The Movie Trailer as the New Model of Marketing

Movie trailers are a perfect example of content that goes viral and in fact, movie marketers have learned that they don’t need to spend as much money on advertising now because they can put their trailers out there and the consumers become the distribution vehicle. 

The Internet is the distribution vehicle.  YouTube is the distribution vehicle, as opposed to having to push it out through television, so more and more marketers are going to have to connect with that type of marketing.

Television programming is the next wave of viral media that we’re going to see where more and more TV ads are going to be promotional ads for TV programs and for all types of video content. Online video content is going to become very short-form snippets that consumers can capture, that they can share easily on Facebook or through Twitter, where they can participate in the way that they can with Instagram. 

They’re going to want to be able to mash up videos and push them out there.  They’re going to want to control that content as opposed to having it pushed to them.  So I think the movie, the theatrical movie business and the video business is an early indication of the way much of marketing will grow where more and more of it will be viral and less and less of it will be paid and that’s a challenge to media companies that are dependent on paid advertising.  They’re going to have to figure out new models. 

Those models I think will focus around sponsorships.  Marketers will go back to the early 50s when they sponsored a particular television program.  Now they’ll sponsor that program across all its platforms, not just insert a commercial on its first airing on television, but be a part of it, help market it, help socialize it across all the platforms for a long period of time.  

In Their Own Words is recorded in Big Think’s studio.

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