Update: Still eating the 6 pies that were left here.

Just before the holiday, I attended a special screening of The Fighter.  There were fantastic performances by Melissa Leo, Christian Bale, who probably lost 50 lbs for this role, Amy Adams and Mark Wahlberg as The Fighter, Mickey Ward.  Well worth your time to see.

Why write about it here?

Because the producer and star, Mark Wahlberg, the cast, and director, joined us for a Question and Answer session where a very gracious Mr. Wahlberg made this statement, “It took YEARS to put this film together.  YEARS of hard work…  Would have been easier to build the Brooklyn Bridge.”

A multi millionaire said it was difficult?  Half the mainly entertainment industry audience probably thought; ‘Just pay for the film yourself…  Humph.’

So, why not?

Without a marketing plan, and without a distribution partner, your film has a great chance of not realizing a profit.  After the story, marketing and distribution are the most important areas.

An example?  Last year over 3,000 films were submitted to the Sundance Film Festival, and based on industry sources, less than 10 received distribution and marketing packages.   That is less than 1% of all submissions.  Many wonderful stories and millions of dollars invested.  What happens to a fantastic film without that marketing and distribution?  You will likely not see it, unless the producers are lucky enough to find a deal with Netflix or On Demand.  Even with that, they need marketing.

What business would build a product without marketing and distribution?  Most companies never would…yet; it is done this way in many independent films.

The producers knew there would be very little chance this film would be seen by enough people to earn capital without marketing and distribution.  A Chief Marketing Officer/Producer (the CMP) would take care of market testing, finding the audience, the target market, and find the likely distribution companies for your film.  This is crucial to the success of your film.  Mr. Wahlberg wouldn’t risk his own funds…why risk your investors?

There are many steps a successful filmmaker takes, but minimally you need to:

Locate the target audience via web/social media through a variety of tools, target the best distribution partners, domestic and foreign sales agents.  Listen to the audience and use the feedback to tailor your marketing pitch.  Interact and build your fan base via interest groups, forums, fan pages, blogs, and other distribution channels.

A business plan must be completed with your film.  This is how to do it successfully. This is how it was done with The Fighter, and this is what we do.

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RipMedia is hired as a marketing officer in film and business projects.  Our offices are in Hollywood, Ca.  Take our litmus test to see if you are on the right path: www.ripmediagroup.com/filmbrief.

Maury Rogow

Posted by mrogow. News and Events.

• Keep the message clear and “non-spammy”. No one wants to get emails with a lot of junk in them.
• Compelling subject line. Keep it less than 55 characters.
• Make sure your mails are easily readable. It takes only a second for a reader to mark your mail as a spam.
• Make a call to action. Keep the message short to build interest and keep attention of the reader.
• Be reachable- provide all the different ways your subscriber can contact you.
• Enforce a privacy policy and let your clients know that you practice it
• Avoid Attachments.

Also consider how you design your message.

• Don’t use any flash, JavaScript, music, or video. A heavy Landing page is a NO-NO.
• Use headers, bullets, and dividers to make the email easier to scan and read.
• Use tables to arrange your content.
• A best practice for designs is to your email template to 500-600 pixels wide.

www.ripmediagroup.com, kyee@ripmediagroup.com

Only weeks after an interview with Maury Rogow and Kelly Yee of RipMedia (and getting lauded with praise), Mr. Hayzlett is leaving his position as Chief Marketing Officer of Kodak with $600 Million a year in increased revenues, and a highly-acclaimed book – The Mirror Test.

Was it that, or the RipMedia contact that made him so popular and confident?  Perhaps no one can ever be sure, but we certainly look forward to seeing more great things from a friend of RipMedia.

www.ripmediagroup.com



Written by Chase Holtman

By Chase Holtman

Lately, we’ve been attempting to experiment with some web-based apps for automating certain processes within our Twitter account.  We decided to give Tweet Spinner a try, but we’ve run into technical issues right out of the gate.  We’ve contacted their support team, and should hopefully have our little test up and running soon.  If you have any input based on your experience with Twitter automation, please drop us a tweet!  I’ll keep you updated in the days to come, so stay tuned…

www.ripmediagroup.com

By Chase Holtman

What’s ghost Twittering, you ask? I’d go into it at length, but my staff writers are striking at the moment. Suffice to say that a ghost Twitterer is social media’s equivalent of a ghost writer. The phenomenon has become very common among celebrities wishing to keep their fans up to date on their daily goings-on.

In his New York Times article When Stars Twitter, a Ghost May Be Lurking, Noam Cohen writes: “…Twitter…has become an important marketing tool for celebrities, politicians and businesses, promising a level of intimacy never before approached online, as well as giving the public the ability to speak directly to people and institutions once comfortably on a pedestal.” Arguably, outsourcing one’s tweets perpetuates the aforementioned “pedestal” in the sense that their followers are not actually conversing with the person in question. On the other hand, it’s possible for such an arrangement to effectively connect public figures with the masses, even if it’s done in an indirect manner.

Joseph Nejman is a former consultant to Britney Spears, and he once spoke about the stigma which often surrounds ghost Twittering, saying: “It’s O.K. to tweet for a brand, but not O.K. for a celebrity. But the truth is, they are a brand. What they are to the public is not always what they are behind the curtain.” For the most part, what it comes down to is this: a lot depends on the intended purpose and/or function of the Twitter account. If it’s used as a sort of PR effort, then the focus isn’t so much on providing highly intimate communication between a celebrity and the public; it’s more about distributing information, promotional updates, and the like.

Despite the delicate nature of writing in the first-person on the behalf of someone else, Transparency goes a long way. It helps to include a disclaimer in the bio section of the profile, such as the one on Bob Layton’s Twitter page. In our case, RIP Media Group manages Mr. Layton’s profile much of the time, but we’re in constant communication with him. He’s actually very much involved; most of the content that gets tweeted has come directly from Layton in one manner or another. In addition, we have a system in place for forwarding requests and questions to (and from) Bob when they come in on Twitter. To reiterate, transparency really is the key. In my experience with Layton’s account, people tend to appreciate the honesty. They’re generally very understanding about the fact that Bob has a lot of projects going on at any given time, and that he has enlisted our help for good reason.

At this point, I’d like to leave you with a tweet that I stumbled across recently, written by Bob Kieffer: “Picturing Larry King (@kingsthings) actually posting his own tweets is like me picturing my [grandma] skateboarding. It just doesn’t fit.” Whether or not Larry King utilizes ghost Twittering, his account seems to be faring pretty well regardless.

http://www.ripmediagroup.com/

By Mandy Rodgers

With the recent release of Kodak’s newest product, the Kodak PlaySport and the brand’s latest feature on Donald Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice,” RipMedia Group’s Maury Rogow wanted to find out more about the company’s latest brand messaging and social media efforts. Jeffrey Hayzlett, chief marketing officer and vice president of Eastman Kodak Company, offered RipMedia some insight into its social media campaigns and advice for burgeoning businesses trying to utilize all that the web has to offer.

This season, Kodak was featured on the “Celebrity Apprentice” for the third year in a row (the first sponsor to become a “three-peater”), reminding people about a popular brand message—the Kodak moment.

“Most people grew up with Kodak moments and knowing it, and there’s a whole new generation that are now doing photography and the capturing of moments digitally, so they don’t know about sharing those moments,” Hayzlett said. “And the key thing about Kodak moments is, they’re not Kodak moments until you share them.”

“Celebrity Apprentice” brought this idea back to the forefront of Kodak with the recent episode giving the celebrity contestants the task of developing an initiative for the brand.

“We’ve had a good experience from the branded entertainment that we’ve conducted with (the show), and it’s increased our sales every time we’ve done it because what it does is it takes the greatest things of the product and the attributes of the product and works that into one of the tasks, and it becomes entertainment which is better than doing advertising,” Hayzlett revealed.

Kodak began this idea of branded entertainment three years ago and will continue advertising, marketing and reaching out to consumers in these ways, and as the chief marketing officer, Hayzlett believes in continuing to create tension within the company.

“What I mean by that is that you continually challenge the status quo,” he explained. “Not that the status quo is a bad thing, because it could very well be a great thing, but what you want to do is question it and look at it through fresh eyes, and that’s indeed what my job has been.”

Hayzlett was brought into the company about a year after Kodak began a marketing and advertising transformation that was staying on track with the growing area of social media and its influence. He refers to himself as the “chief cheerleader” and began exploring which social mediums would help catapult Kodak into another realm of marketing. Twitter is one of the main ones he focuses on still.

“Twitter’s all about sharing, so when you look at it from a brand alignment, it’s very much in line with what Kodak moments is and what Kodak’s about,” he said. “What we do is use emotional technologies to help people make manage and move images and information.”

To help implement these strategies and stay on the cutting edge of all things social media, Kodak has enlisted the help of a chief blogger and a chief listener, both of which interact with customers and continue the personalization of the brand that Kodak wants to be known for.

“For us, thank goodness, a lot of (comments) are mostly positive, but you have some that are negative,” he commented. “You can respond back to that person and get that person over to customer service faster and can take care of that person.”

Though to the consumer, it seems that Kodak is mostly focused on customer-based business, Hayzlett said Kodak’s business-to-business outreach makes up 70 percent of the company’s revenue.

For any businesses that are looking to expand social media reach, Kodak offers a free guide, available on its website at www.Kodak.com. He believes that smaller businesses might actually have an easier time with incorporating these methods as well.

“(Smaller businesses) don’t have the encumbrances and processes and systems that big businesses sometimes have,” he said. “In a big business, everybody wants to run things by the attorneys and HR and is it appropriate or not appropriate, and I’m not saying that’s the wrong thing to do, but you just have to come up with ways to do it faster or simpler or at least to put policies and procedures.”

Hayzlett recommends some free tools like Tweetdeck or Seismic to monitor these conversations that people could be having about your brand. And he doesn’t believe that the number of complaints or customer service calls has decreased, but customer satisfaction as a whole has increased since beginning these communication methods.

“Quite frankly, I would rather see the numbers go up in terms of the number of complaints we handle, because that means we’re getting back to satisfied customers,” he explained. “I want to hear about those conversations, because they’re going to go on with you or without you.”

Upon hearing his ideas in this regard, he often receives the question about his return on investment, and his response is simple: “Tell me what your return on ignoring it is.”

“If you’re improving customer satisfaction, it’s not one does one thing and then get the other, it’s all of those things combined…and social media and these kinds of things have become necessary tools for you, just like a fax machine, e-mail account or telephone number.”

Social media even has helped Kodak launch products, including this year’s Kodak PlaySport camera, which did not have a catchy name at the start of its campaign. Hayzlett was not thrilled with the idea of naming the invention with numbers and letters like previous products, so the company began a naming contest via Twitter. Tons of ideas came pouring in and the winners were given the product and a trip for the family to Las Vegas, where it was revealed at a convention.

“(It’s a) great example of using the power of social media and the power of the crowd to source something that became very valuable for us,” Hayzlett said.

Looking to the future, Hayzlett’s book, “The Mirror Test,” is debuting in May complete with hints and tips on keeping a business viable—if you’re company is breathing, it’s breath should be seen on a mirror, a la The Mirror Test. One test he revealed is shortening your company’s pitch down to the elevator pitch or the 118. “That is, eight seconds is the average attention span of an adult, and 110 seconds is the average time of an elevator ride, so you have eight seconds to hook me and 110 seconds to sell me and people need to get their messages down to that pitch,” he said. “I think that’s the biggest advice I can give to most businesses is to know exactly who they’re serving, why they’re doing it and what their message is.”

For an audio version of the interview, please visit our website at www.ripmediagroup.com.

Conan O’Brien used to host “The Tonight Show,” before NBC decided that its awesome and well-thought out (who actually believed this was going to work?) idea to run a Jay Leno-hosted show Monday through Friday during the 10 p.m. timeslot was a bad move. After much publicity-laden negotiations and battles, O’Brien left the network, giving Leno back his old home. The move angered fans and even people who had never watched O’Brien in their lives. Why? Because O’Brien became the more likable of the two, and Leno seemed to be taking back something that had been promised to O’Brien for years.

Facebook pages were created and logos were designed titled “I’m with Coco,” the playful nickname O’Brien’s diehard fans use for the comedian. Everyone became a fan and quickly picked sides. You’re either Team Conan or Team Leno!

Though it seemed NBC was giving O’Brien the proverbial “short end of the stick,” this will-go-down-in-history television flip-flop was probably the best thing that could have ever happened to the red-headed funnyman.

After the dust had settled just a smidge on the NBC decision and O’Brien final curtain came for “The Tonight Show,” he created a Twitter account that grew in popularity by the hour. Only tweeting one quip a day, everyone waited with baited breath for what O’Brien was thinking each 24-hour interval, and spin-off accounts were created featuring things he mentioned on the site.

One fateful day, O’Brien, who had decided to not follow anyone, found a random girl to name as his first and only followee. The Twitter account @LovelyButton (Sarah Killen) amassed an obscene amount of followers and fans instantly, and O’Brien’s witty comments about the girl and her love of gummy bears endeared him to the public even more.

He tweeted: “Sarah likes Twizzlers and craves cantaloupe. I like Raisinets, but melon feels creepy in my mouth. Twitter pals 4 eva! ”

Sorry, Leno, but I don’t think your viral influence even compares to O’Brien’s.

When he announced his tour dates via Twitter, the show tickets sold quickly. The offers continued to roll in for O’Brien too, including an opportunity he passed on to host the Tony Awards.

On Monday, April 12, O’Brien finally announced his new home for a late-night talk show would be the cable station TBS. George Lopez already has a fairly successful gig that he will now follow.

“The good news: I will be doing a show on TBS starting in November! The bad news: I’ll be playing Rudy on the all new Cosby Show,” his Twitter read.

The web and all social media went abuzz for the news as many had predicted he would pick a timeslot on Fox. “In three months I’ve gone from network television to Twitter to performing live in theaters, and now I’m headed to basic cable,” O’Brien joked in a statement. “My plan is working perfectly.”

Now, he has launched a blog at http://teamcoco.com to continue dominating the web and keeping his fans satisfied.

Only time will tell how he fares on the cable side of late-night, but it does read as a well-oiled publicity machine. His ratings floundered while he led “The Tonight Show,” giving David Letterman a boost on CBS even during his infidelity accusations. He has the show taken away, essentially, only to come out with a loyal fanbase and anticipated new show through his well timed and well executed social media blips.

Leno on the other hand is making headlines for losing his long-time band director, Kevin Eubanks. The void was filled though with “American Idol” band leader Ricky Minor. And his name has now become a verb as Lopez expressed this regarding the change up of times for O’Brien’s new show: “I’m not getting Lenoed. I welcome Conan. I think moving to midnight – hey going to work an hour later it’s a dream come true, and the pay’s the same.”

www.ripmediagroup.com

Netflix Application Available on iPad

by: Mandy Rodgers

When the iPad was first unveiled, the focus was not on movie watching as much as book reading and surfing the internet, but inevitably, thoughts went to the possibilities of watching video on the large-sized iPhone.

In January, Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, discussed the invention, calling it a cross between a laptop computer and a smart phone, and though he eventually played some YouTube videos on it at a San Francisco unveiling, the purpose of the contraption seemed to fall more on the Kindle-rival side of things. But all of that seems to be rapidly changing.

At the end of last month, Netflix revealed that it would allow streaming video on the iPad, a huge leap and bound in what the video aspect of the new gadget could lead to. The Netflix app is even free for those who purchased the product, so if you’re a Netflix subscriber, you get all of the “instant watch” options anywhere you take the iPad. The app will also hold your spot in a movie if you stop watching in the middle and allow users to manage their Netflix movie queue.

Reportedly, the iPad has a 12-hour window of continuous viewing time for things like film and video. Those who previewed and examined the device before it hit the market earlier this month seemed to enjoy its offerings, for what it is.

“If you’re mainly a Web surfer, note-taker, social-networker and emailer, and a consumer of photos, videos, books, periodicals and music—this could be for you,” wrote Wall Street Journal’s Walter Mossberg. “If you need to create or edit giant spreadsheets or long documents, or you have elaborate systems for organizing email, or need to perform video chats, the iPad isn’t going to cut it as your go-to device.”

Another technological guru in the writing world, David Pogue of the New York Times wrote: “And the techies are right about another thing: the iPad is not a laptop. It’s not nearly as good for creating stuff. On the other hand, it’s infinitely more convenient for consuming it—books, music, video, photos, Web, e-mail and so on. For most people, manipulating these digital materials directly by touching them is a completely new experience—and a deeply satisfying one.”

So what does this new way to view film mean for the era-defining medium? The more easy access given to movies, the more likely it is that the art of going to the cinema will become an increasingly rare occurrence.

On the other hand, the implementation of 3-D elements in film could keep sending audiences out to the theaters, as well as the larger-than-life IMAX screens that helped popularize films like “Avatar.” (Although, let’s be honest, “Avatar” was probably going to do just fine on its own.)

Now, filmmakers and producers are scrambling to keep up with technology and even creating 3-D versions of films post-production—something that many a film buff have qualms with and even everyday viewers are noticing the problems. (“Clash of the Titans” is an example of this after-the-fact rendering that many felt a waste of money and eye usage.) And though popular movie scholars dismiss 3-D altogether (Roger Ebert has continued to voice his distaste for the trend, calling it a “juvenile abomination” in one tweet), with the popularity of Netflix and things like the iPad where film viewing is literally at ones fingertips, it makes sense that new elements need to be incorporated to perhaps entice families into the theater seats.

When I was studying film at the University of Georgia, famed film theorist David Bordwell made a visit and had this to say in October of 2007: “The number of admissions today are falling. So what’s the answer? Well, 3-D is coming back big and showing regular theatrical releases in IMAX format. James Cameron is convinced that 3-D is the future of cinema.”

Hmmm…maybe this Cameron person is onto something.

Nowadays, it has become clear that there are many advantages in taking the web-TV approach when attempting to get a new project off the ground.  These include lower costs all around, flexible episode lengths, and opportunities for more effective exposure.

Mashable blogger Melissa Jun Rowley has written about the newly-popular action web series The Bannen Way, which exemplifies the ways in which some TV is being created differently.  In her article entitled The Future of TV?: The Story Behind Crackle’s “The Bannen Way” Rowley writes: “Since its January 6 premiere, [the show] has raked in more than 13 million streams, making it the fastest growing property on Sony’s Crackle digital video network.” In an interview, executive producer and star Mark Gantt describes the origins of the project: “We decided to make webisodes, where potentially millions of people could see our work versus the 40 or so people who would see our work at a film festival.”

Some of the decision-makers at Sony have talked about developing the show into a traditional TV series.  Gantt has talked about some of his ideas for supplementing the series, saying, “If it’s up to us, we’ll have a web presence to accompany the TV show.  We want to do this new kind of trans media and cross storytelling with the web, iPhone apps, the whole nine yards.”

In other news, ABC and CBS have both announced plans to offer streaming versions of some of their TV shows on the Apple iPad.  In a post titled ABC and CBS to Stream Shows on iPad for Free, Mashable blogger Samuel Axon has pointed out one of the technical road blocks which seemed to stand in the way at first:  “Critics initially argued that the iPad would not be ideal for watching video online because most video websites use Adobe’s Flash technology, which the iPad doesn’t play nice with.”  In spite of this, many video-streaming sites have already developed versions of their services which use iPad-compatible HTML5 technology.  Hulu and Netflix are among those reported to be working on iPad-friendly video-streaming solutions.

All of this seems to illustrate the fact that television as we know it is being turned on its head – and suffice to say that the changes taking place are long-overdue and largely for the better.

www.ripmediagroup.com

The end of an era is upon us as the TV series “At the Movies” closes its balcony for the last time. What began with a simple idea of Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel in the ‘80s as feuding Chicago critics, became a renowned staple of film criticism and entertainment and spawned many a pop culture phrase and lexicon.

The statement from the studio is this: “After 24 seasons with us in national syndication, the highly regarded movie review show ‘At the Movies’ (formerly known as ‘Siskel & Ebert’ and ‘Ebert & Roeper’) will air its last original broadcast the weekend of August 14, 2010.

This was a very difficult decision, especially considering the program’s rich history and iconic status within the entertainment industry, but from a business perspective it became clear this weekly, half-hour, broadcast syndication series was no longer sustainable. We gratefully acknowledge the outstanding work of the program’s current co-hosts A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips and top-notch production staff, and it is with heartfelt appreciation that we extend very special thanks to the two brilliant, visionary and incomparable critics that started it all, Roger Ebert and the late Gene Siskel.”

With that statement, fans blogged and Ebert tweeted opinions of the future of TV programs focused on film criticism and the like. After Siskel’s death in 1999, Ebert continued the show with Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times, like Ebert. Both left the series in 2008, leaving its future unsure as two different pairs of critics tried to fill the humongous shoes of their predecessors.

Now, the internet gives everyone a chance to voice their happiness or displeasure with a film choice, and rank, rate, and tomato each new release to their heart’s content giving other readers and users a chance to instantly see if a film is receiving widespread love or dissatisfaction.

Coining the phrase “two thumbs up,” the legendary “At the Movies” has left a lasting impression on many audiences and film-goers, and with Ebert’s failing health, the series was never going to possess the same spark it had at the beginning.

Taking to Twitter, Ebert is stirring up support for the medium by announcing his plans with his wife to launch a new series in the same vein.

“We believe a market still exists for a weekly show where a couple of critics review new movies,” wrote the Sun-Times critic.

Due to his extensive surgery for thyroid cancer that left him unable to speak, Ebert would not be in front of the camera but would serve as a producer. And he revealed that the “thumbs” rating scale would return—a staple to any film critic’s vocabulary.