In the traditional view of film industry, releases and premieres plays crucial parts in the production’s long-term sustainability. There is a critical point in time during theatrical release or distribution window that will be a time-limited “make it or break it” period. This is one of the reason why marketing and distribution in the film sector is crucial and essential, to secure audiences’ interests during that short window of first release.
Today, the above factor are less critical to a film’s lifetime success. With the wider reach & easier access of online distribution channels, a movie produced 20 years ago will likely be easy to find, re-promoted, and consumed by modern audiences. That critical window period that traditionally becomes the ‘life and death’ of the business, has just expanded much wider.
Despite this fact, however, proper marketing planning is not less important today as it was 10 years ago, before the digital distribution era. This is because marketing does not only serve the purpose of acquiring end consumers or viewing audiences, but it’s also important to capture interest and engagements of other stakeholders that will impact survival of the production itself. Examples of these stakeholders are the investors or pre-sale buyers, who can provide financial support and income assurance since the very first inception of the project, even before production of the film is finished.
Importance of Marketing & Early Distribution for a Production’s Survival
Good marketing strategies in all stages throughout the planning & production process can also help increasing the chances of additional or alternative funding and sources of income. This will smoothen the entire production process prior to distribution, which reduces the risk of production failure or cash flow problems throughout production process.
The independent film industry works in such a way that a minimum to no cash revenue will be generated until after the production is finished. Hence, it can take long period to recoup back the invested money, and therefore, raising the challenge of managing cash flow. A good marketing & distribution effort also help to ensure that there will be alternative source of monetization, for example, from themed events, merchandises, or licensing revenue from development of games related to the film’s storyline. This again, will increase investment appetite of investors, and reduce risk of post-production failure.
Different marketing & distribution channel serves different purposes in different stage of the film production. Several examples of typical marketing & distribution efforts include involvement in film festivals, release of official poster, release of official trailers, sponsorship in events, press-releases, and finally, cinematic distribution and secondary releases (DVD, VOD, TV).
Involvement in film festivals are typical ways to get a head start in selling the film to an agent or distributor, or to engage with investors as well as finding pre-sale buyers if the film is in ongoing production. At this stage, most marketing is done on a B2B level where producers pitch to other stakeholders to raise fund or get represented for later stage sales. At a later stage, marketing becomes more important in attracting audiences to consume the finished product.
Nowadays however, the emerging digital landscape has and will continue to transform the way films are distributed and the way audiences consume them. The digital era not only enhances the quality and ease of access for audiences in consuming the products, but also optimizes the cost for producers to reach wider base of mass audience. It also enhances competition and lowers barriers to entry. Due to this reason, players within the film industry will need to be versatile enough to adapt to new trends or shifts in market’s preference towards media consumption.
New Trends of Film Distribution & Consumption in the “Digital Era”
There are multiple ways the new age of digital transformation has and will change film marketing & distribution. I will discuss about 6 trends that has emerged and will likely continue to change overall approach to films’ marketing & distribution strategies:
1. The Raise of Social Media
Digital buzz quickly replaces traditional word of mouth in reaching to new set of audiences. Trends are shifting towards word of mouth within social media platform more than they do in direct conversations. Sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, play important roles in film marketing, not just through paid advertising, but also through native content marketing.
2. Involvement of big data and analytics
Similar to most marketing strategy shifts in the modern digital era, big data in film industry is also used as a new way of delivering more efficient marketing. We can see a lot of big data plays being exploited especially in subscription models of VOD, or even in cinema through its loyalty programs. By using big data to analyze customer preferences and trends of consumption, producers can target the audiences and tailor the contents accordingly. More relevant targeted marketing, better suited contents and non-promotional strategies such as launch date, location, distribution, and channel strategy will optimize cost and improve ROI.
3. Increasing importance of mobile adoption
As the digital era continues, mobile become increasingly trendy amongst millennials and most productive-age audiences across the globe. In a certain region, there already has been seen trends where mobile utilization rate is higher than desktop when it comes to online activities amongst customers. This trend suggested the possibility of this phenomena being replicated to other markets, and players need to be versatile to adopt to this new consumption trend when time arrives.
4. Further diversification of various on-demand models
As we know, the ever-changing digital disruptions have also disrupted the film & media industry, especially from distribution channel perspective. There has been raising varieties of channels and business models emerging, such as the raise of VOD trend replacing DVDs and broadcasted TV. VOD itself has been revolutionized by the emergence of different types of business models, such as TVOD, AVOD, and SVOD. In the future, hybrid models or other more creative models will likely appear to continuously serve audiences’ interests better.
SVOD, most likely one of the most popular model currently adapted, is subscription-based video on demand, where people can subscribe for a fee, within a certain period of time — one major player in this area is Netflix.
In contrast to that, TVOD (Transactional VOD) provides the chance for audiences to only spend money on the exact product they wanted to consume, instead of paying a flat per-month subscription fee for all of the database content. This option is tailored more towards audiences who have more specific type of movie interests as opposed to a wide range of mix. An example of this player is Google Play Movies.
AVOD, on the other hand, serves best audiences who are more cost-constrained. Customers will able to watch contents for free with the exchange of advertising contents being shown, example of such player is YouTube. This channel also allows the growth of market demand competition, as more indie producers to have wider access in cheap distributions.
It is also plausible to hypothesize that in the near future, each of these models will have their own sub-model, or dilute and merge into another model or a new model. For example, TVOD will soon innovate on the flexibility of rental period, offering hourly to daily rental as opposed to monthly only.
5. Changes in distribution and market consolidation
Players such as Netflix recently disrupted the distribution chain in the film industry, by offering alternative option to market one’s film: directly through online OTT / VOD channel instead of going through cinema theatrical release. This is a major shift in the distribution process of a film, where typically almost all new major films are targeted to be launched through a proper theatrical release in cinemas. Now that Netflix and other OTT players have embraced the strategy of acquiring licenses before it’s publicly released, they are able to disrupt the distribution market by cutting down some cinema release option and replacing it with much safer and cheaper option: OTT online VOD. This creates both more flexibility and restriction to audiences’ access to a content
6. Utilization of cryptocurrencies for distribution & licensing
Although still infantry and far from being practically adopted, the raise of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies has revolutionized the world in some industries. Now it has come to start its first touch in the media/film/entertainment industry. The utilization of blockchain technology in trading film licenses and film distribution has been quite rapidly experimented and adopted in several markets. Vuulr, an online media company based in Singapore, is one of the pioneer in experimenting this model. By utilizing blockchain to aid film license trading, it is projected that the amount of time and effort needed to trade film licenses will decrease significantly, allowing more efficient and cost-effective distribution process.
As depicted through several points above, marketing and distribution in film during this digital era will become even more increasingly important, since the increasing free flow of information and access to people will not only provides benefit to attract more audiences, but also increases level of competition and reduces barriers of entry. This will force players in the film industry to evolve, adapt quickly, and innovate in their marketing & distribution approach according to shifting consumption trends, as have been laid out earlier.
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