Professional Motion Picture Production and Distribution NEWS
Breakaway Media Author M.J. Hawk Builds Demand for New Thriller Novel with Social Media Strategy from Feature Film Campaign
By Staff
posted Aug 22, 2010, 09:49
To market her latest thriller The Shop, author M.J. Hawk took an innovative page out of Paramount Pictures� social media marketing playbook used to create demand for the blockbuster feature film, Paranormal Activity.
To market her latest thriller The Shop, author M.J. Hawk took an innovative
page out of Paramount Pictures’ social media marketing playbook used to
create demand for the blockbuster feature film, Paranormal Activity.
(Tucson, AZ) Author M.J. Hawk’s political thriller novel, The Shop, follows
her seven novels published by major New York publishers, but with a down economy
and the publishing industry in a maelstrom of change, she isn’t taking
any chances. Paramount vaulted the low-budget film Paranormal Activity into
phenomenal success with a social networking strategy using social media web
service Eventful.com’s “Demand it!” button. Hawk bets that
using Eventful’s service can build an inherent readership for the novel
in a similar way.
M.J. Hawk is the award-winning author of seven novels published by Penguin/Signet,
Kensington Publishing Corp. and Dorchester Publishing. Breakaway Media, a Tucson-based
Internet publishing, marketing and communications company, worked with Hawk
to craft the strategy and design the website, www.whokilledbriennecross.com.
“We built an aura of reality around an important character from the The
Shop,” said Glenn McCreedy, of Breakaway Media. “The site showcases
the life and violent death of country and pop star Brienne Cross and the final
four contestants on her reality show, through features, news articles, and blog
posts. Our aim is to engage visitors to interact with the site and one another,
and to try and answer the question 'Who killed Brienne Cross?'”
Site visitors who want to get the answer once and for all can press the “Demand
it!” button on the website to demand the rest of the story in novel form.
When the “Demands” reach 5000, they will be the first to receive
the answer to the mystery, “who killed Brienne Cross?” The “Demand
it” button takes website visitors to the Eventful platform where they
can interact with each other as well as access other events features. Breakaway
Media provides supporting integration with Facebook and twitter.
Hawk based the strategy on Paramount’s successful track record with Eventful
and the “Demand It” button. Paranormal Activity, made for $11,000,
was bought by Paramount which originally wanted to remake the film with a big
budget and name actors. But the web marketing executive said, “Let me
see what I can do with this.” Paramount told fans that if they wanted
a national release for “Paranormal Activity,” they needed 100 demands
in each town to get the film’s distribution there. Using Eventful’s
service along with test screenings to build word of mouth, they pursed their
goal of a total 1 million demands, eventually reaching more than 1.5 million
demands.
Hawk and Breakaway Media embedded clues to the murders in the website’s
content and story threads offering possible explanations that play out in real
time. At www.whokilledbriennecross.com, site visitors can be drawn into the
world of a fictional murder victim and participate in a scavenger hunt for clues
in the site’s content by looking for “cluecons”, then vote
weekly on who killed Brienne Cross.
“I want people to enjoy the website and have fun with the story. Once
it catches their interest, they can press the 'Demand it!' button and we’ll
let them know when they’ve helped get the book to publication,”
said Hawk. “And really, how often do readers have a direct ability to
affect what book a publisher will pick up?”
Resources:
http://www.whokilledbriennecross.com
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