Is Cinema Dead? - Chapter 42 - Marketing, Advertising and Publicity

What are you going to do when there is no budget for MAP(marketing, advertising, publicity and public relation)?

MARKETING AND Advertising

Nowadays a film production has two phases. One is the film production where a great amount of the film budget goes and the second is MAP. For a typical blockbuster film produced from the major studios, the budget for MAP is equal to the budget for the making of the film. However, for an independent produced film and especially for micro-budget film, all of the money goes for the making of the film. This makes the life of the film limited and very short. Without MAP there is no chances the film to bee seen, to get attention and to attract the public.

By knowing all of this I had to work extremely hard to create buzz around the title from the very beginning of its making. I of course had to use all of the free tools which were available for me at that point. I used heavily and mostly facebook. We created a facebook official page and I began posting all kind of content, mostly creative about the film. Images, visuals, art works, behind the scene photos, teasers, trailers, GIFs, short bumpers and all of the interviews which we did during the making and promotion of the film.

I experienced how INDIEGOGO can be a very powerful tool for advertisement and marketing of the film, plus its original function as a crowd funding campaign platform.

We knew that with NoOne's story, genre and topic won't be easy for us to market the film for the general public. We knew that it would be a very niche film, for a specific public, but we too knew that if we go and create an interesting film and tell the story not conventionally it may provoke more people to go and see it.

What we initially figured out about NoOne's audience was confirmed after the theatrical release. Actually we tested our eventual sweet spot audience with our facebook page posts and creative content. We found out that women between 20-40, well educated, independent, self conscious and aware, are our audience, they were loving and enjoying the story of the film and its characters. Later on Christo our distributor from A + films would share his observation that unfortunately this target group doesn't go very often to watch film in cinema. However, they prefer to watch films in their own time and in their preferable place, even by themselves.

NoOne's intimacy and rawness also was a very huge factor contributing to the fact that more likely people would enjoy this type of story from the comfort of their futons. Despite of all of this information we were doing a marketing campaign which was open to the general public, we were emphasizing on the controversial elements of the film, its lesbian sex scene which actually was the first in the hundred years of Bulgarian cinema history. We were bringing to the front the sex and the sexual plotline in our visual materials and trailers. This of course made the film more popular but what appeared is the fact that more popular doesn't mean more watched. This is very interesting conclusion, because everybody I notice is trying to hook as many people as possible, but by this the right audience is missed in the conversation between the public and the film. We did this mistake in our campaign before the NoOne's theatrical release. However, having in mind that our target group in general dosn't go to cinema, we didn't have other chance but to risk and make the title more provocative in its marketing and advertisement campaign than it is actually. This is another great lesson, never tweak and twist the nature and character of the film just to hook people to go and buy tickets.

In general with our marketing social media campaign we were truthful from the very beginning, we were communicating correctly what were the values at stake in this film, about what was the film and about whom was the story about. In our facebook page we had organically gathered around 7500 likes. Before the theatrical release I decided to go and buy likes, I bought 3000likes from facebook for the price of 50$. I did it motivated by the impression which I had a that time that people could be influenced and convinced to trust and believe in the film if they see that thousands of people are liking it. I don't recommend to anyone doing it, because later on it would appear that the interaction and the responds from the people who liked and followed our facebook page has been diluted and thus the impact of our social media platform was weakened.

So my general conclusion about MAP for micro - budget film is that the best and effective way to execute a MAP campaign is when it is s specific and truthful as possible. What I mean by that. Find out who is going to like and even better love the film, who is going to find it interesting and communicate every creative content, news post, message, interview or documentary material with them. Communicate with your best audience the film's value, its story and make them engaged and active in this communication. Listen to their questions and voices. This is the biggest chance for a 0 budget to micro budget MAP campaign to work well and in favor for the film.

PUBLICITY

It turned out that to we were lucky to have Mihail Vuchkov as our PR manager, because he literally managed to place us in every talk show and in every major Tv channel in Bulgaria. Additionally to that he organized a Cover Page and numerous publications from the print and online medias.

Publicity still plays fundamental role in Branding and Marketing. The rule is that you start with publicity and then you strive for advertising, just to keep the brand/film alive and fresh. Advertising is used to maintain the attention and public awareness, but actually the movie is sold by publicity.

UPDATE 2020

What was my experience during the promotion of YATAGAN?

We didn't have big budget for MAP and we had to relay mainly on publicity - TV and RADIO interviews, and print and online media publications.

The producers didn't have money to pay for Tv Spot-Trailers and we didn't have this channel for communication, which is still the biggest communicational channel in Bulgaria.

They chose to distribute it independently and so we didn't have the support of one of the two biggest private Tv Channels.

Despite this limitations they managed to create a powerful campaign which was focused in promoting the film through its cast and crew.

What was my plan for MAP?

I wanted to create a social media platform titled YATAGAN. My idea was to use the movie as an INDEPENDENT MEDIA - producing content related to the political and social reality in Bulgaria.

For example free PDF reports, articles and videos informing and educating the public what are the results created by the corruption in the country, fake news, the lack of freedom of speech etc. I had an idea to use the film's theme - THAT NOTHING IS WHAT IT SEEMS in Bulgaria. And to extend it, that even a movie campaign in Bulgaria is not what it seems to be.

Unfortunately we didn't have time and money for this idea. So we dropped it.

I came up with another idea for our campaign. I wanted for the YATAGAN campaign to produce a Web Documentary Series about our CAST. The subject/theme of the series was how everyone of them used humor and comedy to deal with some of the most challenging events in their lives.

We did a pilot episode but again we couldn't find partners to finance the project despite its social media success. This short episode has in YATAGAN official Facebook more than 70 000 views without to be sponsored and pushed.

I believe that for Movie and Tv Series campaigns more and more of the original quality content distributed for free and related to the product/movie/tv series story and theme, will be playing major and bigger role in their marketing and advertising campaigns.

READ CHAPTER 43