Job Well Done Everyone!

Well I have come to the end of my blogging past time (for now) and appreciate all who have taken the time and interest to read my (and our) posts! The advancements in technology and increasing number of social networking sites have kept the movie industry on their toes. From our blog you can see that the movie industry has to keep adjusting to these changes in the industry in order to stay competitve with the online movie viewing access that is now available to individuals. The movie industry has to go the extra mile to stay connected with viewers in order to motivate them to continue going to the theatre. The marketing area of the industry is quickly becoming aquainted with the ways of the networked world in order to understand viewer preference and promote movies through contests, special viewings, promotions and deals in order to connect the movie and the viewer. Having days like “cheap Tuesday” and coming up with new innovative ideas such as IMAX and 3D productions are strategic ways to keep those movie theatre seats filled. As time goes on we are seeing that the movie industry is trying to reach out and connect with the audience in every way possible and continue to work towards keeping the movie-goers wanting MORE. With the advances in technology, the movie industry will continue to see changes in movie viewing preferences and will have to learn to adapt while avoiding a possible loss.

I hope you have all enjoyed your blogging experience as much as we have and you didn’t mind my “constructive” comments on your blogs on a couple of occasions. It was a pleasure being in 3601 with all of you and good luck with upcoming exams!

Happy Holidays Everyone!

A (FINAL) Post from Katrina 🙂

The Most Anticipated Movies of 2013

Thinking of the movies of 2012 that made a stamp in my memory as being highly advertised and most talked about, The Hunger Games, The Dark Knight Rises and The Twilight Sage: Breaking Dawn Part 2 are significant in my mind. It is interesting to see which movies are the most anticipated because you’ll never know if it is a sequel, another story to the same movie or a totally different idea that gets viewers most excited. You always wonder what sparks the interest in the minds of the viewers. Is it the actors that get viewers in anticipation, the book that the movie is based on, the well-know director/producer or is it the story-line and plot? For me personally, I am motivated to go to a movie based on either the actors in the movie or if it is based on a book or previous movie that I know. What makes you motivated to go to a movie?  Here is a list of the top three 2013 most anticipated movies from three different sites:

IMDb: 1) Iron Man 3             2) Thor: The Dark World        3) Star Trek into the darkness

PAJIBA: 1) Iron Man 3         2) R.I.P.D                               3) Oblivion

Movie Insider: 1) Iron Man 3    2) G.I. Joe: Retaliation       3) Fast and Furious 6

It seems like Iron Man 3 takes the cake! Are you going to go see it?

Reference Links:

http://www.pajiba.com/seriously_random_lists/the-10-most-anticipated-films-of-2013.php

http://www.imdb.com/list/2-H9fKXWCCA/

http://www.movieinsider.com/movies/anticipated/2013/

A Post from Katrina

Most Influential Movie Actors on Twitter

I was wondering what actors are most popular on twitter and got a number of different suggestions. I was going to decide based on the number of follwers they had because obviously those with the most followers had the most fans that wanted to connect with them. From one website, their opinion of the top five “most influential” characters associated with the movies was:

1. therock – Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson

2. itunestrailers- official movie updates

3. rollingstone – the Rolling Stone magazine

4. Marlonlwayans

5. Tinch

Now, I don’t know about you guys but I dont even know the last two. AND, as much as I like The Rock…most influential? Really? I doubt it. So then I decided to look on twitter myself and see who was interacting with their fans the most and in turn gaining a number of followers. The star who exceeded all else that I looked up was Britney Spears with a whopping 22 million followers! Now I know she is not in many movies these days but she IS a new judge on the X-Factor this year and from her account you can see her constantly retweeting her fans comments and even replying to them! She usually is tweeting with her fans while the show is airing too so her fans are “watching it with her” and they tweet back and fourth. This is HUGE publicity and a great way to increase ratings. My next search was Seth Rogen, funny guy and very likeable, only has 367.7K followers while It Girl Jessica Alba has 4.5 million followers. Twitter is a great way to interact with fans and keep them excited about upcoming movies. Actors/Actresses and producers of movies need to take this into account and make twitter happen for their upcoming movie! If any movie has a twitter account with half as many followers as Britney then I bet you their ticket sales will have a bright future! Who do you think is most connected to their fans? Do you think that actors/actresses have the power to get their fans to the movies?

Reference: http://wefollow.com/twitter/movies

A Post by Katrina

Crimson Hexagon

Crimson Hexagon is a five-year-old company in Boston that was founded by a Harvard Professor. Studios such as Paramount and CBS have started using tools devised by this company in  order to answer specific questions about the desires of their consumers for various products, including movies. Crimson Hexagon allows their customers access to every public tweet that has ever been written since 2010. Having this information is a huge advantage to movie producers in that they are able to differentiate between what viewers want to see in the production and what they didn’t like. As an example, through Crimson Hexagon, flim companies are able to compare comments from viewers on the movie “Ted” to “The Hangover”.

Crimson Hexagon customers pay more than $100,000 a year to access this information. In one situation, by viewing the volume of tweets expressing a desire to go to the film across seven different movies,  there was a 98.8% correlation observed with actual gross revenue per theatre. Crimson Hexagon’s has researched and revealed that social media comments are highly correlated to opening-weekend box office.

Reference:

Rachel, D. (2012, August 3). Twitter goes to the movies . Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443343704577553270169103822.html

A Post from Katrina

Keeping Movie Theaters Popular

As the price of movie tickets and concessions go up, viewers interest goes down. So, the movie industry has had to come up with innovative ideas that keep us viewers excited about the theatre experience. So what have they come up with? Say hello to Dolby 3D movies!  Within one year of Dolby 3D being introduced there was more than 70 cinemas in 30 countries that adopted this version of screening. Dolby 3D Digital Cinema costs between $20,000-$30,000 to bring the 3D technology to theatres for viewers to experience.The first major title with this technology was Beowulf 3D and every showing was either sold out or very close to being sold out. This fact, as well as the fact that we now see some of our favorite classical movies being reintroduced to the theatre in the 3D version is a good indication that for now, 3D movies are helping ticket sales and keeping those movie theatre seats filled!

Reference: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/3d-movie-theaters-finally-a-reality,5102.html

A Post from Katrina

 

What You Don’t Want to Know About MovieTheatres

After reading the following article, you may decide to stay home from the theaters and illegally download movies on your internet instead! I found a humorous article titled “13 Things a Movie Theater Employee Won’t Tell You” that gives you the inside scoop on how movie theaters operate! Like how for the first couple of months of screening movies, the money earned from ticket sales goes to the movie studies- and that is why the yummy concessions are SO expensive! And did you know that there are chemicals in the popcorn that causes that irresistible popcorn smell fill the theatre? The reliable Reader’s Digest documented this story, so check it out- and see if you’ll still be going to cheap night tomorrow!

Link: http://www.rd.com/slideshows/13-things-a-movie-theater-employee-wont-tell-you/#slideshow=slide1

A Post from Katrina

The Three Levels of Social Media Involvement

As business’ evolve their marketing strategies to include the continuously growing social media network, they are faced with deciding their level of involvement in the new trend. As explained through an article by Debra Ellis, there are three levels of social media involvement:

1) Basic: Watching the different duologue exchange between participants and restricting your input to situations that only concern your business. This would include, chatting with fans at times and resolving issues and misinformation.

2) Participating: At this level, the individual involved in the business is starting conversation instead of only replying. The level involvement creates a community of people with the same interests and opens doors for relationships and dedicated participation.

3) Engaged: When business’ are at this stage of involvement with social media they have established an online community with many responsive members. The conversations within this community is actively flowing with or without your input and the fans are very opinionated and supportive of your business. At this level you have reached the level of achievement of your social media campaign and the benefits are clearly reflected from your efforts.
So where does the movie business fit into this? In order to run a successful social media campaign, a movie’s marketing team must make sure that the whole team involved in the production are at the “Engaged” level. This includes all actors of the movie, producers, director, everyone! In order to make sure the audience is aware of the movie, interaction by all is key in order for fans to feel the movie’s participators are equally interested in the individual as the individual is of the movie.

Link to article: http://www.wilsonellisconsulting.com/blog/03/the-three-levels-of-social-media-involvement-which-one-fits-your-company/

A Post from Katrina

Marketing The Hunger Games

I found a very interesting article that followed Lionsgate entertainment studio’s social media marketing strategies of the promotion of The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins’ best selling young-adult novel turned into a film. Lionsgate, a leading global entertainment company associated with the movie, made social media its marketing campaigns’ main focus. In their favor, they had the novel’s already large fan base and used this to their advantage when making the social media campaign a success. Since Lionsgate used a number of different promotional aspects of social media that includes Facebook, Google Plus, YouTube, Tumblr, Twitter and Pintrest, I decided to just post the article and let you read for yourselves. I was very impressed with how many different creative ways were used to reach out to fans and the amount of support that was received through active participation. One of the things that caught my eye that was said by the author of the article was that “thanks to this social media campaign, the world hasn’t just been watching, it’s been actively participating” and I feel as if this should be the main objective for all promotional companies looking to gain interest in their film.

So did all of the marketing pay off? Well, Lionsgate spent around $45 million dollars to advertise the movie (Fritz, 2012) and made a record at the box office by being the third-best debut of all time as well as doing the best for any film that opening outside of the summer months. The Hunger Games raked-in an incredible $155 million dollars at the domestic box office beating past movies such as Spider-Man 3 and The Twilight Saga: New Moon and Breaking Dawn Part 1 (The Hollywood Reporter, 2012). Seems pretty successful to me! Take notes Hollywood.

Link to Article:  http://www.portent.com/blog/social-media/hunger-games-social-media-campaign.htm

References:

Fritz, B. (2012, March 16). Lionsgate spending $45 million to market ‘the hunger games’. Retrieved from: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2012/03/lionsgate-spending-.html

The Hollywood Reporter. (2012, April 3). Box office shocker: ‘hunger games’ third-best opening weekend of all time. Retrieved from http://movies.yahoo.com/news/box-            office-shocker-hunger-games-third-best-opening-154614434.html

A Post from Katrina

Using the Internet as a Primary Marketing Strategy Tool

One of the biggest changes in today’s marketing strategies that are used to promote movies is…the internet (SHOCKER!). An interesting case where the internet was used as the primary marketing tool to the best to its ability was when the movie Paranormal Activity was being promoted. Paramount Pictures Corporation produced the movie for less than $15,000 and it ended up grossing more than $150 million dollars at the box office. How did it become so popular you ask? FACEBOOK. Paramount extensively used Facebook to promote the film by getting fans people to request a screening of the film in their area and had a goal of 1 million fan requests in order for the film to enter wide release. Their goal was met in a very short amount of time and the result was letting fans have a sense of ownership of the film. It also created a level of awareness as well as a connection that might not be felt through commercials or radio advertisements.

Warren, C. (29, November 2010). How social media is changing the way movies are promoted. Retrieved fromhttp://mashable.com/2010/11/29/social-media-movie-marketing/

A post from Katrina