Film's Cool Session 5: Digital Strategy

In today's session of Film's Cool we had Mat Wakham and Megan Stuart Wallace talking to us about digital strategies, we focused on three digital campaigns in particular that have been very important in promoting a movie and reaching out to a wider audiences.

The key thing that we learnt is that with the dominance of the 'digital age' and importance of the internet in society today, that digital strategies and campaigns are key ways to help promote the film even more, with the most important point being that "a digital strategies is a plan ensuring you get what you want out of your online activities".

We were also introduced to some digital campaigns that have been successful in the past including:

Paranormal activity

Here is a example of the digital campaign made by paranormal activity, where they smartly put out a campaign where audiences could decide whether the film got put out in cinema's worldwide by 'tweeting their scream', this was massively successful and they ended up receiving over one million tweets in 20 hours. Thus, showing the power of social media and the ways in which you could use it successfully to build a strong digital campaign due to the fact that social media allows you to connect to a wide range of people.

Batman: The Dark night

The Dark Night used a flashmob for its campaign strategy, in which they had various people participating in a game which helped bring the story of gotham and batman to life in the real world, the smart thing about using flash mobs is that it allows audiences to get involved with the film, in a active way which helps bring anticipation towards the film, as a result audiences feel as if they are actually a part of the film, and these flash mobs only grow bigger due to word of mouth which helps enhance the films popularity and reputation, even before it is released.

District 9

District 9 make the much simpler route of using signs and posters for their digital campaign, and uses this  as a way to try and bring the story of the film into reality, but still maintains that fact it is a film in it. The fact it provides a website and number to call, make it seem realistic and so allows audiences to get involved in the idea. This helps bring anticipation towards the film, due to the fact audiences are playing a active part in the film before it is even released.

At the end of the session we had a Q&A session with Mat and Megan regarding information on the industry and their work and experience:

Film's Cool Q and A with Mat Wakeham and Megan Stuart Wallace by Film's Cool