New cam­paigns from film stu­dios to pro­mote their movies on YouTube and via inter­ac­tive con­tent is show­ing mar­keters from all indus­tries, how to engage fans, deliv­er excep­tion­al, immer­sive cus­tomer expe­ri­ences and win new audi­ences.

In the world of film mar­ket­ing, build­ing aware­ness is cru­cial. Block­busters are a tru­ly inter­na­tion­al prod­uct, with movie reels shipped to every cor­ner of the globe, and all with­in the time­frame of a lim­it­ed release dura­tion. In many cas­es, a few weeks can whol­ly define whether a movie is a fail­ure or a suc­cess.

That’s why for decades now we’ve seen the bill­boards plas­tered on build­ings, the posters on bus­es – the unvary­ing mar­ket­ing hype that accom­pa­nies every major release. The box office is a num­bers game in which aware­ness is every­thing; the more peo­ple you get into the fun­nel in the first place, the more that will even­tu­al­ly pick up those tick­ets, and make up those vital audi­ence num­bers.

Film mar­keters do have one major advan­tage to play on: peo­ple love going to the movies. Mar­keters have the lux­u­ry of work­ing with a huge­ly mar­ketable prod­uct. Films, by design, have all the appeal, sto­ry­telling, and pull nec­es­sary to engage con­sumers, ampli­fy cam­paigns, and inspire stun­ning con­tent nec­es­sary to get peo­ple into the the­atres.

Marketing For Movies

Film mar­ket­ing has tra­di­tion­al­ly been focused on ful­fill­ing one major touch­point: entice­ment. A con­sumer might become aware of a movie after see­ing an impres­sive bill­board, with a neat, exquis­ite­ly craft­ed tag line. Lat­er, they might seek out or catch a trail­er, and based on those inter­ac­tions a con­sumer will decide whether they want to see that film or anoth­er one.

When you apply the stan­dards defined by dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing in recent years – with mar­keters nur­tur­ing and re-enforc­ing all along the pur­chase fun­nel – to that of film mar­ket­ing, it sud­den­ly strikes as some­what odd that we don’t see more con­tent, and specif­i­cal­ly dig­i­tal media, being pro­duced to build on the engage­ment gen­er­at­ed by tra­di­tion­al media hype.

At the moment, a con­sumer might seek out a review to find out more about the film, but that has long been the remit of tran­si­tion­al jour­nal­ism. What about brand ini­tia­tives that dri­ve engage­ment – the user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent, the influ­encers? After all, film rec­om­men­da­tions have been a pow­er­ful dri­ver of cin­e­ma goers for years. Why should­n’t that be true of an pow­er­ful online influ­encer such as a pop­u­lar vlog­ger on YouTube?

And what about brand­ed ini­tia­tives? Inter­ac­tive and inno­v­a­tive con­tent cer­tain­ly has a great deal of poten­tial, espe­cial­ly when pow­ered by Hol­ly­wood sto­ries.

Film mar­ket­ing fol­lows tried and test­ed, and an undoubt­ed­ly effec­tive mar­ket­ing mod­el. But could film stu­dios be doing more with dig­i­tal media?

Using Digital Media to Build Influencer and Audience engagement

The sim­ple answer is yes. As a Google Think Insights study has recent­ly revealed, film mar­ket­ing is becom­ing increas­ing­ly inno­v­a­tive in the way it mobi­lizes influ­encers and engages com­mu­ni­ties.

While the flag­ship con­tent for any movie is invari­able the trail­er, video-shar­ing plat­forms means that with a lit­tle encour­age­ment, a whole legion of fans, crit­ics, and review­ers can be mobi­lized into cre­at­ing con­tent that spreads addi­tion­al aware­ness and rec­om­men­da­tions about a film. As the study says, “whether through real-life recre­ations of weapon­ry, elab­o­rate musi­cal lip dubs, ani­mat­ed alter­nate end­ings or even just peo­ple’s reac­tions to films”, fan con­tent can gen­er­ate a lev­el of cre­ativ­i­ty and pas­sion that rocks peo­ple’s worlds, and the scale is lim­it­less.

Accord­ing to YouTube’s Head of Cul­ture & Trends Kevin Alloc­ca:

“Fans can engage with, dis­cuss, remix, reen­act and oth­er­wise be a part of the block­buster movie phe­nom­e­na, where pre­vi­ous­ly they had been only pas­sive observers. And the hur­dles to becom­ing this type of fan­boy or fan­girl are much low­er, thanks to our con­stant­ly con­nect­ed world.”

Film Marketing On YouTube: 5 Blockbuster Examples

Here are five stun­ning exam­ples of film mar­keters using YouTube to cre­ate inter­ac­tive con­tent expe­ri­ences.

1. Godzilla Invades YouTube

When Warn­er Bros. and Leg­endary Pic­tures part­nered with YouTube Space LA to tap into the cre­ativ­i­ty of the YouTube com­mu­ni­ty. In an open “cast­ing” 28 chan­nels were cho­sen to shoot their own take on Godzil­la using actu­al sets from the movie. Tak­ing on a fine tra­di­tion for Godzil­la minia­tures and recre­ations, the videos have drawn a stag­ger­ing 8 mil­lion views on YouTube.

2. May The 4th Be With YouTube

Rather endear­ing, and cer­tain­ly a spe­cial occa­sion for “Star Wars” fanat­ics, May 4th is Nation­al “Star Wars” Day. Ahead of the much antic­i­pat­ed new install­ments of the epic space opera, Lucas­film looked to inspire a whole new gen­er­a­tion of fans.

Twelve Los Ange­les-based YouTube chan­nels were select­ed, with each team pro­vid­ing a pitch to cre­ate a “Star Wars” inspired short film. Lucas­film then picked four favorites to go into pro­duc­tion, with the win­ners giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to film their videos on the set of the Mos Eis­ley Can­ti­na, the infa­mous loca­tion where Luke, Han Solo, and Chew­bac­ca first meet. Film­mak­ers even had access to offi­cial “Star Wars” props, cos­tumes and music.

The case study was a great way to intro­duce new audi­ences to the cult of “Star Wars” and the videos gained trac­tion on pop­u­lar video-shar­ing sites includ­ing Yahoo and Col­lege­Hu­mor.

3. The Hunger Games: District Voices

Fans want to iden­ti­fy with the uni­vers­es cre­at­ed by their favorite sto­ries, and like the hous­es of “Har­ry Pot­ter”, fans of “The Hunger Games” (or Pane­ma­ni­acs, after the land of Pamen where the sto­ry is based) love to imag­ine what dis­trict, and what spe­cialisms and skills, they would fit into best.

To pro­mote the upcom­ing fea­ture release of “Mock­ing­jay Part 1” Lion­s­gate com­mis­sioned “Dis­trict Voic­es,” a five-episode YouTube series, in which influ­en­tial YouTube video cre­ators expe­ri­enced a full Panem makeover.

Hav­ing been dressed up in the lat­est Panem fash­ions, cre­ators shared the tal­ent rep­re­sen­ta­tive of their dis­tric­t’s indus­try. For exam­ple, YouTube’s Thread­Banger rep­re­sent­ed Dis­trict 8 and spoke about their pro­fi­cien­cy with tex­tiles. Lion­s­gate sup­plied authen­tic cos­tumes, set designs and props from the Hunger Games films to com­plete the visu­al trans­for­ma­tion of YouTu­ber’s trans­for­ma­tions into cit­i­zens of Panem.

4. A Journey Through Middle-earth

The eager­ly await­ed “The Hob­bit: The Des­o­la­tion of Smaug” was Warn­er Bros. Pic­ture’s most impor­tant releas­es for 2013. Fol­low­ing the mas­sive suc­cess of “The Lord of the Rings” tril­o­gy, hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in invest­ment meant that a equal­ly huge box office return was both nec­es­sary and expect­ed.

To ampli­fy the mar­ket­ing cam­paign the stu­dios cre­at­ed “A Jour­ney Through Mid­dle-earth”, an immer­sive web expe­ri­ence that allows users to nav­i­gate through a 3D envi­ron­ment that lets them explore the char­ac­ters and loca­tions of the Tolkien uni­verse. Designed in Google’s Chrome brows­er, the inter­ac­tive map gen­er­at­ed buzz and excite­ment about the movie. For a film in which the loca­tions play such an impor­tant part, pro­vid­ing an inter­ac­tive map is both exhil­a­rat­ing for fans, and a great exam­ple of using inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy to pro­duce fun, engag­ing con­tent.

5. Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy

To pro­mote Mar­vel’s lat­est super­hero install­ment, “Guardians of the Galaxy”, Dis­ney cre­at­ed a fic­tion­al trav­el agency, cre­at­ed to show off the exot­ic des­ti­na­tions present in the film. Offer­ing the ulti­mate galac­tic vaca­tion, fans will be thrilled to explore the “Guardians of the Galaxy” uni­verse.

Wel­comed by the Galaxy Get­aways trav­el agent, the con­tent was designed in HTML5 and allows users to explore real­is­tic-look­ing des­ti­na­tions using Google Street View. Users can also explore weath­er reports, trav­el quizzes, and more. Fur­ther­more, vir­tu­al trav­el­ers had the abil­i­ty to inte­grate their expe­ri­ences via their pre­ferred social media plat­forms and share their jour­ney’s trav­el cards on Face­book, Twit­ter, and Google+.

Movie Touchpoints

The cam­paigns show what can be achieved when you com­bine excep­tion­al sto­ries, fic­tion­al uni­vers­es, and inno­v­a­tive dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing prac­tices. Excep­tion­al con­tent, on the chan­nels con­sumers are brows­ing, or using to eval­u­ate deci­sions, helps to ful­fill those cru­cial touch­points that ulti­mate­ly lead to a con­ver­sion – just as dig­i­tal mar­keters have been prac­tic­ing for years.

In a way film stu­dios have always spe­cial­ized in con­tent. Using video and inter­ac­tive con­tent has sim­ply brought sto­ry­telling to the mod­ern age, to a gen­er­a­tion of new audi­ences. Lever­ag­ing fanat­ics, the fin­er ele­ments of the prod­uct they are mar­ket­ing, and imag­i­na­tive ways to use the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy, there are lessons here that all mar­keters can ben­e­fit from.

And it’s a trend that’s catch­ing on. Stu­dios have all the resources to con­duct more excep­tion­al cam­paigns. From a con­tent per­spec­tive, stu­dios have every abil­i­ty to take on con­tent mar­ket­ing like a duck to water; they will engage pow­er­ful influ­encers, and make sure the sto­ry-rich con­tent finds it’s way onto organ­ic search results and social media.

By cre­at­ing con­tent that’s share­able, engag­ing, influ­en­tial and inte­grat­ed, film mar­ket­ing is show­ing the poten­tial of inter­ac­tive video mar­ket­ing. It seems now that the old stu­dios can teach dig­i­tal mar­keters a thing or two of their own.

Do you think brands can learn from film mar­keters in engag­ing influ­encers and audi­ences on YouTube?