A social media rise for the Planet of the Apes

20th Century Fox new movie just opened in theaters on August 5. It’s “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”, directed by Rupert Wyatt: a new origin story written as a prequel to the 1968 film, “Planet of the Apes”, of which Tim Burton did a remake ten years ago. Does it sound like rebooting a reboot? If it does, it’s because it is: 20th Century Fox is trying to turn the title into a franchise, like other successful or less successful stories like Spiderman, Superman, or Hulk.

And it’s trying to do it through a social and digital strategy that includes Facebook (of course), YouTube (naturally), iPhone App (for sure), and Twitter (yes). Let’s briefly look at them.

• “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” Facebook page is aimed at fan engagement. The page structure and content is not much innovative or special, but a new features introduced is that the page asks fans to “Like” the page to unlock access to more features. Features include research videos, an iPhone app, and exclusive content. This seems a novel tactic, even if till now the page has only around 72,000 likes.
• YouTube looks like the preferred way for “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” social media promotion. The movie channel on YouTube is great: it has a custom design with real-time updates, lots and lots of HD video, behind-the-scenes moments, TV spots, and various versions of the film trailer. Even though the movie channel on YouTube is only a few months old, it already has more than 320k channel views and more than 33M total upload views.
• The iPhone App released by 20th Century Fox to promote the movie is named “Apes Will Rise”, and it is available on the Apple store as well as on the Facebook page. The app basically consists in a memory game and access to the channel on YouTube and information about the movie and online tickets. As always, the app is good but is limited to iPhone.
• On Twitter, “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” has an account, @apeswillrise, and is also using the hashtag #apewillrise for promotion. The effects for now are inferior to other comparable movies (around 6k followers), as we said for Facebook, but things may change soon since the movie is just out.

As a conclusion, is this social media campaign effective? Movie was out two days ago and early reviews are positive. However, the efforts 20th Century Fox put in the campaign seem a bit behind the ideal: rebooting an historic franchise is hard work, and more robust social campaign would likely give the film a better shot at connecting with audiences.