Late last Thursday my Twitter list of entertainment journalists lit up with posts about “Super 8“. It was the evening of the all-media screening Los Angeles and as soon as the credits rolled journalists and critics began praising the film on Twitter. That kind of buzz can’t be bought, or at least that’s what I thought at the time.

Realizing the positive word-of-mouth the film was receiving on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, Paramount, the studio releasing the film on June 10th, has decided to stoke the fire. They have partnered with Twitter to offer users of the service advanced tickets to a sneak preview screening on June 9th. Paramount is also holding separate, private screenings for Twitter users with large numbers of followers, and even one for Twitter employees. Attendees of all screenings will be encouraged to post messages about the film on Twitter.

To facilitate the offering, Paramount has sponsored the hashtag #Super8Secret as a Promoted Trend on Twitter. Users who click on the trending topic are provided with a link to purchase advanced tickets to the “Super 8″ sneak previews taking place at 325 theaters throughout the United States. Paramount is also offering free popcorn as part of the promotion.

The move may underscore the obstacle Paramount is facing in trying to market “Super 8″. Directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg, the movie is not based on a sequel, nor does it star an marquee talent. Instead, “Super 8″ tells the original story of a group of adolescents who, while making a homemade zombie movie in 1979, are put in harms way after witnessing a huge train derailment. Compounding Paramount’s problem is Abrams’ desire to keep one of the movie’s main twists a secret both in media reports and marketing material. The studio relented and produced commercials and trailers that don’t really tell prospective audience members all that much about “Super 8″.

With it’s Twitter promotion Paramount is hoping that those who have seen “Super 8″ will help market the film for them. Reports have the film tracking well with adults who may have fond memories of Spielberg’s earlier work in addition to fans of Abrams, the creator of television series such as “Lost” and “Alias” and the filmmaker behind the “Star Trek” reboot.

One criticism of the promotion from TechCruch was that it felt more like a camouflaged advertisement than a legitimate deal since the offer of free popcorn was contingent on the purchase of additional concessions. Still, in an age where the costs of marketing a movie continue to rise in direct opposition to the cost of producing and distributing it, these kinds of efforts may help studios and filmmakers find alternative methods for getting the word out on new releases.

Hollywood movies are shown all over the world. In fact, American films are cited by some as one of the country’s biggest exports. So I wasn’t exactly surprised to find out that American made flicks are quite popular in Poland. However, I recently stumbled across PolishPoster.com, a cache of Polish promotional one-sheets for popular Hollywood releases which, for me, was a welcome discovery.

In an effort to align their marketing with the cultural taste of Poland’s moviegoers, distributors have turned to local artists throughout the years to customize the one-sheets for American movies. The end result was the creation of hundreds, if not thousands, of movie posters that rival modern art masterpieces.

Apparently there was an art movement in Poland beginning in the mid-1960s and lasting through the 1980s known as the Polish School of Poster Art or the Polish Poster School. The country was the epicenter for a style referred to as “wall and board” art. Artist Henryk Tomaszewski is credited with being the founder of the movement in the 1950s.

The style proved so popular that during the Cold War the government used the unique posters for propaganda campaigns. Ironically the most widely recognized image from such political posters is the iconic banners used by Lech Wa??sa during rallies for the anti-government trade union Solidarity.

According to the PolishPosters.com, the Polish Poster School has been in a slow and steady decline since the end of the Cold War:

“Present-day street advertising does not need artists but businessmen, able to efficiently carry out the wishes of the customer. No one expects an artistic vision; the message does not need to be allegorical and ambiguous, simply effective.”

That’s a real shame since the posters created for American movies during this time are often better than the originals crafted by the marketing machines of Hollywood studios. A poster for “The Bachelor Party” resembles the work of Saul Bass. There’s the chaotic explosion of color on a “Big Lebowski” one-sheet that would make Jean-Michel Basquiat envious. Marlon Brando’s face is set ablaze in pastels on the poster for “Apocalypse Now”. The stockinged legs of dancing girls form a Swastika on the one-sheet for “Cabaret”. My favorite is probably the minimalist poster for Charlie Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush” which turns the silent film stars face into an emoticon, long before such symbolism was in fashion.

Remarkably, many of these one-sheets can still be purchased on the PolishPosters.com. Have a look through their website and let us know what you think in the comments section below.

It’s no secret that digital cinema equipment is expensive. Converting a single auditorium in a multiplex can cost more than USD $80,000. The cost is so high that movie studios are subsidizing conversions through virtual print fees (VPF). But for theatres that are too small to qualify for VPFs, converting may never be financially feasible. One such theatre hopes a special program being run by Pepsi will help them fund their digital future.

The Finch Theatre in Lincoln, Kansas was founded as a multi-purpose venue that would serve the community of 1,200 residents of the small rural town. Volunteers spent six years renovating the building before the theatre opened for business in 2000. Over the past ten years, the theatre has been used for movies, the performing arts, community meetings and social gatherings such as reunions. It remains one of few theatres that continue to operate in the region.

That’s actually quite an accomplishment given that the Finch Theatre is run and staffed completely by volunteers. The main source of revenue for the theatre is cinema; the Finch shows movies every Friday, Saturday and Sunday throughout the year. Presently, the Finch shows first-run or recently released titles on 35mm, though they fear that five to ten years from now studios will stop producing film prints leaving them with few, if any, options for operating as a movie theatre.

But the Finch’s board of directors are progressive thinkers. After all, the theater has its own Facebook page. Earlier this year the theatre’s board began researching what a digital conversion would require and they were left suffering from sticker shock at how much it would cost. The price tag for a conversion is far in excess of what a theatre whose top ticket price of USD $5.00 could ever afford.

That’s when one of the board members came across a website promoting the Pepsi Refresh Project. The soft drink company is giving away USD $1,300,000 each month to fund “great ideas”. Pepsi is accepting 1000 ideas every month for projects that are “beneficial, achievable, constructive, and ‘shovel-ready’ (meaning it can be finished within 12 months of funding)”. Approved projects are posted on Refresh Project’s website where they can be voted on by the masses. At the end of the month the top ten projects in each of six grant categories are awarded with USD $5,000, $25,000 or $50,000. There are even two awards of USD $250,000 handed out each month.

The Finch Theatre’s application for a $50,000 was accepted in September. Voting for the Finch’s digital cinema conversion project began on October 1st and continues through the end of the month. The public can vote for a project once every day of the month through one of three methods; the Refresh Project website, a Pepsi Refesh Facebook app or even via text message (texting 103055 to 73774 would cast a vote for the Finch). The Finch Theatre project started out in 236th place and has since moved up to the 114th position in the Arts and Culture grant category.

Tara Kubick, member of the Finch Theatre’s board says the theatre has put a lot of effort into getting the word out about their Pepsi challenge:

“This will take way more people than just our small community has to win. We began a paper campaign, printing small cards with voting information on them and hand them to everyone we talk to) as well as flyers. We have contacted the local high schools to involve teachers and students in voting. We also began posting the information on the Finch Theatre’s website and Facebook page. We continue to send mass emails to all of our business and personal contacts encouraging everyone to vote and share the information with everyone they know. Information is being run on a local radio station and we have notified the local newspaper of our efforts.”

And the Finch isn’t counting solely on a grant from Pepsi to help them convert their theatre to digital. They have already raised USD $55,000 of the USD $100,000 budget through donations from private donors, local banks and fundraisers like a men’s beauty pageant dubbed “Studs in Stockings”.

It is unlikely that “Toy Story 3″ needed any help building awareness as it stormed the box office this weekend and earned USD $109 million in North America making it Pixar’s biggest opening. However, Disney was taking no chances. On top of the massive print, television and outdoor advertising campaigns the studio threw social media into the marketing mix.

As we’ve already reported, Disney was the first studio to sell tickets through Facebook, the world’ largest social networking site. On Wednesday they became the first company of any kind to purchase a trending topic on Twitter, the popular micro-blogging platform.

For those of you who don’t know, Twitter allows users to post messages of no more than 140 characters to groups of friends and followers. It’s kind of like sending a mass SMS message to those who have subscribed to your Twitter feed. Rather than receive messages on their mobile phones, most users actually visit Twitter’s website to read this stream of messages. Others use desktop applications to keep up with Twitter posts.

Either method allows users to see a list of Trending Topics. These topics are the top 10 most popular phrases being used on Twitter at that moment. Lately the Trending Topics list has been filled with phrases associated with the FIFA World Cup. Last Thursday the list became clogged with topics surrounding the Los Angeles Lakers NBA title.

On Wednesday of last week Twitter began experimenting with promoting a trending topic within the list, starting with “Toy Story 3″. Disney had to purchase the trending topic entry which then appeared on the bottom of the Trending Topics list that appears on users home pages. A big yellow label alerted users that the topic was being paid for. Clicking on the trending topic would bring you to a search results page with a live list of messages users were currently posting on Twitter about “Toy Story 3″.

The program doesn’t come as a total surprise. Back in April Twitter announced a plan to include Promoted Tweets at the top of search results pages as a way of bringing in advertising revenue. Apparently the Trending Topics campaigns are the second phase in Twitter’s advertising strategy.

A Twitter spokesperson said in a statement:

“As we have always said, we plan to test different advertising and promotional models in these early stages of our monetization efforts. As part of this effort, today we began testing Promoted Trends, which is an extension of our Promoted Tweets platform. These Promoted Trends initially appear at the bottom of the Trending Topics list on Twitter and are clearly marked ‘Promoted.’ As conversations about the topic increase, Promoted Trends may move up the list.”

In other words, “Toy Story 3″, though already trending on Twitter this past Wednesday, had not broken into the top ten phrases being discussed on the site. Disney’s promotion put the film’s title at the bottom of the Trending Topics list until such time as the number of posts about the film increased pushing it higher, or decreased causing it to drop off the list entirely.

There are a couple of reasons that Disney’s inclusion of a Promoted Trend campaign on Twitter for “Toy Story 3″ is interesting. The first is that in all likelihood, the mostly young, hip and tech savvy users of Twitter were no doubt already aware of “Toy Story 3″ and its upcoming release. The second is that along with their Tickets Together app on Facebook the move shows just how aggressive the studios is going to be in finding new and interesting methods for promoting their film releases. The move also coincides with Disney’s hiring of MT Carney as their new head of marketing.

Disney also benefited from the publicity generated by being the first company to ever run a Promoted Trend campaign Twitter.

Click here to view the embedded video.

While tech industry pundits and media outlets have spent the past several weeks throwing stones at Facebook over its privacy policy, Walt Disney Studios may have figured out a way to exploit the popular social networking website to sell movie tickets to their films.

As the New York Times reported yesterday, on May 26th Disney launched Disney Tickets Together, a Facebook application that allows users to purchase tickets for “Toy Story 3″. Without ever having to leave the Facebook site, moviegoers can see which of their friends have purchased tickets to the film or invite their friends along when purchasing tickets.

The friends a user selects to join them at “Toy Story 3″ will receive a message inviting them to purchase tickets for the same showing. In the same way the link to a popular YouTube video will make its way around the Internet via millions of emails, Disney has turned the purchasing of movie tickets into a viral activity. Disney told the Times the application has proven quite popular with groups as large as 80 purchasing tickets for “Toy Story 3′s” June 18th opening. Facebook will not be collecting a percentage of sales.

Disney spent several months developing Disney Tickets Together before its launch at the end of May. Like any other Facebook application (or app, as they are often referred to), a user is directed to the apps main page where the current city setting in their profile helps target theatres scheduled to play “Toy Story 3″. Hovering over a showtime at any specific theatre launches a tiny pop-up with relevant information, such as whether the theatre has Dolby 3D, RealD 3D or stadium seating.

Rather than sell tickets directly, it appears Disney Tickets Together will work through existing online web retailers including Fandango. Roughly 20% of movie’s tickets are purchased online for any given wide-release title. No word on whether the app has been set up for territories outside North America. According to Dan Rose, Facebook’s vice president of partnerships and platform marketing:

“What Disney is doing moves beyond just creating awareness to using the platform to acquire customers directly. This is the first time that a movie studio has tried this, which we think makes a lot of sense because moviegoing is one of those activities that is inherently social.”

Though the presence of Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, on Disney’s board might be credited for the endeavor, more likely it is the site’s nearly 500 million registered users from all over the world that attracted the studio. With this past weekend’s movie attendance down 22% over last year’s Memorial Day weekend, studios should be using every sales tool available to sell more tickets.

What do you think of Disney’s Facebook effort? Would you purchase tickets to a film through Facebook? If so, would you invite your friends? If someone invited you to a movie using this type of application, would you consider tagging along? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.

A little bird told us that the Hollywood studios are starting to take note of the impact instant 140-character-or-less reviews can have on the box office prospects of a newly released films. Well, actually, it’s a Washington Post articles that examines what impact if any Twitter had on the mixed fortunes of film like  Brüno and G.I. Joe. From the article:

“I think Twitter can’t be stopped,” says Stephen Bruno, the Weinstein Co.’s senior director of marketing. “Now you have to see it as an addition to the campaign of any movie. People want real-time news, and suddenly a studio can give it to them in a first-person way.”

Eamonn Bowles, president of Magnolia Pictures, says studios are worrying about a time when “people will be Twittering during the opening credits — and leaving when they don’t like them.” But he also warns, “The next step [for the Twitter Effect] is for studio marketing to manipulate it.”

While Twitter is no doubt having some impact, Boxofficemojo.com‘s president injects a note of realism into the debate at the end of the article:

“Revolutionize moviegoing? No,” he said. “But all the tiny little bits together [Twitter, MySpace, Facebook and others] can add up to something meaningful.”

A sample of Tweets of Quantin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds from today:

Akilah_Zomg Inglourious Basterds was fantastic! Love love love love, go see it!

Thenatt Inglourious Basterds FANTASTIC!!! Go watch it!!! I clapped!! I never clap LMFAO….

RobertDonohue Inglourious Basterds. Not what I expected. Still very good. I must say I enjoyed District 9 more. I wish there were more basterds scenes.

aprilismissing So Inglourious Basterds is the best movie I’ve seen in quite a long time. Def. catching it again this weekend.

taylorisgreat inglourious basterds totally scalps district 9. read em n weep.

So it seems that early Twitts are greater fans of QT than critics.

You’ve got to hand it to Disney for creating another innovative way to promote 3D.
To raise awareness of the format and the studio’s upcoming stereoscopic release “A Christmas Carol,” Disney has put together a 40-city promotional tour that will travel by train.
As part of the exhibition, at each stop Disney will put up an inflatable 3D theater that was specially developed for the tour with technology suppliers Dolby and Barco. The 50x 50 ft. theater stands 25 ft. high and can be erected in less than six hours, execs said.
The theater uses the Dolby 3D system, and its gear includes two Barco DP2000 digital projectors, Dolby servers and a Dolby sound system. There is freestanding 18 by 17½ ft. screen and seating for 125.
Here, guests preview 3D clips from Robert Zemeckis’ “A Christmas Carol,” which opens Nov. 6.
The clever theater design will no doubt have plenty of additional applications.
The “Christmas Carol Train Tour” opened over Memorial Day weekend at Los Angeles’ Union Station and wraps the weekend of Oct. 30 in New York. The tour schedule can be found here

Click here to view the embedded video.

These days trying to gain awareness for a product through the marketing clutter can be an uphill battle in the best of times.  The amount of advertising most people are subjected to on a daily basis has skyrocketed over the last decade to hundreds, if not thousands, of messages per day.  Whatever the number, getting the message out about a new product is no easy task and that is certainly true when it comes to movies.

With at least three new films opening each week in North America, moviegoers are inundated with trailers, posters, news stories, commercials, billboards, merchandise, promotions, etc. for new releases.  Up until the last five years there almost seemed to be a set formula for how to market an upcoming release.  Now with media such as the Internet and video games competing for consumers attention, it’s even more difficult to market products, especially movies.  As many companies in various industries are discovering, the hugely expensive marketing campaigns movie studios are known for throwing at their films may not be as effective as a grass roots word of mouth campaign implemented that employs the networking characteristics of the web.

Just ask the filmmakers behind “Bart Got A Room”.  What. . . . you haven’t heard of the indie film “Bart Got A Room?”  Yeah, neither had I until mid-February.  I stumbled across a one of ScreenCrave’s Twitter posts that mentioned the trailer for “Bart Got A Room” was now online and the film looked hilarious.  That was enough of a plug to get me to click on the link they provided and watch the trailer on YouTube.

Turns out “Bart Got A Room” is an independent film from first time writer/director Brian Hecker that received enough positive reviews when it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last April that Anchor Bay came along and acquired it.  The coming-of-age movie about a teenage boy in desperate search of a prom date opened on April 3rd on 11 screens in New York, Miami and Los Angeles.  After 10 days in theatres, the film has made USD $50,000.  This may not sound like much, but the trailer was about the only marketing the film had. . . or was it.

While watching the trailer on YouTube I noticed a number of related links referencing the film, all of which featured what seemed to be the same heavyset, adolescent-looking boy.  With a few clicks I discovered this “boy” was Brandon Hardesty, an up-and-coming comedian who gained fame on YouTube making short quirky videos.  He initially gained recognition doing clips documenting his strange faces and voices that received millions of views.  His short “The 30 Second Video” made him a YouTube star and he now has over 66,000 subscribers to his channel.  He is now best known for doing a series of reenactments of classic film scenes in which he plays all of the characters.

Hardesty somehow parlayed his YouTube notoriety into a supporting role in “Bart Got A Room” in which he stars with the likes of William H. Macy and Cheryl Himes.  But the young comedian decided that once the film cameras stopped rolling,  his video camera would take over.  He produced a series of unofficial video blogs on YouTube about his experience working on the film, including ones where he announces landing the role and another where he is attending the film’s premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.  These videos have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.  As seen above, when “Bart Got A Room” was about to hit theatres, Hardesty made another comical video announcing its release date and which theatres the movie would be playing in.

While all of this did not turn “Bart Got A Room” into a USD $100 million blockbuster, it did work to increase awareness of the film with Internet savvy moviegoers (you know, the ones that usually have expendable income).  As well, it made me feel like I knew a little bit more about the film before going to see it.  After watching all of Hardesty’s videos I felt quite gratified that I had learned about a film that I was unaware of in a manner that didn’t require a trade publication or a television commercial.  And isn’t that the intent of marketing. . . to build awareness?

As Hardesty is now proving, major Hollywood studios are reluctant to head down such a grass roots path with their big budget films.  He is now starring in the next “American Pie” sequel and, like with “Bart Got A Room”, he is posting videos about his experience on YouTube.  Unfortunately, in his first posting he reveals that his posts might not be as frequent as he must run everything past the execs at Universal for approval.  It’s a shame really, because Hardesty’s efforts are truly complimentary to the marketing of such a film.  In fact, I had no idea another “American Pie” sequel was in the works until I saw Hardesty’s latest post.

Major studios may find that following Hardesty’s lead by conducting some of their own inexpensive social networking campaigns could help them build awareness of a film with the public and maintain that awareness for an extended period of time.  If executed properly, such campaigns could very well become part of the moviegoing experience – rather than being turned off by traditional advertising, audiences might actually seek out and participate in the marketing.

With many of North America’s newspapers presently threatening to cease publication as they try and stave off bankruptcy, retailers of all types and sizes have had to look for alternative advertising methods to market themselves.  This can be incredibly difficult when due to the numerous mediums that fight for consumers attention and time, including television, magazines, radio, billboards, direct mail, video games and the Internet.  Exhibition circuits are not immune from this problem and in fact are particularly vulnerable since most of their advertising is placed in newspapers on a week-by-week basis.   Malco Theatres, a medium-size exhibition chain based in Memphis, TN, hopes that turning to online social networking sites such as Facebook will help them overcome this marketing challenge.

Malco, which runs 320 screens in 30 locations across five states (Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee), set up a Facebook group to help them stay in touch with customers about upcoming events, new releases and promotions.  The group, which is moderated by Malco’s marketing director, Karen Scott, allows the chain to update it’s members on a moment’s notice with news, photos and links.  What’s really nice about Facebook groups, and what makes them perfect marketing tools, is their ability to broadcast information out to a wide audience.  While it is not possible to send message through Facebook to more than twenty users at a time, a group administrator can send out messages to everyone that’s a member of their group.  Presently, the Malco Theatres’ Facebook group has 460 members.  Besides being summarized in emails, these messages also appear in a user’s Facebook inbox and “timeline”.  For instance, I belong to a Fast Company magazine group on Facebook and each month when the latest edition hits newsstands I receive a notice through site.

Another way for a group administrator to market to their members is through event invites.  That’s exactly what happened on Tuesday, March 10th when Ms. Scott invited Malco Theatres’ group members to attend second run movies at the circuit’s Bartlett Cinema in Bartlett, TN.  I received an email about the event which linked back to the posting in the Facebook group which had all of the relevant info for anyone wanting to attend.  I also received a message in my Facebook inbox and the event appears in my Events list on Facebook.  Members can even RSVP for an event right on Facebook.  At the time of writing, 71 members had said they might attend, while 157 had yet to respond to the invite.  (A list of those not attending was hidden from viewers).  The following is a screenshot of Malco’s post:

Malco has chosen not to allow members to communicate through a discussion board or “wall” on the group’s page and there is no ability for members to share photos, videos or links.  This cuts down on the participatory nature (and stickiness) of such networking sites, but it also prevents nattering nabobs and the technologically illiterate from detracting from the information Malco wants to get across.

“Viral marketing is the wave of the future and offers us the opportunity to connect instantly with customers,” wrote Ms. Scott when I contacted her (ironically through Facebook) to discuss Malco’s use of the site.  “Through Facebook’s web page, text message and email connectivity, we have a captive audience that tends to be on the site for at least 20 minutes per visit.  With that kind of face time, we have an excellent chance of having our info viewed multiple times per day.”

Time will tell if Malco’s progressive Facebook marketing effort pays off.  Though I don’t live in Tennessee, and thus won’t be attending any second run films at the Bartlett Cinema, I now am more aware of Malco and all that’s happening at their circuit on a regular basis.  It will be interesting to see if other regional (or even national) circuits resort to social networking sites in their attempts to find more effective and less costly marketing mediums.

By the way, if you are a member of Facebook please leave a comment below to let the exhibition and distribution community know they can connect with you through the site.  Should you wish, you can use your Facebook login info (Facebook Connect) when commenting.  As well, Celluloid Junkie recently created a Facebook fan page (very similar to groups) which can be found here.

There used to be a time not so long ago, about two or three years, that motion picture distributors made many of their decisions about release patterns based on a weekly report produced by one third-party company; National Research Group. The company, founded in 1978, became a de-facto standard for market research within the film industry, especially when it came to test screenings and determining a movie’s release date. Today, thanks to the Internet, much of the work NRG does by polling potential moviegoers about their awareness of upcoming releases can be conducted in real time using websites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Earlier this week while checking my Twitter timeline I noticed that a lot of the people I follow on the micro-blogging site were posting messages about Warner Bros. tent pole release, “Watchmen”. This wasn’t so surprising since I follow a lot of entertainment journalists and film industry professionals and the movie was opening in just a few days. However I wondered how many other people were posting 140 character messages about the film. A quick query “Watchmen” on Twitter’s search page proved to be a wonderful example at how effective the service can be in providing an instant read on whether people were aware of the movie and what they were saying about it. The following screenshot was taken on Tuesday morning:

Not only were the site’s users talking about “Watchmen”, but it was the number one topic found in posts on Twitter, as can be seen in the Trending Topics section on the right hand side of the page. What makes this even more meaningful is that Twitter has millions of daily users posting tens-of-millions of messages 24-hours per day. For a topic to reach the top of the trending list on the search page is no easy task. As you can see from the screenshot, even seconds after the search was conducted two additional messages with the word “watchmen” had been posted. Users were posting links to reviews and some were even planning group trips to screenings of the film (see post from @jasonhhinc).

I revisited the search page several times during the course of this past week at all hours of the day and night. What I noticed was that during the daytime, when North American users were providing the majority of posts “Watchmen” was always found in the top trending topics list. At night, when Twitter users from Europe and Asia are predominantly online “Watchmen” began to drop to lower spots on the list and at times fell off it completely. As the week progressed messages about the film turned from discussions on when users were going to see the film to one sentence critiques from those who had just gotten out of early showings. On Friday links to reviews from both mainstream and online media were posted by the thousands.

All of this can be both good news and bad news for a distributor. Trying to create positive word-of-mouth about release is made all the more easy with sites like Twitter, though if opening weekend audiences begin to turn on a film, the word spreads like wildfire and no amount of advertising may help increase box office grosses.

Today, NRG is a part of Nielsen Media and has been folded into the monolithic market research firms’ Bases division. The weekly “Competitve Positioning” report, once coveted by industry execs eager to learn how a movie was “tracking”, isn’t even listed on their website. Whether NRG still distributes the report or even if  industry interest has waned I can’t say. Certainly there is some value in the kind of demographic data collected by NRG’s telephone polls. Twitter can’t tell you how many women over the age of 25 know about a particular movie nor how likely there are to see it opening weekend. All it can do is inform you that the technologically savvy masses that use the site are aware of a film and what they are saying about it. And there is no analysis of the constant raw data stream Twitter spits out, like there would be with Nielsen.

Still, I can’t help but think, like newspapers, NRG’s product may be facing stiff competition these days from more timely online resources.