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.
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
In order to spread awareness and enhance sales of 1/3 Less Fat Philadelphia Cream Cheese by Kraft, the company came up with innovative idea. The word-of-mouth campaign targeted audiences through a series of authentic blog articles and videos of Adam and Tyler’s interactions. Additional online buzz for the campaign was created by seeding the videos, as well as Bloopers, to YouTube in order to raise traffic to www.AdamAndTyler.com. The campaign generated over 535,088 direct online conversations, 7,000 video views and 50,000 blog views. Case study
To generate awareness regarding its new Compass, a powerful stereo system, the company Jeep intelligently utilized social mediums like MySpace and Facebook. The social networking campaign involved organizing a series of live musical concerts throughout the country and information about each of these shows was only available through MySpace and Facebook pages. The result of the campaign is visible from the fact that MySpace profile of jeep gathered over 12,000 friends, 258 comments and over 1.3M clicks. Case study
Roaring Springs Water Park developed an entirely new marketing strategy based on customer evangelism, which aimed at increasing revenues of the park not entirely based on high volume sales of the passes, instead the company wanted its customers to return several times. In collaboration with BlueLine Grassroots Marketing, the company came up to the idea of spreading awareness through word of mouth strategy, here they took help of mothers. The other step was to train park staff to conduct face-to-face guest surveys. The park also set up a MySpace account for employees to enhance their own sense of community and ownership. The campaign was a roaring one and the company generated $120,000 funds. Case study
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