Distributing trailers should be the priority

Posted by Chris

September 10, 2007

My new column is up at Brandweek, this time with my ranting (again) about how studios need more to embrace sites like YouTube and others to make sure their trailers are sent as far and wide around the Internet as possible. It’s no longer, I don’t think, a viable strategy to insist people come to an single site. Instead, the trailers (or any form of video marketing material) need to be where the users are already at.

In the column I site Fox Searchlight and Yari Film Group as two of the smaller studios that are doing just that out of necessity more than anything. They don’t have tons of disposable cash to throw around and so make use of the free tools that are available in order to supplement their online strategy. As an example watch this video in the Fox Searchlight channel that features “Falling Slowly” from the Once soundtrack playing over a collection of clips from the film. I’ve probably watched this 12 times and it’s done nothing but build my anticipation for seeing the movie.

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Stay Tuned for Previews? Not Online

September 10, 2007

By Chris Thilk

NEW YORK — Movie trailers are a unique sort of promotional form. They usually require no additional production, since the footage contained in the spot is already shot for the movie itself. They also have to tell the story of the movie in just two to three minutes in a way that connects with audiences. In essence, they are mini-movies.

They’re also highly engaging. People get excited about trailers in a way that they just don’t for most other commercials. Think about how many times you or someone else has said, “I have to get there before the previews” when planning a trip to the movies. They’re also probably the major factor, along with word-of-mouth, in determining what movie gets seen.

So you would think, based on this sort of excitement, that studios would be seeding the Internet with trailers, putting them anywhere and everywhere they could in order to expand their reach.

You would also be wrong.

Search YouTube for a trailer and odds are you’ll find it just fine, but the user who put it there isn’t the studio. It’s someone who ripped the trailer from Apple or Yahoo’s trailer pages, or from one of the entertainment sites that got the trailer as an “exclusive.” For popular movies there will be dozens of versions of the trailer available, most of questionable quality.

You’ll have better luck finding an officially loaded version of a trailer if the movie in question is from a smaller studio. Houses like Fox Searchlight, Yari Film Group, Picturehouse and others have realized that YouTube provides a no-cost distribution platform for their promotional materials and have taken advantage of that.

There’s no reason, honestly, for the major studios not to be as aggressive in seeding YouTube, Crackle, iFilm or any of the other video portals with official versions of their trailers. This is not “new media” anymore. And trailers aren’t something that media companies make money from directly anyway, so the default “We can’t monetize it” argument does not hold water.

Uploading video to YouTube and other sites is easy – just look at how many people are doing it. Studios can create a master account to constantly update with all the trailers they produce. Then they can also create movie-specific accounts to make sure the trailers are found by anyone looking for them.

NBC and Fox are correct in their thinking behind Hulu.com: People do want professionally produced content online. But where they start to be wrong is when they think they can define where that content lives. Users want to find it where they are, not where they’re told to be.

So spread movie trailers around online. It’s no different than running commercials on a bunch of different TV stations, other than that online it costs almost nothing and is more interactive. So it’s not only different, it’s actually better.