Tag Archives: Twitter

Disney Turns To Twitter For “Toy Story 3”

June 20, 2010

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.

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“New Moon” Breaks Records For Internet Buzz and Midnight Box Office

By J. Sperling Reich

November 20, 2009

Already one of the most anticipated film releases of 2009, it should come as no surprise that “Twilight Saga: New Moon” is setting all sorts of records, both at the box office and on Internet social networking sites.

According to Variety, the second installment in the “Twilight” franchise smashed the North American box office record for midnight showings by grossing $26.3 million when it screened on 3,514 screens Thursday evening (or more precisely Friday morning). The previous record of $22.2 million was set this past summer by “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”. On Thursday the Los Angeles Times was predicting the film would open in North America to over $90 million. Ben Fritz’s article points out that the first “Twilight” film had a significant box office drop off of 41% from Friday to Saturday in its opening weekend and a similar decline is expected this time around.

Spurring such wild daily swings of the box office is moviegoers use of Internet social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. On Wednesday 81,000 messages were posted to Twitter and “New Moon” was the top trending topic on the site on Thursday evening and Friday. Mashable has a post this morning detailing what people are saying about the film in their online conversations. They pull their information from a quick study put together by Crimson Hexagon, a company that analyzes social networking trends. Below is a chart measuring 4500 tweets, as Twitter postings are called, referencing the film:

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Twitter’s Instant Reviews Has Hollywood Worried

By Admin

August 20, 2009

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.

Posted in Marketing & Promotions, Technology

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Can Social Media Help A Movie Studio Conduct Market Research?

By J. Sperling Reich

March 7, 2009

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. Read More »

Posted in Marketing & Promotions, Miscellaneous

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