Viral marketing tool to get exposure for your films

You can create video postcards that you send to your mailing list. On the postcard, you ask that they forward it to 3 friends, in return you give them a free download. Just think if everyone on your mailing list forwarded your video postcard to 3 friends...... Grow your fan base, get exposure.

Go to http://www.audiopromotionpro.com and enter in the following into the promo code box to get a free account:

hrosso66

enjoy and give me your feedback on the system.

Thanks......

Joe
 
What are people's thoughst on this kinda marketing? I ask becuase I get so many of these and I tend to bin them. Does this kind of marketinga ctually work or do the majority of these get trashed?
 
Viral marketing is the hottest thing in advertising right now.

However, usually it's done by embedding your advert into an e-mail and then sending it out to everyone on your mailing list. It only works if your viral is so funny/compelling unusual that people forward it on to their friends.

The interesting thing about virals is that they are mainly shot on mini dv and edited on fairly basic equipment. They are so hot at the moment because pretty much anyone can run a viral campaign for pratically nothing.

I've gone onto this company's site and signed up for my free membership and I'm going to look at how they operate. It maybe a way forward or it may not. I haven't decided.

The important thing is that you'd don't have to do this via a web provider, all you need is a viral idea and a big enough emailing list to kick it off.

One thing that I am sure of is that for virals to work for movies the trailer needs to be more than just your basic cinema preview. It needs a hook that makes people want to email it to their mates.

Where these guys might be useful is in hooking into the video podcasting market.
 
Just my opinion here, but when I receive an email like this, little red suspicion flags go up and I don my tinfoil hat right before I dete it -- even when it's from someone I know.

It's unfortunate that I know too many people who don't understand or realize the possibility that their forwarded message could contain malware/adware/spyware/viruses (virii?). I just don't bother taking the chance.

Yes, this perspective may be negative in many ways and even be harmful to some new fantastic artist's introduction into the world, but I can't afford to take chances in this day and age.

Let's get creative here. If YOU were tasked to create a new promotional campaign for a new artist that didn't involve "viral" emails or anything that any advanced PC/Mac user would become suspicious of, how would you do it?
 
I'm with mrde50 on this one. Those emails go straight to my trash bin.
One of the better ways of advertising (though it may sound dumb), is launch a site. Then either submit a catchy trailer/racey clip to a video site like break.com or muchosucko.com. Pop a watermark of your site address in the lower corner of the video or at the end. Alot of people will see the videos, alot of people will visit your site.
 
I'm afraid that you guys are just wrong about this one.

Viral advertising is massive. It's a very cost effective way of getting a message out. You need forget the term viral (it's an advertising industry way of expressing how the mesage is transmited)

The first thing they teach you when you work in advertising is not to do market research based on a sample size of one. Or in other words don't assume that your own opinions and behaviours match the general publics.

Truth is that a sucessful viral marketing campaign works on the basis that the vast majority of office bounds drones and computer bound teenagers spend half their time forwarding each other funny jokes and things they've seen on the net.

Viral advertising builds on that common behaviour.

Do some research into it before you dismiss it.

Personally I can think of two good reasons why indie film makers should be interested in viral marketing.

1) It's cheap guerilla marketing technique that requires all the skills and tools that an indie film maker already has

2) It's a way for a production company who have nothing more than a camcorder and a half decent edting system to create income, providing they can find clients to produce viral ads for.

Do some research before being so dismissive. If you had any idea about how hot this issue is in the world of advertising right now and how much money is being thrown about, you'd reconsider.
 
This is all great feedback

You made a comment about video podcasting clive. We do offer that on audiopromotinpro.com and we've also launched a seperate site, www.pcastbaby.com. This is strictly dedicated to audio and video podcasting. We also integrated Google Maps into our system so now you can create a podcast, then click on our "G" icon and get a google map with flags showing all the locations around the world of people who subscribed to your podcast.

I love the indie world, I'm just not very talented at anything... I'm a tech guy, so I'm really working hard at creating applications that will help indie musicians, filmmakers and game developers. This thread really helps, I appreciate everyone's feedback.

I understand mrde50's concern about viral marketing as it pertains to email, but clive is right, it's a very hot concept right now. It's up to the artist though to create compelling material that will make people want to forward the postcard. Also, once the email addresses are submitted, the user gets to download something for free. That's more incentive. This download could be a music track not available on CD, bloopers or behind the scenes footage from a film, again, it's up to the artist to get creative, we're just a delivery mechanism.
 
Dang, your podcasting site looks good. Clive, why'd you have to make me look so dumb? :grumpy: ;)
I had a misconception about the audio promotion site. I heard viral marketing and instantly thought "mailing lists" and "spam", thinking not only were the postcard's created and content hosted, but they were mass mailed too. Since that's not the case, the whole marketing scheme is forwarded and passed on by people who know each other, it stands a much better chance of success than mass emails (what I thought it was at first).
So yeah, looks good.:yes:
 
, the whole marketing scheme is forwarded and passed on by people who know each other, it stands a much better chance of success than mass email

My fault, I should have explained that part better.

Clive, why'd you have to make me look so dumb?

Sorry, wasn't my intention; I'm just really lucky that I had my attention drawn to virals about a year ago by my brother who runs a guerilla marketing company. Because of my background in advertising I was really interested and have been looking into it.

What I've been playing with is the idea that you could distribute a film completely independently of the industry using a combination of viral and podcast marketing and bit torrent P2P for distribution. I still don't have it locked down, but the viral stuff is very excitintg. It's a marketing tool that plays to the strengths of indies.
 
clive said:
Sorry, wasn't my intention
No need to apologize; I was just messing with ya. :P

You mentioned using bitTorrent in conjunction with podcasting. That sounds like an awesome idea. I've seen people request .mp4 video torrents so they can put them on their portable media players and a few new sites launching geared solely toward providing and tracking such torrents.
 
I've seen people request .mp4 video torrents so they can put them on their portable media players and a few new sites launching geared solely toward providing and tracking such torrents.

I have a friend who is quite good a predicting trends and in his opinion both the CD and DVD are facing extinction in the next five years. He thinks they'll go the way of records. In fact he believes that both the record industry and the film industry as we know it are on the edge of an evolutionary jump.

One of the things that he thinks will engender this jump are concepts like bitTorrent. He believes we are moving towards a time when the idea of people spending $23 million to make a non-blockbuster movie is doomed and that more and more the industry will be polarised between huge blockbusters and micro-budget indies. Where this will go, is a battle between the studios who will spend all their time trying to find ways of controlling their products in the market place agaisnt P2P sharing and the indies who will see it as a way of generating a large audience for their films.

I'm not sure myself where this is all going, but it's interesting.
 
clive said:
I have a friend who is quite good a predicting trends and in his opinion both the CD and DVD are facing extinction in the next five years. He thinks they'll go the way of records. In fact he believes that both the record industry and the film industry as we know it are on the edge of an evolutionary jump.

I'm not sure myself where this is all going, but it's interesting.

Great. It took me five years to replace my my VHS with DVD's. NOT fair.

Seriously though with HD DVD and BlueRay being launches at great cost surely that should secure the DVD side of things for many years to come? After all DVD has been around, unchallanged for over 8 years now.
 
Seriously though with HD DVD and BlueRay being launches at great cost surely that should secure the DVD side of things for many years to come? After all DVD has been around, unchallanged for over 8 years now.

The real question is going to be, will people pay to buy a DVD that they might only watch once or twice, when they can download it for free or for a significantly lower price?

In the end it's going to be a battle over resolution, will the P2P be able to provide images as good as the ones off the DVD. There is no reason why they shouldn't.

Like I said, I'm not sure about this, but I'm keeping my eye on the developments.
 
What about PSP

Have you guys been considering the Play Station Portable platform? All the big studios are releasing films on UMD which is the proprietary media format for PSP. 10 million PSP units were sold worldwide in just 10 months and you would be surprised at the demographics, a large majority of the people buying these units are from 25 - 30 so it seems a demographic that indie filmmakers would want to target.

I'm getting licensed by Sony and am in the process of purchasing all the software and hardware so I can produce a UMD, I want to create an all Indie title. I hope to have it on the market by 4qtr this year. It's quite an endeavor.
 
heyjoe said:
Have you guys been considering the Play Station Portable platform? All the big studios are releasing films on UMD which is the proprietary media format for PSP. 10 million PSP units were sold worldwide in just 10 months and you would be surprised at the demographics, a large majority of the people buying these units are from 25 - 30 so it seems a demographic that indie filmmakers would want to target.

I'm getting licensed by Sony and am in the process of purchasing all the software and hardware so I can produce a UMD, I want to create an all Indie title. I hope to have it on the market by 4qtr this year. It's quite an endeavor.

Funny i've been talking to other companies about this. I had (or have) a company doing UMD interested in Left For Dead but if you get your stuff in gear first talk to me as our US DVD release was brilliant and would love to get it out on UMD in the States and/or UK
 
clive said:
I'm afraid that you guys are just wrong about this one.

Viral advertising is massive. It's a very cost effective way of getting a message out. You need forget the term viral (it's an advertising industry way of expressing how the mesage is transmited)
From DICTIONARY.COM:

Spamming (verb)
  1. To send unsolicited e-mail to.
  2. To send (a message) indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups.
In my humble opinion, I say it qualifies as spam. It's not for everyone, some like it, some don't. Some despise it (me). Would I use it to advertise my stuff? No. I'm afraid of being hated for using it.

Clive, you're the first person I've ever seen to defend the use of viral marketing. Perhaps you see potential in it that I don't.
 
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It's not spam, it's friends sending friends something of interest, and it has a pyramid effect.
 
I can see how it can be abused, but if used correctly, it's not spam. The idea is you'll tell three friends, not spam three studios.
 
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