How Twitter and Social Marketing Will Save the Movies - Jim Louderback - MediaBizBloggers

Earlier this year Twitter was accused of killing Sascha Baron Cohen39s latest movie Bruno Land of the Lost and Year One as rapid fire negative tweets doomed Saturday and Sunday attendanceBut it39s not all bad news Social media marketing was behind the biggest movie you39ve never heard of the amazing Paranormal Activity which took in 22 million last weekend making it the highest grossing flick of the week nearly double its closest competitor Oh and all that despite being in about 35 less theaters than its competitionHow did it do so well We had a front row seat here at Revision3 as we helped the company leverage the power of social media to drive demand around the country amp8211 at a tiny fraction of a traditional movie campaignThe low budget Paranormal Activity which was made for less than 15000 was discovered by Steven Spielberg who originally wanted to remake it But then he decided along with Paramount to try releasing it through nontraditional means which these days essentially involves Twitter Facebook and online videoParamount called us up to help energize our 3 million strong audience of young tech and Internetsavvy men Our first test to fill up San Francisco39s cavernous Castro Theater for a midnight movie that no one had ever heard of And we had just 5 days to do it allPiece of cake Our Websavvy show hosts have on average 68000 Twitter followers each We quickly harnessed the Revision3 Twitter army to let our fans know about the upcoming show In addition we passed the word along to our Facebook fan pages as well and urged everyone not to miss the most amazing movie experience of the fall for freeWord started spreading Our indy moviemaking show Film Riot got involved as well This funny show hosted by an incredibly creative horror movie producer based in Miami not only told all his fans but we flew him out to San Francisco to be the host of the midnight showing His fans locally were overjoyed and many of them immediately made plans to show upOur other hosts also joined in Fans of Tekzilla and CoOp were encouraged to come down to the screening as well to hang out with the hosts of those shows tooWe even quickly launched a Paranormal Activity microsite about the upcoming movie to give our fans a place to RSVP and to get more information about the screening You can see that here along with a link to the trailer the official site and moreThe screening was a huge success Although Paramount originally didn39t think we would fill the balcony we ended up putting butts in every seat and by 3am we39d helped convert more than a thousand Revision3 fans into Paranormal Activity ambassadorsAnd yes they told all their friends amp8211 which averaged more than a hundred followers each on Facebook Twitter MySpace and other social networks In addition we encouraged everyone we touched to quotDemand Itquot amp8211 to demand a showing of Paranormal Activity in their home town This also touched off a huge response around the social nets and helped build buzz for the movie far beyond San FranciscoSo Phase 1 was a huge success But it didn39t stop there Our Film Riot host Ryan Connolly dedicated his next episode to Paranormal Activity and brought his viewers to the event and showed off parts of the trailer That episode has proven to be the biggest yet for the new show with more than 300000 viewers to date and 10000 new viewers each dayAnd we39ve kept up the tweeting poking and prodding One of our producers posted pictures from the event on the social photosharing site Flickr Our latest tweet helped Paramount get the word out about this weekend39s expansion and encouraged our viewers to be part of an exclusive Paranormal Activity partyMy congratulations to the Paramount marketing team who really understood how social media could be used to drive incredible buzz awareness and viewership of an amazing movie Instead of an incredibly expensive multimillion dollar TV print and outdoor campaign Paramount has created a huge success amp8211 more than 65 million dollars so far through deft usage of social networks online video and other nontraditional meansSure the movie was good If it was shlock the twittersphere would have easily destroyed it just as it wrote the epitaph for Bruno Land of the Lost and Year One But with a good movie and a minimal budget Paramount and its partners have proven that you can make movie magic amp8211 and money amp8211 with a minimal investmentThe lessons of Paranormal Activity extend beyond simply creating buzz around a horror flick Leveraging the power of socially connected engaged audiences by focusing on the new influencers can pay tremendous dividends for everything from Apple iPhones to Zappos shoes It39s not just about telling a few friends anymore When something is good and with the right fulcrum social media can move mountainsWhat does the modern movie ad look like In the end what you see below drove more profit to Paramount39s bottom line than a hundred million impressions on broadcast TVSo who39s going to PARANORMAL ACTIVITY ryanconnollypatricknorton jollyroger a few of the Area5Coop guys are you httpowlyqMtB409 PM Sep 23rd from HootSuiteDon39t Forget Thursday Midnight join Revision3 in checking out PARANORMAL ACTIVITY for FREE Don39t miss out RSVP nowhttpowlyqM0qGrab a drink wus before going to PARANORMAL ACTIVITY We39ll be at Lucky 13 at 9PM tonite before going to the movie httpowlyqV2b jollyroger Pics from Revision3 Paranormal Activity Movie at the castro here httptinyurlcomycpae9pcastro revision3 rev3 paranormal 849 pm Sep 25th 2009amp160Revision3 quotParanormal Activityquot Movie Night a set on Flickrhttpwwwflickrcomphotosrogerchangsets72157622454343082ParamountPics RT revision3 Hey SF represent This Thurs ParanormalActivity expands ampamp 10 theaters only host an exclusive party httptlgdmqc8And many many moreJim Louderback joined Revision3 as the CEO in July 2007 He can be reached at jimrevision3comRead all Jimamp8217s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Jim 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How Twitter and Social Marketing Will Save the Movies - Jim Louderback - MediaBizBloggers

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