Quick Takes: 4/10/09

filmstripThis isn’t movie marketing related exactly but IFC and Sundance have teamed on a site called Indienomics that seeks to position the two, just in time for the advertising upfront season, as the only two truly independent media entities around. The site puts it in terms of appealing, through them, to an affluent and sophisticated audience that is going to be highly lucrative for advertisers attending what is the network’s first shared upfront.

Considering director Bryan Singer blamed Warner Bros. for botching the marketing of his Superman reboot, I find it curious that he’d be the one sought out for insight as to how Paramount should market the Star Trek movie. But he does have decent geek cred so I guess it’s alright.

Rounding out AdAge’s recent focus on movie marketing is this: A list of marketing lessons that can be derived from the success of Paul Blart: Mall Cop.

Fox Searchlight’s online ads for the DVD release of Slumdog Millionaire included in-banner quizzes and other entertainment functionality and features, ultimately contributing to above-expectations click-through and even conversion rates.

The US Post Office has refused to send postcards meant to promote LOOK, the voyeuristic look at just how many security cameras there are out and about in the world and what kind of stuff they’re capturing. The Post Office says the postcards, which sport an image of a guy having sex with a girl whose legs are wrapped around him while she lays on a storage shelf, is obscene. Ridiculous, I know.

Finding An Audience: 4/10/09

movie-ticket-and-popcornDVD

Finding that Blu-ray doesn’t represent a clear enough upgrade from standard DVDs to motivate most consumers, studios are trying a variety of other tactics to try to shore or slipping sales numbers, especially as they continue to lose market share to online and on-demand outlets.

ONLINE/ON-DEMAND

Sony is reportedly in talks to bring feature-length films to YouTube, meaning it would be the second studio to do so after MGM and not counting a handful of one-off deals. Sony has been a moderately-enthusiastic embracer of long-form online video. The deal would likely hurt its proprietary Crackle.com but be a huge win for YouTube considering ad buyers aren’t as put off by Hollywood features as they are user-generated content and they’re losing the professional content market to others like Hulu.

Cable network AMC is launching an online channel where it will stream B-movies from the 1950′s and 60′s. Sound like it will be open to everyone so I’m assuming this is an ad-supported venture. 27 titles will be available when it goes live with more being added on a regular basis.

I’m good with it

For the record, I have no problem with Google indexing Movie Marketing Madness. It sends a bunch of traffic my way, resulting in increased ad revenue for me. Anyone who removes themselves from being indexed by the search engine just results in my content moving up a notch because it’s not competing against theirs.