Promoting movies in a digital world

The digital age has remodeled the PR landscape, especially when we are talking about entertainment industry, providing publicists with enormous resources to promote their clients. In the same time, all these digital tools are available to the public as well, enabling almost anyone with a computer and wifi, to publish their opinions on social media sites, blogs, websites, influencing the modern culture, and giving a lot of headaches and challenges to PR people. Internet has changed everything. The old times when Hollywood publicists were using traditional advertising and marketing methods to promote Sinatra, Jack Nicholson, to hide scandals and affairs, are long gone.

Taking a look back at an interview from 1999, (when Internet was just in its early stage), between Access Hollywood and the legendary publicist Pat Kingsley, it feels like hundred years ago. During this interview she was talking about the industry at that time, about the hard work, the long hours, and about the job itself: ”Our job is to promote the work our client does in the most positive light”, mentioning also that the public has changed a lot lately, becoming better educated, therefore, “you have to anticipate their needs” (Access Hollywood, 1999). Just thinking how much better educated and spoiled the public is now, after 18 years, would be interesting to see how Pat Kingsley would continue her legendary career. She is in fact retired now, but her agency PMK is still up and running. On a more recent interview in 2006, Michelle Panzer, The IFC Entertainment's vice president of publicity, discussing about the evolution of movies publicity with the new technologies, stated that "It's a two-way street, in that we have essentially rewritten how we disseminate our information and reprogramed how we receive it." Continuing to reveal what has changed in the past decade, she mentioned: "We not only gather our information in a new way_by our BlackBerry blasts, blogs, homepage and iPods_but we use the technology to facilitate our own messaging".

When people think about movies, they typically think about the cast, the performing, the special effects, the music, the sound, the story...and the list goes on. However, people rarely think about the marketing, advertising or public relations teams that work so much to promote those movies. Their efforts in filling up the theaters at the premiers are enormous.

The need for movies to have revenue streams beyond their cinema releases is leading studios to invest more and more in digital channels capable of creating engaging experiences both inside the theater and out. In today’s digital world, movie marketing is much more different and much more challenging than it used to be before the internet and social media. The movie industry has changed a lot in the last 2 decades, keeping pace with most current trends and innovations. In the timeline of movie history, the 1999 psychological horror movie The Blair Which Project was a game-changer for movie marketing, being the first to use digital advertising in the very early days of the internet. According to Huang, Strijnev and Ratchford (2015) in their Role of Advertising and Consumer Interest in the Motion Picture Industry, the movie industry ranks as “the second largest advertising category over a period from 2001 through 2005 with combined expenditures of over $17 billion (TNS Media Intelligence Ad$pender database).“

Fast-forwarding to 2017, movie advertising continues to be huge, involving many different departments, each with various goals to achieve, correlating social campaigns to gross box office revenues. Down bellow is a graphic I built with each department that is crucial to movie marketing, prior to the big release.

Every good battle begins with a good strategy. Therefore, the strategic planning is the first phase when things are put together. In this phase, the Marketing team works tirelessly on determining 2 of the most important aspects of a long marketing research: film positioning and the target market for the promotional activities that are about to start.

By now, digital advertising team had already launched the website, a lot of buzz is made on social media, lots of efforts are invested in SEO … Driving targeted Internet traffic to your desired point of sale, (which at this early stage is the movie’s website), and converting these visitors into customers, later on, you will see the price for all these efforts into getting as many people to view the release at opening weekend. It is crucial you add all kinds of tracking tools to your website, so you can closely monitor the users' activity.

Trailers are key components for marketing a movie. They are giving the audience an idea of what to expect, meanwhile teasing the viewers. Once the official trailer is released, the Public Relations and media teams begin working 24/7 until the movie is finally out: interviews with the cast, with the producers and directors, press releases and a lot of endorsement for the movie… Trailers are now created and distributed through movie theaters (traditionally) and YouTube (social media). Trailer releases need to be timed effectively, targeting (or avoiding) specific periods in the year to take advantage of competition.

Therefore, film communications are very important because it supports every stage of a film’s creation. In pre-production, films need to control the flow of information to the media and release announcements in a way that makes sense for its project. In production, communicators must take the same caution and plan how to protect and release information about the movie. In post-production, it is the communicator’s job to make sure the movie is marketed well and reaches the intended audience.

Before I wrap this up, I just wanted to share with you a chart with some of the most competitive jobs in the movie industry

I hope I made it quite clear how important is the marketing efforts in promoting a movie, and next time when you watch a movie, (an indie or a big blockbuster), just think about how much of what you see is the result of the marketing, advertising, and PR’S efforts.

References

Access Hollywood: Pat Kingsley rewrites the rules of celebrity PR. (1999). Public Relations Tactics, 6(7), 26.

Huang, D., Strijnev, A., & Ratchford, B. (2015). Role of Advertising and Consumer Interest in the Motion Picture Industry. Review of Marketing Science, 13(1), 1-40. DOI: 10.1515/roms2014-0005.