How FilmMaker Used Digital Media To Generate Viral That Make Money

Lately, the film industry has been striving to comprend how the music industry's marketing trends, particularly with respect to the growing approvaladoption of social media. Musicians have been successfully applying a plethora of online tools within a diverse use of social channels to connect with and create a larger audience. Today, it would be very tough to promote records without a social medial-savvy crew in place, gaining audience support behind the scenes. Many showbiz marketing professionals in the movie industry are turning to online social channels to create a customized user experience for fans, just like the music industry. The movie industry needs to appreciate the numerous nuances of each social platform before they can be successful. Below are ideas to help the entertainment industry grasp those ideas.

Hollywood Movie Director Andrews Jenkins seems to be a forerunner in the film industry's swing en route for creating a social media experience for fans, even before his movie was made. In May 2012, he called Edwin Duterte of The Viral Publicity in Southern California to build up a comprehensive and strong social media based movement. Although the film is only in its "concept phase", Jenkins wanted to in one way or another create an "online ground-swell buzz" of his 3-minute concept trailer prior to showing it to Hollywood studio executives to green light the project for a full feature film. Duterte recommended that the strategy include setting up the proper social media profiles, instigating a "foundation of topics" for engagement, then starting the campaign on a meaningful date to including as many "fans" as possible so they can develop "ownership in the film". In almost two months, he has been able to gain over 600,000 Youtube views and over a dozen entertainment companies interests.

When setting up online digital site accounts for the various online social media sites, such as Google Plus, FB, and twitter, the entertainment strategy group must recognize the different nuances of the various sites. For instance, Facebook is more sharing opinions in a less formal way, while the Google Plus group is more interest-based sharing using more detailed discussions. As evidenced with the Shadow Lurkers movie, Andrews utilized the G+ Hangouts to create one-on-one video chats that connected the audience to him. Duterte created this campaign to initially focus on Andrews personality because the film didn't have a full script yet. It was more important that the fan base have a connection to Andrews personally. The campaign was to show off his expertise and giving "how to use your camera" was an easy topic of interest to the fans.

Another reason he chose to utilize G+ hangout was because the video chats could immediately be produced to Youtube without effort. The conversation videos could then be shared more easily among various social media platforms. Duterte said, "Our guests criteria was to find influential people who had strong G+ and Youtube followings. Everytime we did a hangout, our guests would share our conversation video chat along with a link to the teaser video. This strategy produced over 600,000 views on Youtube."

Duterte added another level of personalization. With everyone who did a hangout about the movie, a "thank you badge" was created that included the fan's name and how many views the video got at within 24 hours of the conversation chat.

If the movie industry understood how to effectively utilize the power of digital media, they could appreciate a stronger advertising strategy at a lower costs and risk verse the traditional marketing efforts.