One Will Fall…

The epic next chapter in the cinematic Monsterverse pits two of the greatest icons in motion picture history against one another - the fearsome Godzilla 🦖 and the mighty Kong 🦍- with humanity 🧍🧍‍♀️ caught in the balance. Godzilla vs. Kong has been released in the cinema on 24th of March in Malaysia.

There are a few things unique about marketing films 🎞️ and TV 📺 shows. Timing is incredibly important - you must build up as much hype in the short space of time ⏳ leading up to and around the launch as possible. Another unique factor is that films and TV shows, by their very nature, are content gold mines - a huge privilege when it comes to crafting a powerful content marketing strategy for an upcoming film or TV show launch.

Let’s take a look 👀 at the strategies, tactics & ideas 💡 for creating an exceptional online marketing campaign for your next movie or TV show 👇

1️⃣ Do Something Remarkable - The Publicity Stunt

Seth Godin, an American author and former dot com business executive, one of the brightest minds 🧠 in the marketing world 🌍, summed it up perfectly when he said: “By definition, remarkable things get remarked upon”. Word of mouth 👄 is the most powerful form of marketing. If you want to leverage viral marketing of any sorts, you must begin by doing something worth talking 🗣️ about.

2️⃣ Go to Town With Your Video 📽️ Marketing

We seldom buy 🛍️ things that we have not seen or tested in some capacity, which is why trailers are absolutely essential to marketing films & TV shows. For content to spread at a compound rate i.e. ‘go viral’, it must push the audience to experience an emotional extreme. This can be through humour 🤣, fear 😰, sadness 😭, enlightenment 🤩, anger 😡, lust 🤤, or any other strong emotional trigger. 

Think about any video, meme, or infographic you know that went incredibly viral - what emotion did it heighten? If you can create your trailer in a way that genuinely alters the viewer’s emotional state, you are onto a winner 🥇.

3️⃣ Make your Facebook Page Interactive

First of all, when it comes to designing your Facebook Page, make it visually compelling 🤩. Get creative with your design, but keep everything above the fold bold and in line with the film branding. Facebook Page is extremely powerful 💪 at driving 🚗 engagement, as they can be hooked ⚓ directly into the open graph to get users sharing and inviting their friends to the film’s page.

Finally, when it comes to posting timeline updates, keep it visual, balanced ⚖️, and engaging. Photos 🖼️ and videos typically generate the most engagement on Facebook, so be sure to incorporate this into your strategy, while balancing the type of content you post.

4️⃣ Use Social Competitions & Quizzes

It may not be the most innovative way of driving engagement online, but quizzes and competitions are a good balance of low risk and high reward. They virtually never fail to drum up buzz, and providing you get the reward or incentive right, they can work wonders in getting people to share your content with their friends.

When running competitions and incentivised quizzes, a trick that never seems to fail is offering a large incentive 🎁 for people who invite more of their friends to join. An easy way of doing this is to set up a unique URL parameter system whereby they receive an extra 5 or 10 entries to the competition for every friend who enters via their unique link.

5️⃣ Using Celebrity & Brand Partnerships

Whether you are an independent film or a well-financed Hollywood movie, you will likely have some affiliation with various brands - be it through official partnerships, or unofficial endorsement of certain products. If you do have celebrity actors or major brand partnerships, make sure you are utilising their audiences online.

6️⃣ Persona Marketing

Your film or TV show will almost certainly have a character that the audience connect with in some way or another. Many film marketing campaigns have intelligently played on their audiences love ❤️ (or hate) for certain characters by building a persona around those characters on social media.

7️⃣ Using Memes & Other Forms of UGC

Memes are becoming a great way of leveraging your audience’s creativity to build highly shareable content that subtly promotes your movie. The benefit of using memes are that they are easily customisable, extremely shareable, and very quick to produce.

Another similar tactic is to use caption contests, fan art, or other types of tongue 👅-in-cheek user generated content to leverage the collective sharing power and creativity of your audience.

8️⃣ Facebook Advertising

Facebook Ads are a “one to many” form of advertising, you can pay to show your advert in the timeline of one person, and their interaction with your ad can automatically drive free interaction from their friends. Basically, Facebook Ads are really effective if your adverts are genuinely shareable.

Marketing films and TV shows is not an easy task. If you want to stand out from the crowd, do something remarkable, be ambitious with your marketing goals 🥅, work with experts, and do not believe the myth that you need a large budget to achieve great results. Money 💵 helps, but creativity is the real currency in marketing.

Contact 📞 us today if you have any questions, or would like to talk about your up-and-coming film or TV show’s digital marketing strategy 🤩😎!

Reference:
Marcus Taylor, August 12th, 2020, 17 Inspiring Marketing Strategies For Your Film Or TV Show