By Reid Rosefelt
Why are you using social media? It takes a lot of time. What is the exact benefit you think you can get from it?
I don’t know about you, but the most important thing to me is to send people to my blog. Certainly I think that utilizing social media to build traffic on your website or blog should be high on your list.
What about Mobile? As people increasingly use
By Roger Jackson
Previously: Secret 19-Point VoD Marketing Plan, Part I
Here’s Part II of our 19 point plan…
This post was going to be Part 2 of Two. But I try to avoid overly lengthy posts. And feedback over the past couple of weeks has convinced me to focus this post on just a couple of points: VoD Windowing, and Facebook Marketing. So…here are points 11 & 12 of the 19 point plan, with the final 7 to follow in a fortnight. It’s not bait & switch, just that, as the Dude said, “new shit has come to light.”
11. VoD Windowing: The film industry is adept at double, triple and quadruple-dipping. They are one of the few businesses that have found a way to sell the same product to you over and over …and over again. It’s genius if you think about it. You pay to watch a movie in theaters, and then maybe you buy or rent the Blu-Ray or regular DVD, or you catch it on Cable VoD or subsequently online Transactional VoD. And even on iTunes or Amazon or Vude there’s a form of mini-windowing by this oh-so-devious business — the choice of watching the film in Standard Definition, or pay a buck extra for HD. A few months (or, these days, weeks) later it’s on television pay-per-view, which more or less lines up with Subscription VoD, like Netflix. And somewhere in there you also “pay” (via your airline ticket) to watch it on that flight to Paris. And while this is definitely a business model under pressure, with shrinking windows (and therefore profits) it’s still very much the way Hollywood does distribution…and VoD is no exception.
By Marc Schiller
Back in early May, I had the pleasure of attending “A2E: Artist To Entrepreneur” a fantastic lab organized by Ted Hope and the San Francisco Film Society. Over a three day period, a group of extremely talented filmmakers, technologists, marketing and distribution experts came together to explore new paradigms for film distribution.
On the first day of the lab, Ted and his team passed around a worksheet that all of the filmmakers were asked to complete. While filmmakers are often asked to submit information when applying for funding, few are compelled to explore their film from a marketing and distribution perspective as effectively and as thoroughly as the A2E worksheet demanded.
By Reid Rosefelt
I’ve been a film publicist for 35 years and have worked on hundreds of movies. Whether a film ended up grossing a hundred thousand or a hundred million, my approach has always been essentially the same.
1) Be Consistent With Positioning
The most important task for a marketer is to find a description of the film that accentuates its strengths, minimizes its weaknesses, and makes you want to see it. In the trade this is called “positioning.”
By Reid Rosefelt
As I’ve said before, attempting to game social media is like trying to playing chess with a computer that can change the rules at will. Every social media guru is aware of this, as social media changes like the wind.
This is why I’m not interested in writing “[INSERT NUMBER HERE] THINGS YOU MUST KNOW ABOUT PINTEREST.” Rather than pretend to be an expert by recycling other people’s insights and research, I’d rather direct you to the original thinkers here.
More importantly, when you are dealing with something that is always changing, trusting experts isn’t always the best idea. I think you should be proactive–not just a passive receiver of other people’s ideas. I’d rather suggest a working process, instead of “tips.” I’m talking about curiosity and a willingness to make your own experiments.
By Reid Rosefelt
We define and display ourselves in social media through our taste. We show the books, movies, TV shows, theatre, music, technology, sports, food, and video games we like, and what we have to say about them. Pinterest does that, with the difference being that it’s not as evanescent as Facebook and Twitter. It’s not about what you said a minute or few hours ago, it’s relatively permanent. It’s a series of baskets–your boards–in which you place your interests. They are always there, you just keep putting more stuff in them.
Your boards are all dedicated to s
By Reid Rosefelt
Today many marketers are making twice as much money on Pinterest as they are on Facebook. Does that mean that for you–my filmmaker and artist readers–Pinterest is worth twice as much of your precious time? Yes, and there’s a simple reason.
All the big social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram have struggled to translate their large numbers into revenue. Eventually, the costs to simply keep in operation get so astronomical that they throw up their hands in despair–and the only answer they can come up with is advertising.
On the other hand, the ability to market and promote is built into Pinterest’s DNA. Pinterest is a colossally effective store that is as fun and addictive as “Angry Birds.” Like that thing you’re looking at? Click. Buy. It’s Google search on steroids.
