Social media has been growing rapidly and it’s starting to take over the movie industry. Movie companies have been using social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat to help promote their upcoming movies or even releases of digital copies of their films.
Twitter has played a huge role in the development of social media marketing for movie companies. For example the huge blockbuster last winter Star Wars: The Force Awakens took over social media completely during the build up to the premiere and even afterwards.
When The Walt Disney Company first released the official trailer for the film. Fans had the chance to buy tickets for the film once the trailer aired, this led to many movie websites crashing from the amount of overload of demand. Once the websites crashed social media became a place for fans to display outrage and opinions on the trailer.
This year we had the opportunity to experience Fox’s Live Production of the Musical and also famous movie from the 1970’s Grease. The show had been promoting its brand through out the social media outlets through the cast and several teaser trailers.
The movie became a instant hit and fans were all over twitter expressing their opinions on the show. Original cast member Olivia Newton-John tweeted.
Julianne Hough, Didi, Barry & the cast! So excited to watch GREASE LIVE (@gogrease) tonight!! I know you will be... https://t.co/CEj4SqnqSi
— Olivia Newton-John (@olivianj) February 1, 2016
On instagram Julianne Hough of the movie Grease: Live helped promote the show by doing a countdown. Grease: Live had a very popular cast with Vanessa Hudgens, Carly Rae Jepsen, Julianne Hough, Carlos Pena, Keke Palmer and more. There is no question the powerhouse cast contributed to the success of marketing for the movie.
Facebook contributes to the success of marketing movies by the ability for people to see what their friends or pages they're following are posting. Facebook is a structured social media outlet that helps each of us control what we intend to see. Grease: Live had shared many videos on their page to promote the film as well as pictures with updates on the film.
Star Wars had done the same thing with posting videos as well as updates consistently on their Facebook page. The one downside of all social media apps is that fans started to spoil the movie for others who didn't see it at the time. The spoilers got out of control to the point when anyone couldn't look at any comments on a post without being scared to view a spoiler.