A friend and I went to a free advance movie screening a few nights ago, courtesy of one of the many marketing and PR companies hired by studios to build buzz in advance of movies' opening weekends. I used to be involved in the film festival and marketing circuit; for such buzz screenings, these companies' primary -- if not only -- concern is that each seat be filled. As a result, they promote the screening passes as "secret" or somehow under-the-radar, but in truth the intention is for the pass to spread widely among individuals' social and professional networks so that there is an overflow of people trying to get in to the advance screening.
We got our pass not through a direct social or professional connection, but through Twitter. Granted, another friend alerted us to the Twitter pass, but anyone can follow this PR group's tweets and print off its passes. And while you still have to be "in the know" enough to know about and follow this PR group's Twitter and Facebook accounts, it's not hard to find them on these social media sites.
In addition to this rapidly disappearing barrier to participation is this company's outright promotion of their social media outlets. My friend and I were given a book-form copy of the movie's script and a t-shirt with the film's title and accompanying graphic as a reward for using the Twitter-generated pass. Why the superfluous Twitter push? Is there that much competition for people's eyes and ears that these marketers need to so up the ante just to get the public's attention? And why so seemingly unselective about cultivating your target? Sure, it's important to build buzz for your product, but if a majority of your advance screening viewers don't come near your target audience, why invest in this way?
1 comment:
As the friend who accompanied you to the movie, I have to say that I thought it was really strange that they didn't even make any attempt to collect any contact/demographic information from us. I mean what's the point of handing out free promotional stuff if you aren't even going to get any useable information in return? Perhaps the assumption was that the company already had our info since we had been alerted by Twitter, but then why not take the effort to try get this information from other movie-goers? Surely, that would have been an extremely easy way to build the companies mailing list.
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