show.

Unveil the beginning- Film website

About the same time that the first trailers hit the theaters, the movie studio will unveil an official website for the film. Typical movie websites allow visitors to view multiple versions of the movie trailer, watch behind-the-scenes interviews and mini-documentaries, read plot synopses, download cell-phone ringtones, desktop wallpaper, play games, chat in forums and even pre-order tickets. The official movie website is only the beginning of a much broader internet marketing campaign.

Theatrical trailers

The theatrical trailer is the stepping stone to promote a movie to its target audience. Starting much before the release of a major studio movie, distributors run movie trailers that are meticulously edited and audience-tested. The idea is to give moviegoers a taste of the laughs, special effects and plot twists of the studio’s upcoming releases while leaving them wanting for more.

Weeks before the movie opens nationwide, the promotions department starts an all-out publicity blitz. Promoters can also release behind-the-scenes clips, bloopers and other viral videos on video-sharing sites like YouTube.

Here are some very popular behind-the-scene videos of the movie Dangal, the highest money garnering movie in Bollywood. These videos, each, has more than 15 million views:

A blooper is a short sequence of a film or video production, usually a deleted scene, containing a mistake made by a member of the cast or crew. Let’s take a sneak peek at the most popular ones on the web, a blooper of the wondrous superhero movie Deadpool.

Press-Junket

As the release date of the film draws closer, movie marketers try to get early favorable press coverage in newspapers, magazines and on TV entertainment shows. The main movie publicity tactic is called a “press junket”. At a press junket, journalists, entertainment reporters, and movie critics all gather up to a special location for a day or two for interviews with the actors and creators of the film.  Be smart with who you invite to your press junket. While the main journalists and critics will be the key movers, you may also want to experiment with inviting influential bloggers and fans to the event.

Let’s watch a press junket of the 2017 million dollar movie ‘Life’ where the actors Jake Gyllenhaal & Ryan Reynolds come up with candid jokes and share their experience –

The video alone got more than 1.5 million views. Their candid web answering video garnered a 10million views on Youtube:

Product tie-ins or Auction props

Another popular strategy is to use highly visible product tie-ins and corporate partnerships. In the weeks leading up to the release of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” images of the green Grinch appeared on packages of Oreos, boxes of Froot Loops and cans of Sprite. Even the United States Postal Service got into the act, stamping letters with special “Happy Who-lidays!” messages.

Image 1: https://i.pinimg.com/736x/d8/a0/e7/d8a0e76f84ac847a983bea5ec0996aba–kids-christmas-treats-healthy-christmas-treats.jpg

Image 2: https://i.pinimg.com/236x/a5/d1/b5/a5d1b59c61577ae356f3c8597acfca53–grinch-youth.jpg

The Harry Potter was one of the most popular films to have done such tie-up merchandising and garnered a lot of profit worldwide by selling their customized Harry Potter goodies. Hermoine’s ‘Time-Turner’ was one of the most sold goodies globally before and after the launch of the movie Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Something Remarkable- Publicity stunts

Another significant movie marketing strategy is the publicity stunt, an orchestrated media event where someone does something incredibly silly, dangerous or spectacular to draw further attention to the opening of the movie. An example is when the promoters of “The Simpsons Movie” transformed dozens of nationwide 7-Eleven convenience stores into replica’s of Springfield’s own Kwik-E Mart.

Here’s the Kwik-E-Mart Store from The Simpsons at Universal Studios Orlando in Florida. Link:

If you want to leverage viral marketing of any sorts, you must begin by doing something worth talking about.When Game of Thrones marketed their latest series in the UK, they erected a huge dragon’s head, appearing to have been washed up on a Dorset beach. It created a huge buzz and excitement in the entire city.

Pre-Roll Video Advertising

Pre-roll video ads are an incredibly effective tool for drumming up interest and seeding your trailer online. They’re relatively inexpensive, and you aren’t charged if the viewer clicks ‘skip’ within the first five seconds. Using a service like TubeMogul, you can easily have your trailer appearing before related videos on YouTube, as well as sites like IMDB, 4oD, Vimeo, and many other sites. Here’s an overview of the Tubemogul software: 

The important thing to remember about pre-roll advertising is to give the viewer a call to action. This could be visiting the movie’s Facebook Page and engaging in a social game about the film, or entering a competition to win premiere tickets, or perhaps just going through to the movie’s official website to watch the full-length trailer. Of course, the more interesting you can make it for the viewer, the better.

Let your viewers experience the story

The Hunger Games had one of the most forward-thinking digital marketing campaigns of the decade. We focussed on various aspects of their strategy throughout their posts, but perhaps the most innovative aspect of their strategy was their ‘Virtual Hunger Games’, whereby users could join a district and compete against other districts, just like in the film.

This virtual game enabled viewers to experience what the characters in the film experienced while engaging with other fans of the film. What was incredibly smart, was how this game also tied in aspects of gamification and social integration to incentivise users to invite their friends, share updates, and ultimately spread the word about The Hunger Games virally.

IMDB Listings & Advertising

With millions of people visiting IMDB on a daily basis in search of new films and TV shows to watch, it’d be outrageous to ignore this site in your film or TV show’s digital marketing strategy.

Be as comprehensive as you possibly can when filling out the information required in the listing, and do whatever it takes to drive people to review the film. IMDB is a search engine, and much like Google or YouTube, their algorithm is driven largely by relevance and popularity, so you’ll want to make sure that your film page contains as much information as possible, and is well linked throughout the site.

Involve your audience in the making of the film

In the months leading up to the launch of The Dark Knight, Warner Brothers launched the award-winning “Why so Serious?” campaign, which brought Gotham City to life. The video below shows how the campaign encouraged over 10 million fans around the World to visit landmarks around the World in full Joker makeup, creating a huge amount of buzz for the film.

Involving your audience in the making of or promotion strategy of the film is a fantastic way to get some early die-hard fans. There are countless ways to do this, from running a competition to be featured as an extra,  crowdfunding your film or TV show using a platform like Kickstarter, where people are rewarded with exclusive gifts for helping to fund the making of the film.

Exuberant Video Marketing

Having a trailer is not enough. It must have a great seeding strategy, and be ultra shareable to produce great results. For content to spread at a compound rate i.e. ‘go viral’, it must push the audience to experience an emotional extreme. This can be through humour, fear, sadness, enlightenment, anger, lust, or any other strong emotional trigger. Think about any video, meme, or infographic you know that went incredibly viral – what emotion did it heighten? If you can create your trailer in a way that genuinely alters the viewer’s emotional state, you’re onto a winner.

When you have a great video trailer, you need a seeding strategy. Initially uploading your video onto your film’s landing page using something like Wistia, a video hosting platform for business, will be a smart move.

After a week or two, seed your video trailer into YouTube, promoting it further through pre-roll ads, YouTube playlists, AdWords etc.

Make your Facebook Page Interactive

When you visit the Breaking Bad, Hunger Games, or World War Z Facebook Page, you’re presented with a huge variety of games, contests, and fun apps to use. On top of this, the updates are frequent and very engaging.
First of all, when it comes to designing your Facebook Page, make it visually compelling. Use the cover image in creative ways to attract attention to the app section of a page. Get creative with your design, but keep everything above the fold bold and in line with the film branding. When done well, it looks incredible.

Facebook Apps are what typically make or break a Facebook Page’s ability to prove significant ROI or not. Social apps are extremely powerful at driving engagement, as they can be hooked directly into the open graph to get users sharing and inviting their friends to the film’s page.

*image sources: https://www.ventureharbour.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Screen-Shot-2013-10-23-at-13.35.18.png

Finally, when it comes to posting timeline updates, keep it visual, balanced, and engaging. Photos and videos typically generate the most engagement on Facebook, so be sure to incorporate this into your strategy, while balancing the type of content you post. In terms of frequency, it is usually found that a frequency of two posts per day works well on Facebook.

Using Niche Social Networks – Vine, Instagram, Pinterest

While Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter will almost certainly be at the centre of your social media strategy, that doesn’t mean you should avoid the smaller platforms, such as Vine, Instagram, or Pinterest. There have been some fantastically creative film marketing campaigns done using platforms like Vine. The trick is to understand these platforms and create a content strategy that fits the audience who use them. For example, Sundance Film Festival which is the largest independent film festival in the United States, use Pinterest

to highlight the best independent films. While they may only have 8,360 followers, many of these followers actively share Sundance’s pins on their own wall – enabling them to spread virally.

Similarly, Instagram is a photo-filtered image sharing platform. The Great Gatsby movie cleverly used Instagram filters to make photographs of the film, actors, and events have an old look, resonating both with the ‘Instagram style’ and the old theme of the movie.

Image source: https://www.ventureharbour.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Screen-Shot-2013-10-28-at-11.57.54-1024×505.png

Use social competitions & quizzes

It may not be the most innovative way of driving engagement online, but quizzes and competitions are a good balance between low risk and high reward. They virtually never fail to drum up buzz, and providing you get the reward or incentive right, they can work wonders in getting people to share your content with their friends.

When running competitions and incentivised quizzes, a trick that never seems to fail is offering a large incentive for people who invite more of their friends to join. Here’s a list of some of the best social contest apps you can use to drum up some social virality for your film or TV show:

Using Celebrity & Brand Partnerships

Whether you’re an independent film or a well-financed movie, you will likely have some affiliation with various brands – be it through official partnerships, or unofficial endorsement of certain products. If you do have celebrity actors or major brand partnerships, make sure you’re utilising their audiences online.

Coca-Cola has 74.5m fans on Facebook and 2m on Twitter, which is 30x larger than the total audience of the  James Bond social media accounts. When the two partnered on the launch of Skyfall, James Bond utilised Coke’s social media following to the max, enabling them to drive a huge amount of engagement in a short space of time.

Persona Marketing

Your film or TV show will almost certainly have a character that the audience connect with in some way or another. Many film marketing campaigns have intelligently played on their audiences love for certain characters by building a persona around those characters on social media.

The Ted character on Twitter is a fantastic example. With close to 700,000 followers, Ted continues to post funny comments that spread like wildfire. While this has obviously taken time to build up an audience of this size, it’s effectively free marketing for the film now – on any given day Ted can post a tweet reaching hundreds of thousands of people, and driving thousands of retweets.

Using Memes & Other User Generated Content

Memes are becoming a great way of leveraging your audience’s creativity to build highly shareable content that subtly promotes your movie. The benefit of using memes is that they’re easily customisable, extremely shareable, and very quick to produce. To put their popularity into perspective, a search for “Breaking Bad Memes” in Google returns over 18 million results.

https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/enhanced/web05/2012/7/10/15/enhanced-buzz-23905-1341948858-0.jpg?downsize=715:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto

https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/enhanced/terminal05/2012/7/10/15/enhanced-buzz-18363-1341949020-8.jpg?downsize=715:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto

GoT has it’s own Facebook Page only for Game of Throne memes

Using Google Adwords

Every day, there are millions of searches made in Google for film and TV show recommendations. One of the quickest ways of reaching this audience of potential viewers is through Google Adwords. It’s certainly not the most creative or cost-effective way to market your film, but it is an option.

One option that could be particularly effective is using AdWords. Alternatively, you could run ads on genre terms like “action film recommendations” or “good action films”.

This was an analysis of various modern marketing techniques for your Film Industry. if you would like to have a detailed discussion, please get in touch with us at hello@pixelsutra.com. We would be glad to assist you.