Social Media Tools Are becoming increasingly popular for marketing
The Avatar movie is well on its way to becoming the highest grossing film of all time. With its unique 3D special effects, revolutionary style of cinematography and thought provoking story line, it is no surprise that people around the world are flocking to cinemas to experience this brand new style of film making. The fact that everyone was highly anticipating the release of this film at the end of 2009 shows us that the Avatar marketing team did a magnificent job in wetting our appetites for the film. Much of this can be attributed to the way the film has been marketed amongst social media networks. This article takes a look at some of the unique methods which James Cameron’s team utilized in promoting Avatar – “The last airbender” movie.
Facebook, MySpace and Twitter:
Ok, so it’s fairly standard these days to have fan pages on the social media networks listed above, however the Avatar team did an exceptional job of promoting these films before they were released last year. The interesting fact about these fan pages is that they were bustling with status updates and movie clips etc. in the time leading up to the release; however, they have hardly been updated at all since the movie premier. The Avatar 3D movie twitter profile has over 18000 followers and the Facebook fan page boasts an impressive 700 000 fans. This is simply massive for a movie.
The Facebook WebCast:
MTV.com planned and executed a webcast featuring an interview with director James Cameron, producer Jon Landau and stars Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana from the Avatar Movie cast. Fans were able to submit questions for the stars in the weeks leading up to the interview which would be answered by the foursome online. You don’t normally find celebrities sitting down for 30 minutes doing an interview like this for an online webcast; however James Cameron and Co. managed to take the time out for the interview which proved to be a massive success.
The MySpace Premier:
Realising that MySpace is still an enormous social network, the Avatar’s movie premier was broadcast live to MySpace users via Ustream online. The fact that the premier was just one week prior to official release to cinemas worldwide ensured that a final buzz of excitement was created for all online users.
The Avatar Movie trailer – Online!
As with many other movie releases these days, the Avatar Movie in 2009 released an Apple trailer debut which was announced on twitter in the weeks leading up to the film premier. The trailer debut was so popular that servers struggled to get the video out to all the eager viewers. The debut trailer was followed by a second trailer which was received with an equal amount of enthusiasm. A Major online buzz was created as fans “mashed-up” and remixed numerous videos with other films to create entertaining short video clips.
Interactive Movie Trailer:
Perhaps the biggest online buzz was created by the unique interactive trailer which was posted online shortly after the two initial trailers. The trailer required a download, however once downloaded, users were able to navigate through the trailer to see different aspects of the film, online social media updates and clips from the movie. Due to the innovative nature of the interactive trailer, techies and the press alike were buzzing in online forums and blogs.
Despite the fact that the Avatar movie is currently the most pirated movie of all time, (why would you want to watch this on a low quality pirate copy?) the movie has just broken the record for the biggest 4th week in the box office, breaking Titanic’s previous record by over 20 million dollars! If they keep these awesome sales figures up in the weeks to come, they will no doubt break Titanic’s record and go on to set another long lasting record that will be tough to break. As the man who directed both the Avatar movie and Titanic, James Cameron will no doubt have a massive 3 dimensional smile of his own right now!
