A report on Audience building and the future Creative Europe Programme has been published by the European Expert Network on Culture (EENC). The aim of this report is to explore the role of audience building, presenting relevant trends and examples in different cultural sectors and provide recommendations to European Institutions for the next Creative Europe Programme.
Regardless of the political and government recommendations, what is made clear is that the next Creative Europe Programme will have the audience development as a main priority in its schemes. So what can we do, from the film industry, to be prepared to meet these requirements as well as to increase and develop our audiences? I will use some of the strategies and recommendations stated in the report to try to briefly brainstorm some ideas, from the point of view of the film industry:
- Education in audience development:
- National and regional institutions dedicated to the statistics could offer trimestral workshops to unveil the state of the art of the audience behaviour for each industry.
- Some audience development courses could be added to the Media Studies and Film Schools curricula.
- Specific departments in close contact with audiences should share their knowledge with all the company, so for instance, a screenwriter could be aware of young people's trends when going to the cinema.
- Extract results and data from previous projects and analyse what went wrong and what worked out well.
- Outreach and accessibility
- Consider, when ellaborating the distribution plan, how the outreach could be wider and how this film or audiovisual production could be more accesible to other target groups.
- Use mobile technologies to help with the call to action (nearest cinemas screening your movie, showtimes, ticket discounts on FourSquare,...)
- Make the most of your online campaign, to get the attention of those who cannot be reached by traditional media.
- Partnerships, mostly with other sectors
- Explore more partnership opportunities from development, beign not just for product placement, but also for the distribution and exhibition phases.
- Consider how a partnership could help to broaden the outreach to other target groups.
- Consider how a partnership could help both increasing the funding and/or reducing the final fee the audience has to pay to enjoy the movie.
- Consider the tourism sector as a viable and long term ally.
- Consider partnerships as a way to "virtually" increase your marketing and promotion budget (synergies)
- It seems that the most engaged people are with a production, the most they will consume, recommend and collaborate for the success of the project. So, maybe we could consider from development how will we make our future audiences engaged with the project along the production, and how this could benefit the movie itself and its awareness. Some tips from the report are related to user generated content (mainly with the use of digital technologies) and volunteering/consultation.
- Consider how user engagement (via user generated content, social media or volunteering) could help use with the search for funging (via crowdfunding or just by demonstrating to a financer how many people is already engaged in the production), raising awareness in different cities/territories (so we could cut direct promotion costs and get some in-site feedback), calling to action (organising "events" to watch the movie, for instance), maintaining the movie in the spotlight weeks after the theatrical release...
- Audience segmentation (specially children, young people, people with disabilities and minorities):
- If our target group is very specific, consider how we could create sub-projects to get to these other population segments. Educational screenings? Screenings outside cinemas? Creating crossmedia/transmedia projects?
- I really think this could be a big audience booster. As flat rates are becoming the standard on every online VOD service, shouldn't theaters do the same? Some multiplexes in the UK have already stablished affordable flat monthly rates (for the price of 1.5 or 2 movies, watch all the movies you want) which ensure a monthly income for the theater whilst dragging more people to the cinemas.
- Consider ways to make the production available (preferably at the same time) everywhere? Different ways of distribution depending on the location needs and audience behaviours.
And to end with, I would like to add another category:
- Content creation towards an audience
- Design appealing and interesting contents capable of engaging an audience. Without good contents, no audience will be developed nor engaged. An exercise of humility has to be done, in order to determinate the appropiate quality of the production we are pushing to the market.
It's been a while since I posted my last comment and a lot has been going on. But before getting to that, I wanted to talk about the Marketing Movies Online Conference, organized by DIVA (Diversity in Visual Arts) held last wednesday 13th at London's Film Museum. Since I was in London during the week, I was able to attend and now, I wanted to share some notes with you.
Common problems arose, as getting to know your audience, active engagement and ROI, with lower budgets. But I wanted to focus on solutions, and share with you some information that Mr. James Cashmore (Director of Media and Entertainment, at Google UK) gave us.
Cashmore stressed the value of winning the moments that matter, in order to bring some light on the problems stated before. Google reported that online searchs about movie ratings and reviews have doubled from 2009 to 2011, which leds us to think that the interest to discover upcoming films has increased. Good!
In fact, during this period, one third of the generic movie searches perfomed by Google users where about new releases, trailers and showtimes. And two thirds were searches with the title + trailer / dvd / showtimes / whatever. Cashmore stated Awareness, Discovery and Action as the main reasons for movie-Googling.
The thing is that queries in Google Mobile have increased more than queries on YouTube. The exact numbers were:
- 58% Google
- 20% YouTube
- 22% Google Mobile
With this in mind, Google displayed a calendar of events and the reactions received by Google, YouTube and Google Mobile users during several movie promotion campaigns. For instance, during the 23 week before the film release, most of the queries were about the teaser trailer. 13 weeks before the release, about the trailer. 6 weeks before, about the trailer, cast and some generic details. On the releasing day, queries were about showtimes, cinemas, and reviews. And from 3 weeks after and on, mostly about merchandise.
However, the most important part of the study was to highlight where the queries were made during this calendar. Thereby:
- YouTube resulted as the main tool for queries for early awareness (teaser trailer and trailer, mostly), which is not a big surprise, BUT,
- From week -3 to release, Google Desktop increased the queries received AND
- From two weeks before the release to two weeks after, Google Mobile was the King.
Screenshoot from "James Cashmore Director of Media and Entertainment, Google UK Ltd Keynote: Being Found Online Marketing Movies Online Conference 13th June 2012"
Good thing to know: people are using smartphones to make the final decision of going to see a movie, and since they are mobile, movie marketers have to capture local demand thinking mobile.
Cashmore's advice was to focus online film campaigns by two main goals:
- Maximize trailer views and Create interest (to assure the decision to see a movie) and
- Capture local demand (to assure the decision to go to the cinema)
This is what I found most interesting, but the whole keynote was great. You can check it here.
So, what do you think? Tweet me @lenatwit
Yeap. All my fault. But the thing is that I am not really proud of the content of this blog, so instead of keep writing, I always left it at the end of my to-do list. I'm sorry.
I'll try again, because I have some anoying geek friends who keep pushing me to write some stuff of what I do, but specially of what I think. Like this was a cathartic tool to my professional frustrations or something...
I have to tell you that nowadays I am more into film development rather than into social media or movie marketing. I think most of the mistakes of current theatrical releases could be avoided in a well planned development phase, and I am getting really tired of working as a community manager instead of reading screenplays and elaborating marketing plans, and thinking of strategies, or, let's say it, producing great movies... So maybe you get to read more posts related to development than to social media or movie marketing. Hope it's ok for you.
See you!
I just read in Gonzalo Martin's blog that the USC Annemberg Innovation Lab has released a tool to analyze the amount and quality of the tweets (positive or negative) related to a movie release during a weekend. You can see the example from this weekend here. Gonzalo asks if looking at the first samples, some communication actions could be done to reconduct negative buzz and promote the theaters attendance at the last moment, thanks to these kind of tools and geolocalization. It seems to me a tool with a really interesting potential, and I can imagine a scenario like in Truman's Show, where all movie marketers will be following social networks during all the weekend, to see exacly what are our Trumans, sorry, our potential audience, saying and doing. It has an evil touch, but I have no doubts that it could be a key tool to understand why successes and failures happen, and also, like Gonzalo says, to live reconducting little buzz crisis. However, I ask myself how tweets are classified, in an automated manner, between beign "positive" or "negative" buzz of the movie. With key words? Do they consider sarcasm and irony? What about neutral informations? It would be interesting too to obtain information about the causes of this positive or negative buzz: if we detect that there's a lot of negative buzz about our movie release, the very next thing we are going to need in order to reconduct the situation is to know why. It may help some "most used words" analysis in each category? How could we do this qualitative analysis in a massive and automated way?
¿What do they have in common (and not in common) the top20 Spanish films of the last year? ¿Which elements worked out on 2010 to reach a bigger audience? With some data published on the Spanish Film Academy's magazine (and from BoxOffice.es) I have created a table to analyze the most successful Spanish films in terms of Spanish box office, and the elements of these movies that could be key elements related to their success.
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This week Kung Fu Panda's is releasing in Spain. Jack Black, Angelina Jolie and Lucy Liu repeat as the main characters, whilst Gary Oldman goes in charge of the bad boy. Preceded by an authentic world tour of promotion, started in Cannes (and still not ended) the funny story of the greedy and clumsy panda who has to save the world is a whole example of online promotion of a blockbuster of family entertainment.
SUMMARY OF THE ONLINE CAMPAIGN IN THE US
- Oficial web site very complete, with lots of games focused on a young target and all kind of contents, specially video.
- Direct access to the location of screenings and ticket purchasing.
- A special web site intended for children, under parental control.
- Intense work done in social networks (mostly Facebook), with not only an specific page for the movie, but for every one of the main characters. Efforts to mantain the fans of the first movie and generation of expectations for this sequel (community management) since May 2010. Generous content and materials production, enough to cover a whole year of promotion in this social network.
- Synergies with the partners: presence on their web sites and platforms on social networks, and coordination of special actions with them for the family target.
- Banner campaign.
SUMMARY OF THE SPANISH ONLINE CAMPAIGN
- Customization of the US web site, but with less contents.
- Promotion on social networks since May 2011, from the distribution company's Facebook page, Tuenti page and Twitter account, Paramount Pictures Spain, combining the promotion of Kung Fu Panda 2 with Thor's, Super8's, and Transformer's. Similar contents to the US version, but concentrated in time.
Bearing in mind the budget differences that may have been between the US online campaign and the Spanish one, we are not afraid to say that the "cuts" on the online actions are, generally, logical and understandable. The release, several weeks before, of the movie in the US and the wide international promotion leaded by Paramount US since Cannes Film Festival (and even before), have already given prominence to Kung Fu Panda 2 in Spain on the Internet, which is, ultimately, global (and takes advantadge of the international materials). The coverage on social networks has been short but intense, with a dripping of original and attractive materials (some of them specific from the Spanish release) and a suitable tone and maintenance.
However, we have to point out some areas of improvement in the adaptation of the online campaign to the Spanish release, as it is the short margin of time during which Paramount Pictures Spain has been working on social networks (less than 2 months) and the fact that the presence of the movie is included on the umbrella of the distribution company's Facebook page. This, not only makes the movie harder to find on Facebook but forces it to compete during these 2 months with the promotion of the other releases of the distribution company. It also would had been interesting to offer a theater location system in order to let the audience find where do the movie is screened, and to purchase tickets. This is a common practice in the US but still not in Spain. By the other hand, some video materials used in the US promotion could had been used too for the Spanish promotion, only by adding subtitles.
Please, find the extended analysis on the Spanish version of the blog.
Two weeks ago, Marta Baldó from WAW invited me to give a talk in the Master of Movie Marketing, Distribution and Sales from the ESCAC, the Catalonian School of Filmmaking. As an ex-student of the Master Degree, it was a whole new experience to be on the other side and give some - hopefully - useful advice to the students of this 4th edition.
The keynote is made from an eminent practical point of view: which are the most used actions and techniques on social media for movie releases, with some first hand experience advice. Instead of looking at all the posibilities, I focused on giving simple ideas that nowadays, are almost a MUST for every project.
As I think that working in social media without following a global strategy has no sense at all, the second part of the presentation talks about other usual practiques in the online world of movie promotion. The idea is no longer "to do something on social networks" but "to integrate the online in the general marketing strategy", and "online" could mean websites, banners, actions on social networks or non of the above. As always, it would depend on your goals and the strategies you have planned to reach them.
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