Marketing

From the start, our team knew that marketing was going to be difficult. The audience typically associated with a film like Lovely, Still is predominantly made up of senior citizens. A strong majority of seniors have become laggards in regards to technology and do not use the internet, so the task of marketing through Twitter, blogs, and Facebook were strictly reserved to target those in the film community, student organizations at the University of Central Florida, and friends. Within the first week of viewing the film we set up a blog, Twitter, and Facebook Fan Page. We established a marketing plan outlining the upcoming months’ marketing goals. Input from the filmmaker Nik Fackler was desperately sought, however two weeks passed without a single response. The social network pages were updated twice a week and packed with exciting posts about the film. Posters, interviews with the cast, critic reviews, and various other links played a vital role in the quality of our posts. Each of the web pages was cross-promoted through each other. Luckily our team had access to the student organization database at UCF and used it to our advantage to send blast emails, linking recipients to out content. The response wasn’t as great as initially thought, but in regards to the Enzian Theatre’s capacity, the number of interested individuals wasn’t bad. Our team kept the social network content active and up-to-date and continued to send email reminders using the student organization database until the premiere of the film.

An entire month passed without a word from our filmmaker. A few weeks before the premiere we were contacted by a very enthusiastic producer named, Dana Altman. He wanted to set up a conference call with us and the director, Nik Fackler. The date and time for the call was set, but when the arranged date came, we heard nothing. Once again we were back to square one, without any approval, press kit, or promotional material from the Lovely, Still crew. We took it upon ourselves to design a flyer to hand out in the winter park area, grocery stores in the day time, Sunday matinee movies, craft stores, early-bird hours at restaurants…places the elderly generally hang out. Using Photoshop we designed a flyer using an image of the films poster we found online. The free SGA print lab allows up to twenty sheets per day, so our team definitely used it to our advantage. Using Google, we searched for local retirement homes and senior centers in the Central Florida area. We knew from the very beginning that our main target audience was the elderly, so emails entailing the synopsis, starring actors, location, and show time of the films premiere were sent to the senior centers we were able to get contact information from.

The social network traffic started to decline, which was expected. Nevertheless, we created a Facebook event for the films premiere and blasted it throughout our trinity of social media sites. We had twenty people RSVP to the event and the Enzian holds close to two-hundred guests; we started to worry. The Thursday, Friday, and Saturday before Lovely, Still’s Sunday evening premiere was crunch time. We decided to attach Starburst candies to each of the flyers we passed out. It worked! To our surprise, when candy or some other object is attached to a flyer, people are more inclined to actually read it. Throughout the days leading up to the premiere we canvassed Winter Park (including the Winter Park Village) with flyers and assorted Starburst candies. We knew reaching out to the elderly and promoting the fact the show time was early on a Sunday evening was our only chance for packing the house…and it did! The film started at 6:30pm and by 5:30pm there was a line wrapping around the building. To test our marketing strategies we asked some of the people in line how they heard about the film. Some stated that they received one of the flyers while visiting the Winter Park Village others simply read the synopsis of the film in the Florida Film Festival program guide. At show time most of the seats were filled, which we thought was amazing considering the small niche this film catered to.

Final attendance numbers: 4/11 screening--158 attendees (137 tickets, 14 platinum passes, 7 other passes); 4/14 screening-- 107 attendees (82 tickets, 10 platinum passes, 15 other passes)