Marketing Plan

Marketing Strategy

Documentaries, more than other types of films, come with their audience already built in.  There is a subject to the documentary that can be exploited when considering a marketing strategy.  There has to be something of interest that encouraged the filmmaker to explore the event.  In most cases that event has already been explored by someone else and comes complete with its enthusiasts built in. Carl Clifton explains “Distributors are not just buying a film, but buying a support structure.”  Adam Dawtrey of Variety furthers the thought, “the key to making its docs break through is mobilizing support from activists long before release.”

People That Need to Know About This Movie

USS Randolph Alumni - I intend to make use of the mailing list of the 400 sailor’s that attend the USS Randolph’s reunions as the bedrock of my marketing plan.  I plan to encourage all of them to spread the word about the movie, and will have a small section in their newsletter to keep them all up-to-date about the film's progress.  Because of the age and technical savvy of the people I intend to communicate with, I believe that a mailing list would be more effective than simply maintaining a blog or tumbler account, although I will do those things as well.  

USS Randolph Alumni Families - I believe the difference between financial success and not on this project, is whether the grandchildren of the Randolph association are interested and more importantly engaged by the project.  This has been taken to heart as a core of the film’s creative vision.  The most clear themes of Blivits! is about learning to communicate with our parents.  Another one of the ways that I hope to encourage that sort of engagement is to provide each of the people that takes part in the documentary with a complete, unedited version of their story for their own personal use, to share with their family.  I hope to foster participation by allowing people to contribute stories for their parents or grandparents or husbands through the website.

Navy/History Enthusiasts - Research has lead me to believe that there are significant number of people that are interested in the United States Navy and/or history on whole.  Upon further review this fact should have been self-evident given the success of such cable stations as The History Channel, Discovery Channel, The Military Channel, and NatGeo.

This approach will likely reach the most specific audience for this film, and a slightly broader audience would be anyone that has served in the armed forces.  The official magazineof the Navy “All Hands: Magazine of the US Navy” and the Military Officers Association of America both have websites and classified sections that reach around a million retired soldiers and sailors.  There are many other magazines that serve similar functions but speak to slightly different demographics: “Meridian: Magazine of the National NavalOfficers Associations”, “Proceedings: Official Magazine of the US Naval Institute.”, “Link: Career Magazine for the Navy Professional”, “MarinesMag: The Official Magazine of the United States Marine Corps”, “The Officer”, and also “The Navy Times”.  The print media reaches a portion of the population that does not frequently use computers or the internet.  Numbers on the exact circulation of the magazines are difficult to find, making it difficult to quantify the exact impact of focusing a large effort on raising the film’s visibility in those journals.

Communication Strategy

Web Ready Content

I have already started a channel on Vimeo for all the content that I am creating.

Here are some examples of that work.


Earl Cline from Charles Sutter on Vimeo.


Doug Smith from Charles Sutter on Vimeo.


Dave Davenport from Charles Sutter on Vimeo.


Sam Stratus from Charles Sutter on Vimeo.


Ed Luas from Charles Sutter on Vimeo.

I am still in the process of putting together the other 20 interviews that I have collected over the past 2 years, but as I load them to vimeo, I will also host them to my website.

List of Contacts for Publication

The Military Officers Association of America
Proceedings: Official Magazine of the US Naval Institute
MarinesMag: The Official Magazine of the United States Marine Corps
The Navy Times
American Heritage Magazine
American History Magazine
Armchair General Magazine
Good Old Days Magazine
Military History Magazine
Military History Quarterly
Vietnam
Reminisce Magazine
Smithsonian Magazine
World War II Magazine
Military History Monthly
History Today

Budget

The budget for promotion and marketing of the film is around $1000.  However, I hope to find a partner in the History, English or Journalism Departments that are looking to develop a spec article for publication.  All of the publications listed above accept free lance article submissions, and they also have relatively inexpensive advertising costs.

Festivals Targets

There are two criteria a film festival must meet for me to consider submitting the film (and hopefully attending).  I am most concerned with the festivals being in places that are accessible to the veterans that are in the film.  Another consideration for me is that I do not like the idea of being in competition.  It would feel dirty somehow to "win" something for this film.

Seattle Film Festival - Doug Smith
Traverse City Film Festival - Chuck Manning
Orlando Film Festival - Ed Sutter
Daytona Film Festival - Earl Kline
Newport Beach Film Festival - Sam Stratus & Dave Davenport
Dead Center Film Fest - Fred Bartlett & Allie Ryan
Tulsa International Film Festival - Fred Bartlett & Allie Ryan
Barebones Film Festival - Fred Bartlett & Allie Ryan
Atlanta Film Festival - Russell O'Day
Macon Film Festival - Willie Bibbs, Bill Marshall & Jack Reynolds
DCIFF - Don Hillard
Silverdocs - Don Hillard

Blivits Marketing Timeline

Reach

For my product the name of the game will be brand sentiment.  If I can't nurture positive prolonged engagement of my website and my film, I will not be able to creatively and meaningfully talk to my audience.  The type of image that I'd like to build would be akin to Publix.  They have managed to create the image of a socially conscious and morally responsible company.  

The ultimate effect of this image is brand trust.  My brand will live or die based on the trust of people I am trying to sell to.  The retiree demographic are constantly asked for money, and it will be hard for me to distinguish myself from the scam artists.  And measuring that level of trust will be hard to accomodate on social network.  Most of them are not on facebook, twitter, tumblr, or blogger, which means that the most accurate means of charting our message might be directly from Google.  If people are searching for our website and our movie then we're doing well.  For my secondary and tertiary audiences, all of the social media analytics make sense, but these groups will only buy into my film (or web experience) if I can capture the trust of the first group. 

viral videos

"The Blivits! Project" Veterans

The best example of what I would like to do for the sailors of the USS Randolph comes from the people that made Kony 2012.  This was a call to arms and it was a personal plea that blossomed into a world wide meme.

The results of the film are debatable, but the amount of people that saw it are not.  I would like to create a personal message that encouraged veterans to share their stories on our website.

The subject line might be "The Blivits! Project" and the text would read something like "My dad was a sailor on the USS Randolph from 1962-1965, and growing up I heard hilarious, touching and important stories about his life on the ship, but in 2001 my dad suffered a series of aneurysms that left his memory much less clear.  It was then that I realized the world needs to start collecting these stories, as fast as possible.  Please visit www.Blivits.com and click on the link the says share your story.  You may not think that your story is interesting or important, but it just might make a world of difference to someone else's grandchildren or great grandchildren.  Thank you, and I can't wait to hear about you."

Personally - Indie Filmmakers

Much like the recent release Indie Game I intend to give away as many of the interviews as I possibly can, but what might be fun would be to set up a mock interview with my dad, and then go through all the different forms of documentary interviews and explain what each does before we see its effect.

For example, Errol Morris uses jump cuts and heavy editing to make new meaning.  DA Pennebaker refuses to shoot any interviews with lights, and so on and so on until this video because a short class on documentary filmmaking.

The title would be "Mixed Mode - Understanding why how you shoot changes what you shoot." and the text would say something to the effect of "I'm making a personal documentary about my dad and the ship he was on when he was in the Navy, The USS Randolph.  In the process of making this movie, I've learned a great deal about the modes of making a documentary and I'd like to share with you how to tell the difference between them.  Please visit www.blivits.com to see more of my film."

We Won't Forget - Kids Playing War

Similar to campaign for the Veterans, but this video would be more of a call to the children of the world to ask their parents and their grandparents for their stories before its too late.  This video (campaign?) might be closer to the "It Gets Better" videos, if it were successful.

In this campaign the subject line would be "I won't forget ____" and in the blank space the young person would be able to share the story of the person in their life with military experience.

My own personal video would be "I won't forget my father, my grandfather or any of my great uncles and aunts that served in World War 2, Korea and Vietnam.  I appreciate their service in the Navy, Army, and Air Force, and I promise to remember their stories. Please visit www.blivits.com to hear more stories like yours."

General Quarters

The Enemy. (The current crop of war documentaries)

To Hell and Back Again

Chosin

The Invisible War

Their Position

To Hell and Back Again trades hard on its critical acclaim.  The top half of their homepage are quotes about the film and there is almost nothing about the content of the documentary itself.

Chosin focuses on the support's ability to request a screening, to help support the film.  However this website hasn't been very well updated in about a year.

The Invisible War is striking because it is also a call to action.  This film is about an injustice that occurred during the current US military actions.  They as well offer supporters a chance host private screenings.


Our Position
Our movie is a personal call to action.  It has a clear path that is advocated in the film.  We all feel as if we are doing an important service.  We have tried to become a part of the community that has shared itself with us, and to be a value to the community.

Us vs Them

Blivits! does not quite match up with any of these films in a market sense because it will never be sold on my abilities as a filmmaker.  I feel like that would be disingenuous to the stories that I have been given access to in the process of making this film.  We will also do much more work in attempting to reach the veteran community.  We hope that we are doing THEM the service.  This film is a cause in the same sense that Invisible War is, accept that the call to action is not political, its personal.  Each person moved to listen to their parents or grandparents, makes all the difference.

PMD Responsibilities

The PMD that I have already hired for my film is Jessica Southwell.  She promoted a film at the Florida Film Festival that sold out one of it screenings and has in general started to focus her efforts on social networking.  It should also be mentioned that my producer Jason Flynt has a very strong background in this field as well, and has been working with Dr. Mills as the PMD for Wally's Mission on Mars.

Firstly, we know who the core audience of the film will be.  The Randolph Association which is the association of crew alumni that my dad belongs to, are likely to be the film's most important audience.  There are around 400 members of that association. To this end we have gotten a place in the Randolph Association's quarterly newsletter.  Jessica and I will compile an update on our film for each edition of the "Rowdy Randolph".

Second, ultimately Jessica and I will be arranging for screenings around the country at VFW branches and showing the film to small audiences.  If there are available crew members and/or members of the Randolph Association in the area of a screening will go out of our way to get them to show for a question and answer period after the movie.

Third, the budget that we currently have for marketing and distribution is around $2000, however this would get us to our break even point and any money brought in after that would make the movie profitable.

Fourth, our primary focus is going to be finding organizational support for the film as we intend to self-distribute it after completion.  To that end we will likely find as many partnerships as we can with organizations like the VFW and the Randolph Association to get people to our screenings around the country.  We will likely use traditional print advertising for some of this marketing because that is where our audience gets most of its "news".

Five, at some point we might like to add a booking agent, as its something that Jessica feels uncomfortable having completely in her lap.  We will also use an assistant editor to put together content exclusively for the web.

Six, the Randolph Association does have an email list, but as stated previously most of the people on the list do not often check their email.  Many of them get their news through Retired Officer Magazine, or Navy Life.  We will put heavy effort into getting our story into those magazines to keep our audience abreast of the events we will be holding.

Seven, I will be looking for an assistant editor to log footage and create small featurettes for our website.  Some of these clips might be very simple like an interview that we will not use, but some of them might be much more complex.

Eight, our primary focus for release after completion of the film will be television sales.  A theatrical run seems incredibly unlikely, and we will spend most of our effort on television sales agents or VOD possibilities.

Nine, Brian Redban explains that he only recently started making money off of his podcasting empire with Joe Rogan, by selling T-shirts. And I intend to follow suit.  I think that selling tshirts of the Randolph's call signs and the DVDs that we've made might be the best way to get alittle extra money out of our movie.

Ten, though our strategy forgoes most tradition film festivals, we will target several festivals that are not film markets.  We will avoid festivals where the purpose is selling the film, because I do not believe we will have a good chance at being sold, but should it become obvious that this is wrong, we will certainly course correct and attempt to sell the film traditionally.

Eleven, again, we are attempting to make the distribution plan a part of the film's process organically.  That is to say that we will continue to exploit any options we have for distribution as they become available to us, but the only thing that we are counting on is our ability to sell the film ourselves.

Twelve, we have currently targeted the beginning of March to come online with much of our web content.  We expect that this wil give us enough time to shoot all the things we need for the film and by that point we will be putting together the feature, meaning we will know what we can use on the web and what we don't need on in the film.

Possible Consumer Profiles

1. Veterans

The primary audience for this film are veterans and the families of veterans. These people are technologically challenged so they get most of their information from association newsletters and very targeted print media.  They also still attend regular association meetings which is where they spread their news via word of mouth.  The primary concern we have in marketing to them, is that they are constantly being bombarded with people looking for money from them.  They have thousands of advertisements in those magazines and millions of pounds of junkmail that pretend to be a service for them but are really just a different kind of health insurance scam. 

keywords (USS Randolph, VFW, veteran, Navy, aircraft carrier, World War 2, retired, officer,  sailor, shore leave)

2. Indie Filmmakers.

On the complete other end of the spectrum are independent filmmakers.  These people are on twitter, facebook, stumble upon, pinterest, and tumblr.  The place where these guys and girls get their information is usually the internet.  The reason for this is probably two fold: firstly, the information comes too fast to wait for print magazines, secondly, independent filmmakers are very specific in their taste.  For example, documentary makers generally are only interested in other docs. Keywords (indie, documentary, microbudget, low budget, no budget, personal documentary, anti-verite)

3. Young Boys (ages 8-15)
This audience is a mystery in some ways.  They are technology natives which means that they understand the internet in a much different way than the rest of the world does.  However this group is not incredibly likely to aggressively look for information about Blivits! This is mostly because they would be unlikely to know that they should be looking for the movie.  To that end, the most likely way to find this people are through the television, namely The History Channel and The Discovery Channel or through their school.  We are preparing lesson plans to help teachers bring Blivits! into the classroom. Keywords (USS Randolph, Navy, aircraft carrier, World War 2, officer,  sailor, model ship, history channel, discovery channel, super carrier)

my ripomatic

Its Been a Busy Week

This week found me, my wife and my cinematographer Brian Macaione in Savannah, GE, shooting interviews for our documentary Blivits!  We were there from Tuesday to Sunday and during that time we collected over 6 hours of material, almost all of which are direct interviews with some of the surviving crew of the USS Randolph, a retired aircraft carrier in the United States Navy.  The sailors were gracious and humble in a way that was refreshing in a time of "look at me" facebook, twitter, and ah-hem-blogging.  I was alittle surprised to have the sailors be so appreciative of the job that we were doing in capturing their stories, but that probably means that we are on the right track to being a fruitful member of our community.

The importance of the work was reinforced to me this week, as the Randolph Association absorbed the 9 surviving almuni of a mine sweeper named the USS Terror.  That ship had for a short while be a part of the aircraft carrier group's auxiliary compliment.  The Terror had a reunion committee of their own, until this year, but with their numbers dwindling, they joined the Randolph Association.  I was lucky enough to speak with some of the crew of the Terror, and I found that their experiences lived up to the ships moniker.  In the same wave of attacks that saw the Randolph take a kamikaze hit in her flight deck, so too did the Terror.  This ship was less than a quarter of the Randolph's size and when the  she took the direct hit, they lost about a quarter of their crew.  The entire aircraft carrier group was under attack.  This story reminded me of my original idea, that every ship in the Navy has a story to tell, and we would do well to listen.

In both cases I have been able to interview about 25% of the ship’s alumni.  I spoke with three of the Terror’s nine sailors and around 23 of the Randolph’s 99 members.  These sailors varied in age from around 90 to around 60, and their jobs were as diverse as their ages.  I talked to a baker, a medic, one of the Randolph's official photographers, a machine shop worker, a boatswain, a couple of pilots, and a couple of electricians.

More selfishly, I got an plethora of information about what magazines they read, and how they find out about the events that they would like to attend or not.  I also will be included in the quarterly newsletter that the Randolph Association circulates to all of their members.  The executive committee of the group explained that they had a bunch of questions about how to track the progress of the movie, and how to stay involved with me and my making the film.  I suggested involving their families to show them how to see our website and how to keep track of our facebook pages.  I also promised them a copy of their whole interview to be delivered to them in the mail by Christmas.  They will have one copy for themselves but they will also be sent a second copy to share with whomever they choose and of course, each DVD has the website information on it.  So all in all, I think I had a pretty successful trip.

Bomb It!

The primary way that I intend to "attack" the job of marketing and distribution is by releasing some of the extra footage that I'm not using directly in the film, online for free.  We are already on facebook, and our website is currently being developed to house all of the free video and blogs that we're planning, in the mean time my vimeo page stores the video content that will eventually be released through our website.

While it isn't time to consider some of the other things that Reiss talks about, we have heard his suggestions and are planning on following his advise to focus on live events and have the film available on as many platforms as is possible.  In tandem with this strategy, we plan on developing merchandise specifically for the different audience profiles we're discovering.

Keywords

1. Navy
2. veteran
3. war story
4. saving private ryan
5. uss randolph
6. uss indianapolis
7. battle in the pacific
8. uss intrepid
9. kamikaze
10. tora! tora! tora!

Out of Position

According to the Hollywood Report, UCF doesn't even rank amongst the top 25 MFAs for film in the country. It would be hard to take exception with the A.F.I. being listed first or U.S.C being listed second or N.Y.U. being listed in the top four.  Those are the schools that people traditionally have gone to for pipeline jobs into the industry.  And that is what their selling points are.  USC tauts a bajillion alumni in the industry, so does UCLA for that matter.  Even schools like F.S.U. promise work on the productions that are being done in Louisiana.  They all have one thing in common the promise of the student being able to find work after getting a post graduate degree from their school.  UCF makes no such claim.  Our focus is on being the first school to really delve into what the new world of digital content is going to look like.  Existentially important sure, but what does it mean for people coming to school?  I think that further than just the hope we are at the forefront of some shift in ideology, UCF teaches us how to be our own boss.  A great many of the classes I've taken are about how to run my own business, not be a cog in someone elses.  And that is reflected in the expectations of my academic life as well.  Only two other programs in the country require their students to create a feature length project upon matriculation and both of those are limited to documentary film making.  Its the boldness of the program that really seems to set us apart in all ways.  We make feature length movies for the same amount of money students at AFI, NYU, and USC spend on their short films, and at the same time we teach students how to work (maybe more appropriately "Think") for themselves.

PMD me.

The PMD that I have already hired for my film is Jessica Southwell.  She promoted a film at the Florida Film Festival that sold out one of it screenings and has in general started to focus her efforts on social networking.  It should also be mentioned that my producer Jason Flynt has a very strong background in this field as well, and has been working with Dr. Mills as the PMD for Wally's Mission on Mars.

My film poses some unique advantages and some pretty heavy disadvantages in terms of promotion and marketing.  These are some of the things that I spoke about with Jessica before hiring her to be my PMD.

Firstly, we know who the core audience of the film will be.  The Randolph Association which is the association of crew alumni that my dad belongs to, are likely to be the film's most important audience.  There are around 400 members of that association.

Second, ultimately Jessica and I will be arranging for screenings around the country at VFW branches and showing the film to small audiences.  If there are available crew members in the area of a screening will go out of our way to get them to show for a question and answer period after the movie.

Third, the budget that we currently have for marketing and distribution is around $2000, however this would get us to our break even point and any money brought in after that would make the movie profitable.

Fourth, our primary focus is going to be finding organizational support for the film as we intend to self-distribute it after completion.  To that end we will likely find as many partnerships as we can with organizations like the VFW and the Randolph Association to get people to our screenings around the country.  We will likely use traditional print advertising for some of this marketing because that is where our audience gets most of its "news".

Five, at some point we might like to add a booking agent, as its something that Jessica feels uncomfortable having completely in her lap.  We will also use an assistant editor to put together content exclusively for the web.

Six, the Randolph Association does have an email list, but as stated previously most of the people on the list do not often check their email.  Many of them get their news through Retired Officer Magazine, or Navy Life.  We will put heavy effort into getting our story into those magazines to keep our audience abreast of the events we will be holding.

Seven, I will be looking for an assistant editor to log footage and create small featurettes for our website.  Some of these clips might be very simple like an interview that we will not use, but some of them might be much more complex.

Eight, our primary focus for release after completion of the film will be television sales.  A theatrical run seems incredibly unlikely, and we will spend most of our effort on television sales agents or VOD possibilities.

Nine, Brian Redban explains that he only recently started making money off of his podcasting empire with Joe Rogan, by selling T-shirts. And I intend to follow suit.  I think that selling tshirts of the Randolph's call signs and the DVDs that we've made might be the best way to get alittle extra money out of our movie.

Ten, though our strategy forgoes most tradition film festivals, we will target several festivals that are not film markets.  We will avoid festivals where the purpose is selling the film, because I do not believe we will have a good chance at being sold, but should it become obvious that this is wrong, we will certainly course correct and attempt to sell the film traditionally.

Eleven, again, we are attempting to make the distribution plan a part of the film's process organically.  That is to say that we will continue to exploit any options we have for distribution as they become available to us, but the only thing that we are counting on is our ability to sell the film ourself.

Twelve, we have currently targeted the beginning of March to come online with much of our web content.  We expect that this wil give us enough time to shoot all the things we need for the film and by that point we will be putting together the feature, meaning we will know what we can use on the web and what we don't need on in the film.

My MFA

Perhaps the most important thing about UCF's MFA is the fact that we own our movies.  That is something that separates us from FSU, UCLA, NYU, UT-Austin, & USC.  Our projects are belong to us in many ways.  They are a piece of our soul, not just an example of the work that we can create artistically.  They are not an example of some dogmatic new system for making movies.  They are the best example of a story that bursts out of us to tell.

I think that is why I have settled on the tagline:

"OWN YOUR MOVIE."

In every way, our movies are who we are.  By the end of our time at UCF we have found the stories that we need to tell, and each of the films that have been made in the program is an example of this.

The Cost

Before we get into the how of making a guerilla marketing campaign work, we need to discuss the how of how much will it cost?  Numerous sources have suggested that without the appropriate funding, any marketing plan is in trouble from the start.  If we might agree that something MUST be spent, then the next logical question is, how much?  The simple answer here is more than anyone is comfortable with.  Percentage of a movie's budget is likely to be at best 50% but more like 65% according to Captain David.  But there might be a way that's less painful.  This new idea, is actually a very old idea.  

Uncle Milty's playhouse was presented by Texaco.  The advertising was interwoven with the show itself.  For the first part of the 20th century this was how television shows and radio programs paid for themselves.  Perhaps the term "soap opera" rings a bell?  Well the first serialized radio programs directed at women, were paid for by soap makers.  This sort of "in-program" advertising might work for a big budget advertiser and show that already has its viewers but what is the connect with microbudget filmmaking?

The answer at least in part comes from another less than obvious place....Dr. Dre...or more appropriately his headphones.  In 2008, the company was lucky/smart enough to get a couple of interviews with Lebron James at the practice facility wearing a shiny new pair of the $300 headphones. Sales jumped 70% after the implicit endorsement.  In the London Olympics, this strategy went even more crazy.  Before every match Michael Phelps could be seen stretching with the product on, or Usain Bolt would go through his warmups, to whatever soundtrack might have been coming through those very high end speakers.  Beats gave away about three hundred pairs of headphones to athletes, even at full retail value that would have been about $90,000 total investment for a return of 120% spike in sales. The value of NBC ad time during the olympics was more than a $1,000,000 per minute.  Sounds like a deal.

The take away.  Beats knew who would be watching the Olympics, which is their key demographic and they found a way to get to those people without the cost and ineffectiveness of an explicit advertisement.  They essentially did what McDonald's has been doing for years, at a fraction of the cost.  A celebrity endorsement without the grossness of a direct pitch.  To put it in other terms, if Michael Jordan were to have eaten a Big Mac on the sidelines of the original Dream Team's practice time, that would be the equivalent of the Beats marketing experiment this summer.