SEW on Reservation Road’s online efforts

Posted by Chris

October 17, 2007

The staff at SearchEngineWatch apparently got a mandate from their editor to review the online strategy being employed by Focus Features for Reservation Road. They found that strategy wanting.

Among other things they found problems in the fact that there was no stand-alone website for the film and no MySpace page. Both of those, writer Carrie Hill says and I agree with, are major oversights.

Focus’ search strategy is also severely lacking, with the first organic search result ceded to a lukewarm review from MSNBC. That’s likely at least in part to the lack of a dedicated official site. The paid search campaign points to the Focus Features site but there’s no description of the movie or anything that might entice the audience to see the flick.

The part I agree with the most is in the tips Hill gives at the end when she says “A new movie is like a new brand.” That’s very, very true and I don’t see that repeated enough. Hill also recommends a blog that carries the film from production onwards, something I agree with completely.

She says there will be updates on how their little project to increase the Reservation Road online presence goes and it will be interesting to see how that progresses.