As movie marketing shifts online, so does influence

According to internal tracking by Sony itself, online marketing efforts trumped traditional media to influence awareness for two recent films, reports Forbes.

Surveys done by Sony showed that online campaigns for the first time appeared as the primary source of brand awareness for both Resident Evil: Extinction and Superbad. The studio says those numbers reinforce its commitment to marketing on social media platforms and keeping track of how word-of-mouth is spreading digitally.

For Superbad, 73 percent of the audience surveyed said the Internet was their “motivating source of information,” with TV coming in at 72 percent and in-theater spots at 67 percent.

For RE:E those numbers were 64 percent, 56 percent and 55 percent, respectively.

Both of these campaigns, the story points out, had online aspects of their campaign that were age-restricted and therefore un-executable on other media. Superbad also had a Facebook widget people could install on their profiles.

In case you weren’t sure what that was, that sound was the tide turning.

This is just going to be happening more and more often, especially with movies like these that play into a specific niche audience. It’s those types of audiences that are likely to be online – since that’s where they can connect with others like them – and are highly motivated to act on things that interest them.