Our Marketing Work

For marketing the film, we primarily focused our attention on artists and fans of art, with some attention on people from Philadelphia. The film dealt with mostly adult themes so the target audience was 18+, however we leant more towards the older crowd. As for the group members roles, we never established anything concrete. We shared all responsibilities. If something had to be done, whoever was available was the one to do it. This allowed flexibility and worked best for us and our busy schedules.

We primarily attempted to execute our marketing strategy when the festival drew closer and within the neighborhood of the 1st screening of our film, which resulted within a 2 week span to get the word out and advertise for our film. After Mike was able to immediately get into touch with the producer, Jeremy, we were given a few hundred postcards (including stickers with the dates and times of screenings for the festival) and about a dozen posters. The posters were put up on UCF campus, the communication and art buildings. A few postcards were put there as well. The majority of those postcards were passed out during Winter Park Sidewalk Art Festival. The art festival took place March 20-22. On the 20th, Andrew Hernandez and Michael Chaney both walked around for about two hours, pitching the film and passing out the postcards. The next day, Andrew went back with a friend, who has had experience with such things due to being in a band, and they passed out more postcards. The second day was on a Saturday, so there was a much larger gathering thus many more postcards were passed out. With a whole day of approaching people, Andrew found the second day to come easier and the pitch was much more refined.

As for the online angle, Andrew created a Facebook event. With all three team members as administrators of the event, they invited all their friends. However, with no funding, it was impossible to advertise outside of their friends and the result was only 12 confirmed guests, none of which showed. Andrew created a gmail account for the group. Darryl then compiled a list of places that may be interested in the movie. This included faculty and staff of the art departments from UCF, USF, UF, Rollins College, Crealde School of Art, and Stetson University. He had volunteered for the festival last year and noticed people traveling from Tampa and Gainesville to attend the festival. So, when compiling his list of local schools, he expanded his search to those areas as well. Darryl sent out the emails to those on the list, including The Philadelphia Social Club of South Florida. An immediate response from Wallace Wilson of USF said he would distribute the email to 500 faculty, staff, students and friends. Carol Weiss-Singer, founder and co-president of the Philadelphia Social Club responded as well. She said the movie would definitely be an interest for the 400 members but Winter Park was too far for most of the members within the organization. But she hoped the film would eventually be shown in the Palm Beach County area. Darryl also contacted local art galleries and museums to promote the film. He was given permission to place posters in the Orlando Museum of Art and the Menello Museum of Folk Arts, but only in their break rooms. Michael was able deliver flyers and posters the next day.

Michael was also able to talk to one of his teachers and she offered her students extra credit if they went to the festival and saw a movie, including ours. He was going to pitch the movie to the class but was unable to due to no time left after class.

None of the team members could attend the first screening but all three made it to the last. We all arrived about 2 hours before showtime and handed out remaining postcards and the last poster. We approached just about everyone who walked by. If people were just walking by, we tried to convince them to see the movie. If they were there to see a movie, but not sure which one, we advised ours. And if they were going to see another, we tried to get them to see ours instead. By that, we were able to get an extra 8 or 9 people in our screening. The result of focusing on a specific audience and crowd for the marketing of our film led to both of our screenings selling around 100 tickets each.