Hey Everyone -
As many may know from another thread, which I can now not find, I've been dabbling in a mySpace marketing campaign for my animated feature film "Flatland." The plan was to make a profile for the movie, and each of the characters in the film. The characters would respond "in character" in a cute way, leaving comments and sending messages as if they actually existed - in a tongue-in-cheek manner.
After about a week of modest effort, I have managed to gather roughly 10,000 unique "friends" for all the characters and the movie. The campaign consisted of myself and my crew (er, wifey) sending out friend requests to people we thought likely to have read the book that the movie is based on, or would be intrigued by the movie's concept. We sent out about 200-300 friend requests per day. Several characters have broken the 1000 mark.
I gave the campaign a rest for a day and still am getting about 1 or 2 friend requests per hour, per character. Some of this is spammed friends, but a lot arenot, based upon some of the comments and messages that the characters get. "Loved the book!" "When's the movie coming out?"
So my plan is this.
1) Take a month (or two or three) to wrap the film up.
2) Have the crew (er, wifey) continue the campaign in earnest while I do so.
3) Sell a "pre-distribution collector's item screener DVD" of the movie to people online, announcing it to the friends when it's available.
I plan on burning the DVD's myself, using printable DVD's (for a nice professional look), etc. Costs for me would be about $2 a DVD. Would plan on selling it for, say, $10.00.
One thing I am wondering about - is there a good company I can use to get a decent shopping cart system to sell the DVD, that will take credit cards, paypal, etc., so I don't have to mess with that end of it?
Thanks! Feedback and holes in the plan would be much appreciated.
As many may know from another thread, which I can now not find, I've been dabbling in a mySpace marketing campaign for my animated feature film "Flatland." The plan was to make a profile for the movie, and each of the characters in the film. The characters would respond "in character" in a cute way, leaving comments and sending messages as if they actually existed - in a tongue-in-cheek manner.
After about a week of modest effort, I have managed to gather roughly 10,000 unique "friends" for all the characters and the movie. The campaign consisted of myself and my crew (er, wifey) sending out friend requests to people we thought likely to have read the book that the movie is based on, or would be intrigued by the movie's concept. We sent out about 200-300 friend requests per day. Several characters have broken the 1000 mark.
I gave the campaign a rest for a day and still am getting about 1 or 2 friend requests per hour, per character. Some of this is spammed friends, but a lot arenot, based upon some of the comments and messages that the characters get. "Loved the book!" "When's the movie coming out?"
So my plan is this.
1) Take a month (or two or three) to wrap the film up.
2) Have the crew (er, wifey) continue the campaign in earnest while I do so.
3) Sell a "pre-distribution collector's item screener DVD" of the movie to people online, announcing it to the friends when it's available.
I plan on burning the DVD's myself, using printable DVD's (for a nice professional look), etc. Costs for me would be about $2 a DVD. Would plan on selling it for, say, $10.00.
One thing I am wondering about - is there a good company I can use to get a decent shopping cart system to sell the DVD, that will take credit cards, paypal, etc., so I don't have to mess with that end of it?
Thanks! Feedback and holes in the plan would be much appreciated.