Social Media for the Movie Industry, A 20th Century Fox Strategy

You may be familiar with a new film that’s coming out by 20th Century Fox Called “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”  Here is a brief synopsis of the film:

“In the film, a renowned scientist (Jennifer Connelly) finds herself face to face with an alien called Klaatu (Keanu Reeves), who has traveled across the universe to warn of an impending global crisis. She quickly discovers the deadly ramifications of Klaatu’s claim that he is “a friend to the Earth.” Now she must find a way to convince the entity who was sent to destroy us that mankind is worth saving – but it may be too late.”

Now I know it’s probably a tough challenge but try to think of a few social media ideas just from hearing the synopsis of the story.  Were you able to come up with any?

20th Century Fox created an online platform that asks users to think about the following:

If earth were under attack what would you save?  Users are then given the opportunity to input 12 “vital” items that they would save.  But wait, it gets better.  The site also displays real time stats from around the world showing what things other people consider “vital.”

Visitors to the site are then given the ability to vote certain items up as being more “vital” than others (think of digg).  In fact, you can even drill down by geographic category or topic.  For example if you want to see what people in the USA consider “vital” vs what people in Australia consider “vital,” you can.

To top things off the site also includes a social media sharing feature which allows users to share their “vital” lists on popular social networks such as myspace and facebook.

Here are a few things that I like about the site/strategy:

• It’s clever and creative, the concept is unique and makes people think

• The fact that users can vote on other peoples’ items make the whole process interactive

• I love the live stats feature, it makes people feel like they are part of a global community

• The ability for people to drill down by location or category is an “curiosity” feature that will get people to spend more time on the site.

• The ability to share lists across social networks is crucial, this will help the application spread as users will see their friends or connections using it.

Here are a few things I don’t like about the site/strategy

• I would have included a widget that allows users to post the list to their blogs

• I would have also included a twitter option which allows users to “tweet” their lists out to other people

• I would promote the most active users or the users that have submitted the most popular items on the homepage

• The site can slow down your comp or your internet browsing ability since it keeps pulling in live stats, the site is very dynamic.

• Users who visit the site may not completely understand it’s purpose or what they are supposed to do, I know because I was contacted by the company to write about it 🙂

• I don’t see much blogger outreach going on.  The email I received to write about this was impersonal and generic.  I usually ignore such pitches, the only reason I decided to write about this one is because I thought it was interesting.

• I see quite a bit of twitter conversation going on regarding the new movie but I don’t see any type of twitter presence by 20th Century Fox to promote the film, who is responding to all these users having conversations about the film?

What do you think of the social media/online marketing strategy for the new film?  What do you like or don’t like?

thanks for reading!