Disney Studios is known for their massive marketing budget when it comes to promoting new films, which often runs their return on investment (ROI) much lower than it needs to be in many cases. Other production companies had claimed that a high ROI could not be achieved through social marketing, and Step Up 2 the Streets was essentially Disney’s test product on MySpace to determine if such a campaign would be cost-effective.
- Disney released numerous advertisements on MySpace to spark interest
- Advertisements were not aimed for a hard sell; merely to communicate the brand
- Fans were allowed to communicate to the director and the stars through MySpace
- Over 49% of opening weekend attendees remembered the MySpace ads
By the time that Step Up 2 the Streets launched, Disney had over 156,000 friends on MySpace and several million hits over the course of the campaign. Almost half of the opening weekend respondents remembered seeing the MySpace ads and cited that it was one of the reasons they saw the movie, which was exactly the type of online image Disney had hoped for. More about this study can be found here.
With an operating budget of just under $10,000, Paramount Studios was not expecting tremendous numbers from the release of Paranormal Activity in theaters. To their surprise, however, the movie theaters across the country did not want anything to do with the low budget title; regardless of how good it was. Since there was absolutely no advertising budget available, a viral campaign on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter was the sole forms of advertising.
- Celebrity premiere parties were held around 13 college campuses to raise interest
- Horror fans were taped watching the film to show their reactions
- Promo clips and fan reactions were posted on many social networking sites
- The Twitter campaign released new info during Twitter’s slowest hours- 2-6 AM
By creating one of the biggest viral movie campaigns of all time, hundreds of thousands of fans literally demanded that the film be brought to their local theaters. In fact, over 150 fans were listed within the credits simply for making the most noise around the net, which is a big reason why a $10,000 film grossed over $107,000,000 at the box office and an additional $16,000,000 on DVD. More about this study can be found here.
In February of 2010, Sony Pictures launched a comprehensive advertising campaign on Facebook to promote their upcoming movie “Dear John.”
Even though they knew that their ideal target audience was 13 to 24 year old girls, Sony decided to invest in premium ads that would appear on every user’s Facebook account on January 11th, 2010. The promotion featured an interactive campaign that allowed users to answer questions about love, upload personal videos, answer questionnaires, and other types of trivia.
- Promotion of movie “Dear John”
- One day mass campaign to all Facebook users
- Target demographic 13-24 females
Roughly 298,853 people interacted with the ad campaign on January 11th, which was a 1200% increase from the previous day’s total hits. This was also the first Sony film to ever receive a million overall hits on Facebook before the movie release, with much of it coming from word of mouth after the original campaign. Sony estimated an overall 16% increase in fan awareness over the film and a 2% increase is ticket sales. You can view the actual case study here.
It took some convincing, but when the state finally jumped aboard, Iowa’s First State Lottery had built an interactive, digital footprint to support its brand, improve customer engagement, drive ticket sales and extend its reach, including to a younger demographic.
And the numbers panned out: Social media statistics for Iowa State Lottery included more than 18,000 YouTube video views, 1,600 Twitter followers and 1,700 Facebook fans. Source Case Study (hat-tip to Michelle C.)
For promoting the launch of the third move in X-Men series ‘Last Stand’, 20th Century Fox collaborated with Myspace. Myspace users were given exclusive access to movie promotions if they added X-men profile as a friend. More than 3 million members added X-Men as a friend in less than a month and the movie released with a huge $107 million opening over a Memorial Day weekend. After the release, Myspace profile was used to sell DVDs and digital swag. Even by conservatives estimates, the campaign generated more than $1.3 million in revenue for 20th Century Fox. Case Study
Sea World San Antonio decided to adopt a ‘Journey to Atlantis’ social media campaign to spread awareness, build relationships with coaster community and assist in driving visitation to the park. The campaign started with a targeted list of 22 coaster enthusiast blogs and forums. 11 Videos and a 45 photo porfolio were shared through YouTube, Flickr and Veoh. Bloggers and American Coaster enthusiasts were invited for media launch and given free rides for Journey to Atlantis. The campaign received 50 links from unique websites among which 30 were from coastal enthusiast sites. Overall cost per impression turned out to be $0.22 against $1.00 for TV Case Study
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