In Advertising Age this week, Anne Globe, the head of marketing for DreamWorks Animation talks about how the company used the power of partnering with Zynga‘s Farmville to promote its property MegaMind.
Dreamworks partnered a second time with Zynga’s Cityville for Kung Fu Panda 2. With that promotion, Dreamworks connected with 40 million players.
Globe says their audience gets their information first from TV, then from YouTube and thirdly from social sites like Facebook, or Zynga properties.
For instance, Shrek has over 17 million fans on Facebook and Dreamworks is looking to engage those fans through the DVD’s and other materials they are launching. Shrek‘s spinoff Puss in Boots introduced a YouTube Channel that logged 1.4 million views in the first 48 hours.
The studio is looking increasingly to the social media environment because that’s where their fans are. DreamWorks creates materials that will sustain and engage them, way beyond the launch of the film.
Currently, they are dabbling with apps as another rich vehicle to interact with the fan base and not just for promotion.
For some reason, spring is coming late to my part of the world. That hasn’t stopped me from experiencing spring fever – the desire to expand my world and views after a long winter.
I came across this Caroline Casey video from TED that I thought was incredibly inspirational for dreaming a bigger dream.
Went to hear Brent Friedman from Electric Farm Entertainment. He went through some case studies of the transmedia he has created and shared the lessons he’s learned in the process. He defined the transmedia experience as a shattered mirror – each piece is part of the whole, but unique. It’s not re-purposing the same piece of content for different platforms. Transmedia promises an immersive experience. Advertisers love it. They want more than exposure. They want engagement. The audience has choice and lots of content to choose from.
For a universe to be truly worthy of devotion, Friedman maintains that there has to be a deep mythology, archetypal characters and binding principles like The Force in Star Wars. He cites Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and the Matrix as worlds where fans want to go deeper and deeper.
Valemont is the latest world he created with MTV and Verizon.
The premise of Valemont is that a young woman’s brother has gone missing from Valemont University. Little does she know, it’s Hogwarts for Vampires. The 2 minute episodes ran on MTV during the commercial breaks. Verizon sponsored the series.
Friedman maintains Valemont hit a lot of transmedia buttons. It had an intuitive hub – a watering hole or a place where people could go and talk about their experiences on the site; it had a partner for cross-marketing to assist in the promotion of the series as well as its brand; it had good internal sign posts so that the site was easy to maneuver like a ride at Disneyland and it had a mystery as the core story, a common feature in transmedia properties.
There was a Rush Week at Valemont where people could join one of five houses. This created a social game where people were jumping through hoops to become a pledge. A “puppetmaster” was employed 24/7 for the Facebook presence and to send twitter feeds for the 6 main characters. One of the characters became so popular, she had her own blog.
Valemont exceeded all estimates of success. Viewership more than doubled. Verizon experienced an increase in conversion rates to its service.
Electric Farm had the rights to mobile, online and TV content. From the episodes, they created a 2 hour movie. All of the Valemont components were sold either individually or as a package internationally.
The trailer is absolutely the best selling pitching tool you can have. It’s worth spending the time and money on the best representation of your show.
Don’t show or post your trailer until you are positively sure it is as great as your show.
It needs to get to the heart of the story in less than two minutes. Our attention spans are shorter than ever and our eyes begin to glaze over unless the action on the screen is riveting.
A trailer is an exercise in disciplined storytelling and you will need a couple of attempts before you get it right. Get others feedback on it.
Here’s a before and after case study of Battle Castle, a great documentary series currently in production. This is the first draft of their trailer.
In this trailer of Battle Castle, the host introduces the premise clearly within the first 20 seconds. The title acts as an exclamation mark – moving the trailer from the introduction into the structure. The host takes us on a tour of the action that we will see in the program – the secrets, the masterminds behind the building of the castles and the bloody wars. Of course a strong finish with a clear resolution or call to action is a must.
Post your favourite trailers. Let me know which ones work for you.
I went to see Brian Eno speak the other night. You remember him from Roxy Music, U2 and Cold Play. He has a show 77 Million Paintings at the Glenbow Museum.
Brian spoke about his evolution from an art school grad to a musician.
What attracted him initially was the work of Terry Riley who composed a piece in C with 53 bars. The artist establishes the parameters and musicians played numerous instruments according to their whims or wishes. So each time the piece was heard it was a totally different experience.
Eno spoke about how we’ve gone from a society where control is the dominant trait of our culture to one where many can contribute and exchange ideas.
With his show of 77 Million Paintings, an immersive installation that mixes sight and sound, he says that people come to the show in a bit of a hurry to see the piece. However, the light projecting the various bits and pieces moves very slowly. After a while, people begin to relax and some stay in the rooms watching the paintings slowly change and move for hours. He maintains that people surrender to the art and its slowness, something that we don’t often get a chance to do. For most of us, surrender occurs during sex, drugs, religion and art.
He suggests we are on a continuum between control and surrender and that surrendering is something we need to learn – much like a surfer – riding the wave one minute, and controlling your movements the next.
I'm a Canadian entrepreneur living in Vancouver, BC. I help other creative people focus their ideas, set goals and grow their businesses. Read more ...
