Social media has had an effect on how marketers are reaching consumers.  Consumers are constantly on the go and spend a great deal of their time on the internet visiting social media sites several times a day.  Marketers use Facebook “to connect with consumers and would-be customers” (Warren, 2010) the use of these social networks to help companies and brands build a lasting relationship with customers.  The use of these types of marketing campaigns are not only becoming more popular they are also being used my Hollywood to promote up-coming movies.

Movie studios are leveraging social media to drum-up interest for their movies.  For several years, studios have used the internet and created websites with information and trailers for films.  Now they are going a step beyond and creating entire campaigns using social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

One of the most recent examples of using social media was the marketing for Toy Story 3.  Disney and Pixar created a campaign that not only used traditional broadcast and print media they also looked to social media to reach potential viewers.  The companies used “Facebook and YouTube to help promote the film, the studio raised awareness and successfully targeted demographics that don’t traditionally flock to Disney animated feature films” (Warren, 2011).

Disney knows that most of their animated movie goers are kids and parents and they way you market to that group has not changed.  However, Disney and Pixar knew that Toy Story 3 could reach a much larger audience considering many viewers of the first movie are now young adults on college campuses.  While this was a great opportunity for the movie it did create a problem.  Disney would not be able to reach the college age demographic if they relied on their traditional marketing efforts for animated movies.

The way Disney could reach the young adults that were original Toy Story fans was to use social media and special screenings.  Disney used Facebook, YouTube and movie blogs to run a similar campaign to the one targeting children and families (Warren, 2011).  The studio also held ‘special cliffhanger screenings’ of Toy Story 3 at college campuses (Warren, 2011).  “Using Facebook, students with valid college ID could sign up for special screenings of the film.  These screenings were 65 minutes in length and designed to whet viewers appetites for the final release in June 2010” (Warren, 2011).

Besides offering college students, the opportunity to see a special screening of the movie Disney and Pixar also created several online exclusive videos and features.  Exclusive features were created for the characters Ken and Lots-O Huggin Bear (Warren, 2011).  Here are a couple videos that were created for Toy Story 3’s social media campaign.

Disney and Pixar took an approach to promoting a movie that has not been used in the past.  The studio understood that promoting Toy Story 3 to young adults was just as important if not more important than promoting the movie to children and their parents.  I believe the Toy Story 3 campaign is an excellent blueprint for movie studios that want to not only reach consumers by traditional means but also through social media.

References

Warren, C. “How Social Media Helped Toy Story 3 Win at the Box Office” (2011, February 18).  Accessed on March 7, 2011.  Retrieved from <http://mashable.com/2011/02/18/toy-story-3-social-media/>

Warren, C. “How Social Media Is Changing the Way Movies are Promoted” (2010, November 29).  Accessed on March 7, 2011.  Retrieved from <http://mashable.com/2010/11/29/social-media-movie-marketing/>

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