movie marketing - the debate continues
So Mark Cuban has posted an aggregated response to the 1000+ people who responded to his “Movie Marketing Challenge”
4. The other response was along the ideas of what i call “personal tagging or networking”. In other words, i have something Im going to give you, and you in turn can use it and pass it on and we shall cherish our communal experience. We can write about it. Talk about it. Meet about it in any digital or real location. Call it theatrical marketing 2.0.
I love the idea. The problem is that its a downstream idea. It works in response to something that is working well. You need to get the right demographic in the sufficient number in order to build a base strong enough for it to matter. Just as bands and their fans acted as the foundation for myspace, there has to be a means to aggregate a critical mass of the people who will exchange or pass forward tickets and who feel rewarded in doing so.
I dont think I have all the elements in place to make this work yet, but it will certainly be considered.
This clearly accords very closely to what we are proposing here at slingshot, but I find Mark’s objections to it a bit baffling.
Firstly: yes, it will only work with a property that at least some people [and the magic number of how many are needed to achieve a tipping point is, of course, context dependent] are passionate about. But surely, that’s a reasonable starting point? A kind of marketing that could persuade tens of millions of punters to go see bad films that nobody cared in the first place at low cost, would’nt be marketing, it would be voodoo.
Secondly: whilst there is yet to be an online destination that is to film what MySpace has become for music (though of course, MySpace itself is trying with its film-maker forums, and our cousin company LoveFilm is rapidly becoming such an aggregator in the UK), why does Mark feel the need to own or build such a destination himself (other that that Mr. Cuban is a man who seems to enjoy owning things)? Why not work with existing aggregators of movie fans? Well one reason is that they are all acutely aware of the value they add and are selling access to their users at an increasing premium to the studios already - the owners of social media destinations are starting to act like the gate keepers of old media.
But there is another route worth exploring, which is to realise that the core audience for any one particularly movie may not aggregate under the banner ‘movie fans’ but instead by other socio-psychological groupings. MySpace didn’t start as a place to push music. It started as a place for young people to get together. It just happens that young people use music as a proxy for personality and tribe.
So where might these people group? The short answer, surely, is that it is going to vary film to film. And that’s what makes this a non-trivial challenge.