In the early days of the Internet, going onto a movie’s website was a novelty in itself. Teasers and trailers finishing with a call to visit the website—“For more information, go to …the-movie.com,”—signaled that a film wasn’t just an average release, but the kind that warranted a full-fledged marketing campaign. After dialing up and slowly loading the graphics-laden site, you could count on repeats of the trailer, photo galleries, games, and some kind of viral component that allowed you to e-mail a joke, prank or information to your friends.

While movies have by no means abandoned their efforts to build compelling websites, they now work in tandem with social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Through these sites, potential audience members can learn more about the film and easily recommend it to their friends, all during their daily checks of their friends’ Twitters and Facebook statuses.

The Fox Searchlight Facebook “page” for (500) Days of Summer, for example, has all the information you’d expect from a standalone website: the film’s trailers, behind-the-scenes footage, and a photo gallery. News like the release of the film’s poster (which fans voted on) and positive press articles, like Entertainment Weekly’s “500 Days a Summer Movie We Can't Wait to See,” are stacked between fans’ responses to seeing the film, which has been screening at festivals across the country. Unlike on typical websites, which are static, scrolling down the “wall” gives you a sense of chronology, and you can visually see the growth of fan responses:

“Brandon Warr: Saw this at RiverRun Festival in Winston Salem tonight... AMAZING movie. I hope this goes huge, because it definitely deserves it!
April 22 at 9:51pm "
“Jonathan Schwarzbach I just have a feeling this film is going to become so huge.
here's to Zo and Joe's continuing success (and collaborations hopefully)
April 21 at 11:35pm”
“Sunny Kwon Absolutely dying to see this movie! Love the story, I know I'll love this movie...and I'm utterly in love with Joseph Gordon-Levitt! :-)
April 7 at 5:21am”

For a film like (500) Days of Summer, which will screen at more festivals before releasing on July 17, Facebook becomes a perfect way for the studio to channel excitement and buzz—which, at this moment, is enviably high. While the demographics of Facebook are constantly expanding, virtually all teens to twenty-somethings use the medium—the target audience for the “postmodern love story.” By becoming “fans” of a film with as much positive buzz as (500) Days of Summer, users can also broadcast their coolness by associating themselves with the hip and up-and-coming. Since the page “lives” within the interconnected world of Facebook, and many users find it by browsing over from a link on a friend’s page, the movie has the added benefit of being introduced by familiar faces, the ultimate “celebrity” endorsement.

What makes Facebook the perfect marketing tool for some films also makes it all the more difficult to market other films, especially those without fan bases or festival buzz. Run-of-the-mill genre films or those without grassroots campaigns can fly into the radar via Twitter. Most studios have created feeds to plug all their releases, with handles including WarnerBrosEnt, wbpictures, foxsearchlight, FocusFeatures, UniversalPics, and SonyPictures. Twitter feeds become centralized sources of information for all of a studio’s efforts for their films. Users who subscribe to hear the latest news about Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on wbpictures, for example, also learn about The Hangover, 17 Again, and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.

Once someone has subscribed to such a Twitter feed, the constant refresh of insider information becomes addictive. Movie buffs who follow a studio’s Twitter are rewarded with special access to films. The Twitter feed of WarnerBrosEnt, for example, linked to Red Carpet premiere pictures of Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. The “twitpic” images had a grainy, cell-phone quality that suggested the viewpoint of a friend in the movie business, a refreshing alternative to the polished look of photographs taken at a movie premiere.
Via a Twitter update, for example, I am one of the first to learn about a viral-type Twitter campaign for Terminator Salvation. The feed (Resistance 2018) posts “intercepted” messages from Skynet, which Twitter users can decode to earn points. In one day, the feed doubled from 1,000 to 2,000 followers. In between messages like “RA:PT Complete "H_m_n R__i_t_nc_,” followers are encouraged to “Visit http://2018site.com for Terminator Salvation photos and videos,” effectively cross-promoting all aspects of Terminator’s web campaign.



One of the most entertaining marketing strategies involves creating faux social-networking pages for a movie’s characters and expanding their presence to outside the cinematic world. For Universal’s July release Bruno, the studio created a MySpace page, Facebook page and Twitter in the Sacha Baron Cohen character’s flamboyant style. Through the handle brunovassup (linked to via UniversalPics), the Austrian fashion gossip Bruno offers frequently unprintable missives and commentary on current events. Bruno’s thoughts on the swine flu, for example, were posted as “Respect to whoever's doing ze PR campaign for schwein flu—it's gone global even faster zan Atkins did in 2003.” Like other celebrities on Twitter, Bruno posts about his parties and plane travel, the most printable, least offensive remark along the lines of “Just got off ze plane in ze States und thought it vas a special airport for fatties.” Proving that linking is one of the most important tools in web campaigns, all of Bruno’s sites are just a link away from one another. For example, Bruno’s “Meinspace," a MySpace-like page, links back to “Facebuch” and “Tvitter.”

Gentlemen Broncos, the new film from Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess, has already created a site (ronaldchevalier.com) and Twitter (ronaldchevalier) around its main character. The overblown, mystic science-fiction writer, who appears to be partially inspired by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, is played by Jemaine Clement, the star of HBO’s popular, yet slightly underground, comedy series “Flight of the Conchords.” While the film still hasn’t announced a release date, it’s already entertaining followers with goofy posts like “Flock to me Twitter birds, partake from the bread in my hand.” The long lead time allows followers to get used to the unusual brand of humor spouting from the mouth of the character, and drum up interest in a film with relatively little buzz.

On the just-launched RonaldChevalier.com, one game uses cutting-edge technology to shake up the typical “personalize and send to a friend” campaign. Using the webcams that now seem to come on every college-bound kid’s laptop, viewers are encouraged to “Enter the Mind of Ronald Chevalier.” They print out graphics that they then stick on their foreheads. When they turn on their webcams, a mask-like image of Ronald superimposes on their foreheads, lining up with the graphic, which they can then mix with sounds and phrases. After making their videos, users can post them on YouTube and share them with their friends, who, one hopes, will go back to the website to make their own. While the whole procedure sounds rather complicated, it works off an existing trend of teens creating and sharing webcam videos, an informal type of social networking. Moreover, like the Bruno campaign, users are developing a relationship with the character, not the film, the same way fans identify with Batman and not just a particular movie.

Twitter and Facebook, while still new places to market movies, are a natural, powerful way to share information about upcoming films to already plugged-in viewers. Just as people check news sites daily, Facebook and Twitter are part of the daily routines of many web browsers. The films that have the best successes using Twitter and Facebook are ones that have positive buzz or larger-than-life characters like Bruno and Ronald Chevalier. Because these sites rely so heavily on word of mouth, weak films will have a hard time gaining traction, as will films that people are unwilling to announce that they have seen or intend to see. Conversely, movies people are interested in seeing can become must-sees when someone goes through the effort to “follow” them on Twitter or become a “fan” on Facebook. Facebook’s been known for solidifying “acquaintance”-type relationships by giving them a name, “friend,” and then updating users constantly with the details of their lives. Similarly, Facebook and Twitter can solidify a moviegoer’s interest in a film, making the lead-up to its release suspenseful, drawing potential fans closer and making them advocates for a picture they just can’t wait to see.