Jon Reiss

The distribution marketplace is changing and so are marketing strategies

Not every film will have the same marketing strategy because not every film will have the same core audience.  What works best for you depends on who you expect will be your most devoted fans and how you expect to connect with them.

Traditional marketing methods are changing along with the surge in digital distribution.  How will you adapt your strategy to recent trends?  Keep a step ahead!  Tweet, Blog, and Connect!

From BrandingStrategyInsider:

October 27, 2009
Top Ten Integrated Marketing Trends for 2010

1. Less will get done: until we learn to do more with less.

While the year 2009 was marked as the ‘great recession’, we won’t feel its full effects until 2010. Both marketers and their marketing services agency partners are dealing with reduced resources in terms of head-count and budgets. We won’t likely see enough breakthroughs in the marketplace, simply because marketers and agencies alike have to remain focused on ‘getting the work out the door’. The only way to ‘do more with less’ is to align resources toward a single and powerful integrated marketing solution. Individual marketing tactics will simply become marginalized and highly tactical with ‘less’.

2. Marketers will mistakenly ‘whack’ a medium of the marketing mix. Continue reading →

Indies continue to look for ways to harness the internet

For Independent filmmaking and distribution, the internet is still nascent territory.  We’ve only begun to see how we can reach our audiences through broad-band streaming, direct download, and DVD rentals.

But the internet is not a be-all-end-all solution to distribution.  This article highlights the importance of a solid marketing strategy for digital indie distribution.  It’s not enough to get your film streaming online.  Identifying your core audience and marketing to them is a necessity.

From Variety:

Indies still looking for Internet equation
Filmmakers consider sites like Netflix, iTunes
By SCOTT KIRSNER

If only more indie filmmakers could sell as many Internet downloads as “Helvetica,” the future of indie distribution might look more promising. Gary Hustwit’s documentary about the ubiquitous font has taken in a six-figure sum from its showing on iTunes at $9.99 per download.

But while more success stories are starting to be seen, the indie download business is still having problems gaining traction. The power of the Internet was supposed to level the playing field on which independent filmmakers and studios compete for audiences. So what happened?

A decade after the dot-com boom, when the Web promised to make any piece of content globally accessible to any interested viewer, Continue reading →

Web Marketing and DIY Filmmaking Article in Filmmaker Magazine-

Filmmaker Magazine has featured an article that I wrote about DIY web marketing, drawing attention and self distribution for Spring 2009. You should check it out, here is the article.

HOW TO MARKET YOUR DVD ONLINE PART 3
In this installment, Jon Reiss looks at DIY Web marketing.
BY JON REISS

So you’ve authored your DVD and perhaps even replicated it. You’ve found a fulfillment company that you are happy with. Now, how to get people to buy it?

In the last installment of this series, which appeared in the Winter 2009 issue of Filmmaker, I outlined how to maximize your DVD release strategy and before that in the Fall 2008 issue I discussed ways in which filmmakers can get their movies distributed through DIY self-distribution methods and hybrid strategies, all of which are based on my own experience self-distributing my graffiti doc, Bomb It. For filmmakers who are extending this DIY thinking to DVD retail by selling their own discs through a Web site or online store, this article will explore some of the ways you can cost-effectively publicize these releases, draw in potential customers and create revenue for your film.
Continue reading →