Fifty Shades Phenomenon Comes to Life in the Cinemas

In 2011 the ‘word of mouth’ between women, merely based on an erotic romantic novel, made Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey famous all over the world. These women were talking about Fifty Shades of Grey, the story that had over 40 million global sales.  The author responsible behind this successful book is the British writer E.L James. In 2012, James published the second and third volumes of the book. The film adaptation produced by Universal Pictures will be released this Valentine’s Day 2015.  For sure the movie distributor, including Universal, has a huge advantage in marketing and promotion for the success of the book, mainly among women between the ages of 18 and 30 years, however the distributors have been developing an attractive digital campaign to capture the attention of a more diverse audience.

In November 2013, the marketing team organized a photo shoot for Entertainment Weekly, with Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dorman, who play the main characters. E.L James posted photos of the set on her social media during the duration of the film shoot, giving fans of the book a reason to follow all of the behind the scenes of the movie.  On July 19^th, 2014 Beyoncé posted a mini-trailer on her Instagram account that includes a slower version of her hit “Crazy in Love”, which is also the soundtrack of the movie, announcing the official trailer release within the following days. July 24, 2014 was the release of the movie trailer on the Today Show; it was a trending topic on Twitter throughout the entire day. Other brands also took advantage of the movie to promote their own products. One example was the tweet of Tide referring to the movie: “We won’t judge guilty pleasures, we’re just here to #keepitclean”. To this day the official trailer has almost 42 million views on Universal Pictures UK Channel.

In my opinion, nowadays, the marketing strategies for movies have to be interactive in order to involve the audience with the story of the film. Universal Studios did just that by announcing the Grey Internship Program, in which the fans download an app to be part of an ‘internship’ within Grey’s company that would allow access to exclusive content of the movie as they complete specific tasks. The app is available on Apple Store, Google Play and Amazon. This week the movie reaches seven million fans on Facebook, and with it presently being only a month before the actual release, it is possible to get tickets now on the official movie’s web page. In addition, last weekend, during the broadcasting of the Golden Globes, Universal released a new version of the trailer, and in three days it has had over 4.6 millions views.

With these strategies, and the large fan base of the book, Fifty Shades of Grey promises to be one of the biggest box-office movies in 2015. According to Imbd predictions, the movie will collect 210 million domestic and 590 million worldwide, even more than Big Block Buster films such as Fast and Furious 7 and Minions which are also due to be released this year.

Business Plans from the eyes of the experts

As a Business Administration professional, I studied for more than four years the importance of a business plan. I learned the difference between an entrepreneur that takes the time to study the market, the competitors, the legal issues and how to develop a marketing and finance strategy, from entrepreneurs that just decide to go out to the market without any previous study. When you go out and face the real world, as an entrepreneur you have a lot of fears, including failure. However, it is important to know that with good planning and a solid business model the risk decreases.

According to Bloomberg, 8 out of 10 entrepreneurs fail within the first 18 months, and it is not because they did not have a business plan, but because they do not dedicate the appropriate time for its development. As a starting point, the objectives and the goals have to be achievable, the market research should be as detailed as possible and the financial numbers have to be realistic. To analyze what makes a business plan excellent, the best is to review what the experts in business plans suggest.

One of the most successful business founders nowadays is Carlos Slim.  Slim, 74 year-old Mexican, is considered the world's second richest man with a net worth of $78.9 billion (Forbes, 2014). He was born in a Lebanese family dedicated to businesses, so this generates a positive impact in his career. His conglomerate Grupo Carso, founded in 1965, has holdings in companies of different fields such as communications, real estate, airlines, media, technology, retailing, and finance.  Even though he is still conducting some business activities, he is now focused on foundations supporting education, health and employment in Latin America, which represents a valuable investment in countries as mine (Colombia). His power has no limits; he is the owner of one of the most important telecommunications companies in Latin America: Telmex. When he talks about a business he highlights the importance of clear objectives and knowing the tools to reach them. In the Grupo Carso Principles, it is possible to see the reflection of what is important in a business plan. He refers to simple organizational structures to generate flexibility and a fast decision-making culture, as well as to see the market trends in terms of technology to improve the production processes. Creativity and optimism are key. In finance terms, this thought summarizes the smarter way to manage money: “Maintaining austerity in good times strengthens, profits and accelerates the development of the company and averts the bitterly drastic adjustments in times of crisis”.

I decided to consider a perspective more in the side of the entertainment industry, to check how it match with Slim’s point of view, because people often think that products such as movies, music albums or TV programs are just art and do not need market analysis and budgets in the planning process.  For this purpose, Steven Spielberg is the right man. He is more than a talented film director, screenwriter and producer; he is business magnate. He has a net worth of $3 billion. As he could not get into the USC film school, he decided to accept an unpaid internship in the editing department of Universal. He is the founder of the multimedia company Dreamworks. From his experience he talks about the importance of taking risks as he did with the movie Jaws, that was a complete success in the box office. “Failure is inevitable; success is elusive”. With this quote I introduce 5 lessons he gave to entrepreneurs: Overcome your fears, know where to draw the line, find inspiration around you, push your limits and follow your passion.  Behind all his projects there is not only passion, there is also a test based on numbers. As Anil Ambani, the chairman of Reliance Group, said after a negotiation with Spielberg “..Ever since we looked at their business plan, I have never doubted that we would succeed in providing them with the financial muscle required to realize their dreams.”   

These two businessmen show me the importance of passion, as it is the first step making my company a reality. The objectives have to be clear and I have to know my resources inside and out. Showing a different proposal by making a previous analysis of the gap within the market and showing numbers are the evidence of the return in the investment and the tools I want to apply for my business plan development and for my career.

Guerrilla Marketing for Movies

In a digital world, where social media is becoming the most important marketing tool due to its easy use, viral impact capacity, and low cost, there is still space to mix them with unconventional marketing strategies in order to capture the attention of the audience. People love to get involved in different experiences and interact directly with the product or service.  The Guerrilla marketing is a style that combines risk, surprise, events and interaction. This type of marketing is a good option for independent filmmakers who need to optimize their budget in the best way possible. The key is always creativity and imagination.

One of the most interesting and effective ways to promote a movie using guerrilla marketing is with a flash mob event where many people gather in a public area and have a performance. It could be singing, dancing or acting. The idea is to catch the attention of the audience around the place. The first step is to come up with an idea that is directly related with the topic of the movie. Picking a good location is also very important, so it has to be related with the target market of the movie. During the event, it is necessary that someone is there to photograph and film the flash mob.  Social media is a crucial part of the process, because in order to promote the video and make it viral, it is important to post it on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts. An example of a flash mob in a movie release was for Magic Mike, starring Channing Tatum, who appears in the Rockefeller Plaza dancing as the stripper he interpreted in the film.

Another approach to guerilla marketing with a limited budget is to look for speaking opportunities in the field of expertise.  In the filmmaker’s situation, it will be good to talk about film techniques and trends, as they promote the movie at the same time. Opportunities are in schools, colleges, and community organizations, depending on the target market.

Guerilla marketing gives the perfect opportunity to get noticed in the competitive film industry and create an image of being unexpected, different and fun, with a limited budget.

A Great Marketing Campaign with Low Budget

Major film studios have huge budgets for marketing and advertising a movie for release and make it a box office success. However, for independent filmmakers the story is different. They have to measure very carefully how much money they can spend in marketing. Yet, budget constraints do not have to be an obstacle for creativity. Nowadays, it is possible to find support through social media and sponsorships to develop a good promotional strategy. But what happened when social media was not available? One of the most successful viral marketing strategies of all time was developed for The Blair Witch Project in 1999, when Facebook, Twitter and YouTube did not exist. How was this possible?

The Blair Witch Project was a movie about three student filmmakers that were investigating the mystery behind the case of the Blair Witch through interviews of the local people.  The three students disappear and a year later their footage was found.  The actors improvised almost all the lines, what gave the movie a real result. The production company decided to create a low budget website (www.blairwitch.com), that is still working, to document the history of the Blair Witch from 1785 to the day when the footage was discovered. The website has photos, biographies and interviews with family members and is constantly updated with new information. All the evidence made people think it was a true story and encouraged people to talked about it. It also includes trailers with the students’ “real videos” and news coverage of the disappearance.  The most important thing that the team defined very well was the target market. All the ads were shown in college campuses and created a desire to seek more information about the story.  Also, the team took care about details such as listing the three actors as ‘missing, presumed dead’ in IMDb before the release.

The results were incredible: for a $25,000 movie budget, the final production grossed $248 million at the box office (the second highest return on investment for a movie). People made long lines to get a ticket. The success was created on uncertainty and made people think it was a true story. With the technological advances, is very hard to repeat a campaign like this one, but it reminds us of the importance of originality and taking care of the small details to impress the audience.

            

Industry Liabilities

In the entertainment industry a new contract is signed, a new deal is closed, a new license is acquired everyday. This is the reason why is it so important to know the legal terms in order to avoid costly liabilities that can impact the business negatively.  However, any company has a risk to be involved in legal controversies, despite of the experience in the market. The following are some controversies in the film industry.

To entertain the audience with a movie is the principal goal of a film production. The distribution company has the responsibility to develop the marketing campaign for the movie and to find the best screens to capture the target market. But, what happens when the message sent is not appropriate? This was the case of FilmDistrict, an independent movie distributor. In 2011, Sarah Deming, a woman from Michigan, filled a lawsuit against the company for wrong promotion of the movie Driver. After watching the trailer she was expecting a movie similar to ‘Fast and the Furious’, with a lot of racing scenes, but the story was completely different. It was more a drama thriller, so she claimed for a refund of the movie ticket. For many people this lawsuit can be absurd, but I think Sarah is right. In this case, the trailer sells an action movie, when actually it is slow, mystery and focuses on the hard relationship between the driver and his neighbor.  The trailer is the most important advertisement tool to show the public what they should expect from a film, that is why the marketing team has to be very careful with all the elements of it, including the scenes and the music. The trailer has to match the movie content so the public will receive what they are expecting.

The second case is a lawsuit from Peter Jackson to New Line Cinema, the distribution company of the ‘The Lord of the Rings’ movies. The famous director claimed that New Cinema committed fraud in handing revenues of licensing and merchandising for the trilogy. According to The New York Times, Jackson was underpaid by more than $100 million. This is not the only case reported about problems between the distributor and the director of a movie, so it is a reflection of how important is to clearly write all the rights of the parties in the contract and establish the amount limits for different sources of incomes.  The contract must be specific in terms of box office revenues and profits for books, DVDs, merchandising and the responsible for them.

The last case is related to the movie exhibition side of the industry. It is a lawsuit from a local movie theater chain in Georgia, Cobb Theaters, claiming that the big chain AMC Entertainment uses its market power to deprive other competitors to access to films from the most important film distributors. This is not fair for a competitive market and the company is creating a monopoly when they ask for exclusivity for some movies releases. AMC did not talk about the situation. Maybe it is not a case of monopoly, it would be related to the number of screens the company has that allows them to have more movies showing. The important thing is that the market establishes competition rules so all the companies have the same opportunities.  It is clear that the big organizations have more opportunities to capture more audience due to their size and budget, but they have to play fair and do not try to use dirty tricks to affect the normal behavior of the market.

All these cases show the importance of calculate the risks of any project and always have the rights and obligations clear to not be involved in situations that impact the reputation and implicate unnecessary costs.