It’s the next Blair Witch project and its success is eerily similar to that movie. “Paranormal Activity,” is a success. Period. No one disagrees. As of December 2, 2009, the movie raked a healthy $60 million at the US box office.
So, what did the creative maverick folks behind the scenes do to make this flick the smashing success it is?
How about using some social media?This movie cost about $11,000 to produce. The producers did not create a conventional trailer. Instead, they made a little film which was like a trailer but slightly different. Test screenings are nothing new – every movie has their own to gauge their impact and chances of success in national markets. As a statistician would say, it’s called sampling.
Now, here’s the thing: the initial viewers were so scared out of their skulls (and they actually enjoyed the experience) that they began tweeting about the experience (see image for Twitter statistics below). Next thing, you know, the ever adept marketing folks at Paramount started thinking.
The movie was already garnering some serious word-of-mouth buzz, so they figured a few tweaks to the primary plot coupled with an ending that made the Blair Witch Project ending look like a fairy tale wouldn’t hurt. Following that, they organized some midnight college town screenings. Once the college town tweeters began to champion its cause and generate positive buzz, Paramount launched ParanormalMovie.com, a micro site that promoted the movie and asked movie goers to promote the movie .
ParanormalMovie.com claims that it received more than 1 million demands from moviegoers to screen the movie in more theaters, which is why “Paranormal Activity” is, according to the site, “the first-ever movie release demanded by you.” In any case, CNN reported that the online buzz created such excitement that “Paranormal Activity” frightened $7.1 million out of the teen/twenty-somethings pockets last weekend, while only gracing some 200 theaters.
Their usage of various social media like Twitter (tweet your scream) where they invited other tweeters to express their feelings about their experience with the movie and also on Facebook at Facebook.com/paranormalacitivity did help immensely as they leveraged both platforms to the max.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they had an email marketing campaign in play to tie in all the campaigns they had in progress. The social networks play did help too as 11% of all the traffic to ParanormalMovie.com came from Facebook. And, since Nov 09 till date, they had over 1.4 million visitors.
Great stuff and an excellent example of marketers using new media to promote a reasonably good (even though its recycled) product today.
Great observations! I agree that the grassroots digital campaign was very entertaining to see unfold. I wrote more about this here: http://popculture2point0.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/best-of-2009-paranormal-activity-finds-abnormal-amount-of-success-thanks-to-online-following/
Thanks Lauren! I also think that the product has to be good enough for a grassroots campaign to succeed. If “Paranormal Activity” was a weak and shoddy product, Paramount would not have been basking in the millions which the movie earned them.
Hi, perhaps this post is a bit off topic but in any event, I think that the social media usage may be overhyped as a movie tends to have other channels of advertising that drive interest and subsequent action. True PA may have used a lot of social media but I think that other mediums helped too.
Rose, It makes sense that the creators of Paranormal Activity used other channels to create buzz around the film. I haven’t researched this enough to comment any more. Perhaps, later as another blog post.