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Twitter, Marketing and the Movie Industry

// April 23rd, 2009 // New Media

Since it´s launch in 2006 Twitter has generated a lot of buzz and mutated from “the hot new shit” to a mainstream communication tool.

If you are not familiar with Twitter i recommend searching google and you´ll find plenty of information what Twitter is and how you can use it – in short it´s a kind of micro-blog, you can post 140 character messages and the people that follow you can read them.

A lot of companies are constantly trying to figure out how to use Twitter for marketing and pr, some succeed, most of them fail – but why?

Using Twitter for Marketing

Some time ago the pr people from Skittles decided it would be a good idea to point their website to a Twitter search for the term “skittles” to create some buzz about the product.

Soon this idea spread and people started to post tweets that said “Skittles give you AIDS”, so what happened is that the official website of Skittles was flooded with messages that Skittles would give you AIDS – this is probably not the outcome the marketers had hoped for, but what they accomplished is the create a buzz about the brand Skittles.

So this may be an extremely good as well as an extremely bad example on how to use Twitter for marketing – it depends on how you define successful marketing.

Anyway, this is just one example – but will marketing as we know it really work with Twitter?

I don´t think so, you probably wouldn´t follow a company to receive tweets on how cool their product is and why it is better than others – or would you? It depends, i would follow a software developer to get notified of product updates, but that´s more like a newsletter.

Some companies try to pay people with more than some hundred thousands of followers to promote their product, but what would happen just is that people get annoyed and unfollow – so that´s not a good idea.

To come to a point of marketing with Twitter: there are ways to do it, many of them won´t succeed, some original ideas will. There are people with far more knowledge about that topic, i would highly recommend Ritchie Pettauer if you are interested.

The reason for this post is that i wanted to point out one special marketing technique using Twitter:

Twitter and the Movie Industry

More and more celebrities are twittering (i´ll come to that in a minute), and along with infos about their breakfast habits or what music they currently listen to, there are indeed some celebrities who actually give some insights in their current projects.

I grew up right before the internet became really popular (i got my first pc when i was 14 and internet access when i was 16), so back then i used to read magazines to get some infos on new movies – the problem just was that some editor selects which movie-infos are relevant for the masses.

With the internet becoming more and more popular it was getting easier and easier to get infos, and you could choose which movies you want to follow. That´s a great thing, but nevertheless there is some kind of filter between the creators of the movie and yourself – journalists. Of course the movies have official websites, but how many directors, producers or actors are really writing on these websites – probably not that many.

But with Twitter becoming more popular it became really easy to spread news, you wouldn´t have to sit down and think about an article, you just publish short messages on what´s going on on set – that´s incredible for fans, you´re always on top whats happening and sometimes you have access to exclusive content long before all the others.

Here are some really great examples:
» Sheryl Main posts inside infos from the set of Silvester Stallones new movie The Expendables
» Jon Favreau, director of Iron Man, posts news from the shooting of Iron Man 2
» Lions Gate Movies promote Crank 2 and provide exclusive content for their followers
» John August and Diablo Cody, both famous screenwriters, use Twitter alongside their blog
» Hugh Jackman writes about his promotion tour for Wolverine and his ongoing projects
» Grant Imahara gives some insights on The Mythbusters
and so on…

Twitter and Celebrities

/Film has compiled a really nice list of celebrities in the movie industry that use twitter. You can find the list here and here.

So use Twitter for Marketing or not?

As you see, there are numerous really interesting ways to promote you or your product (in theses cases the product is a movie or a show), it just shouldn´t be dump advertisment.

Provide some good information, exclusive content and insights – this will help your cause more than writing how good your product is.

Use the chance to provide information for your fans that is not filtered by journalists or other media, those who are interested will follow, appreciate it and spread the word, those who are not wouldn´t respond to your marketing anyway.

Some usesful Twitter Tools

There are so many Twitter tools, it can be hard to find out which one fits your needs best. Personally i am using the client software Nambu on my Mac and Tweetie on the iPhone.

Here are two websites with a list of twitter clients and different other tools, but if you search Google you´ll find thousands more:

» Twitter Toolbox
» Top 40 Twitter Tools

And finally, you can follow me on Twitter here