With the exponential rise of the Internet and the resources that it provides to access information throughout the world, it is no surprise that the film industry is finally taking advantage of it. After years of investing a great portion of budgets in marketing, studios have begun to use social media sites to promote their films.
Lionsgate may be the pioneer of a revolutionary digital marketing movement with the incredible success of their latest film Hunger Games. This film, which is a book adaptation, received over 156 million dollars in the box office on its opening weekend. This is not new to the industry. What is new, is the fact that most of its marketing campaign was done through social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter and through the use of new technologies. With the release of a free iPhone game, the Hunger Games franchise grew its following from that of the book.
It may have been a bold move, but it has successfully changed the parameters under which Hollywood markets its films. If one film can bring in 156 million dollars with an online marketing campaign, so can many others. This evens out the playing field for us, the independent filmmakers. How? Well, if studios start promoting films through social media (which is free), and succeeds, there is no reason why we can’t all do the same.
According to the NY Times, this marketing strategy is a "blizzard of other inexpensive yet effective online techniques to pull off what may be the marketer’s ultimate trick: persuading fans to persuade each other." The truth of the matter is that today, we are the creators of information and we have the abilities to spread it out if we use the right techniques and use the correct research methods to reach the audience. Search Engine Optimization is the only tool that we need as content creators to reach those who will divulge our information.
No comments:
Post a Comment