Film Marketing With Social Media, Essay Example

Social media campaigns are critical for any business in the 21^st centuries as it provides businesses numerous opportunities and advantages that they can potentially exploit (Zarrella). The entertainment industry has in the past 5 years turned to social media marketing to create the much needed revenue streams to match and surpass the costs of production. Social media is a useful day-to-day personal tool that has been embraced with the advancement of technology and innovations.

The target market(s) is one of the major reasons for the use of social media marketing within the industry. Social media provides companies within the entertainment industry considerable access to a wide number of potential customers. (Evans) Owing to the interactive mature of all social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, the producers of Ted could engage their customer base through the exchange of tweets and status updates to keep track of their needs, desires and wants. This provided much insight into the lives of the target market before the launch of the movie.

Social media marketing also has the inherent advantage of real-time and quick exchanges and responses between the company and its customer base (Zarrella). This allows the company to make the necessary adjustments to their product before release in cases where problems are identified. Ted producers were able to engage their fan base to provide insights into the aspects of the main characters of the movie that they would prefer changed. Engaging customers also allowed their clients to take part in developing the characters and/or the content within the campaign itself, developing customer loyalty.

Ted producers were able to develop a brand out of their product before its release. By developing content that is naughty, outrageous and crass, Stephan McFarlane created a loveable character that traversed different segments of the market. This allowed the campaign access to customers that they probably never knew existed. While the content was originally tailored for a specific market niche, its development attracted a number of clients who were not originally considered.

Elements of Traditional Marketing

While the use of social media is considered one of the modern marketing concepts, there are some elements of traditional marketing that are evident in the Ted movie media campaign. One of the most evident concepts is the Marketing Mix Theory (The 4 P’s). The campaign focused on the main character in their movie, Ted. The placement of the campaign was also very effective. Using social media platforms allowed the campaign to reach a wider market than conventional marketing techniques would (Universal Studios; Universal Studios Home Entertainment;). The campaign also depicted elements of promotion by encouraging their customer base to generated content related to their product.

The Ted movie social media campaign was considerably successful over its counterparts within the same industry. This can largely be attributed to a unique blend of the content that was generated and the techniques used to generate this content. Actively engaging the customer base allowed for the content to develop a considerably string following. Furthermore, the customer base could readily identify with their own content, developing an even stronger following for the movie. The content was largely was somewhat eccentric and crass. However, by virtue of the customer base being actively involved in its production, this content was able to traverse different segments of the market, even those for whom it was not originally intended.

Works Cited

Evans, Dave. Social media marketing : an hour a day. 2nd. Indianapolis: Wiley, 2012.

Universal Studios; Universal Studios Home Entertainment;. “Ted Webby Award Submission.” 25 January 2013. Slideshare. Internet Source. 30 July 2015.

Zarrella, Dan. The Social Media Marketing Book. Sebastopol: O’Reilly Media, 2010. Print.