My previous post, MySpace: Youth Marketing Monster and Model, was an attempt to start connecting some of the wide ranging marketing lessons being learned from MySpace as discussed in online media. The current success of the movie Stick It offers an example of how MySpace can work as an element in a larger marketing strategy, in this case, for a youth-oriented gymnastics flick whose soundtrack includes rock, R &B and such hip hop artists as Missy Elliott, Talib Kweli, Jurassic 5 and Papoose.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, it was the actress Vanessa Lengies who initially set up a MySpace page and convinced Director Jessica Bendinger to follow up with more serious support:
Bendinger [then] hired a person to work on the site full time. Out of her own pocket, she paid a freelancer $100 a day for four weeks to get friend requests, leave friendly comments, send out birthday messages and build targeted traffic for the page (http://www.myspace.com/stickitmovie).
“We really strategized about our audience,” Bendinger says. “First we sought out gymnasts, then cheerleaders who are likely to be familiar with ‘Bring It On,’ then people who like (the band) Fall Out Boy (because) it’s all over the movie and then gay guys.”
Through those efforts, Bendinger’s homegrown team was able to build up to 6,000 friends on the “Stick It” page. . . Disney took over the MySpace site when the official campaign began two weeks ago by adding special features. A TV campaign that kicked off around the same time helped the site grow to more than 10,000 friends by Friday.
As Bendinger notes, MySpace was only one element of her picture’s success:
“MySpace is not going to be what the movie hinges on,” she says. “Is 10,000 enough to open a movie? No. However, 10,000 friends who have anywhere from 50 to 3,000 friends each who are seeing that page — the awareness certainly helps a great deal.”
In a parallel effort to drill down to her constituency, Bendinger hired gymnastics writer John Crumlish to write press releases for all of the NCAA gymnasts who appear in the movie. The releases were used to launch a campaign with college magazines and newspapers, and Disney is using them on the movie’s official Web site.
Bendinger also worked with Disney to package a special mailing of the “Stick It” trailer and the Missy Elliott video “We Run This,” the first single from the movie’s soundtrack, to International Gymnast’s 30,000 subscribers. Many of the recipients represented the movie’s target audience: the 3,000 private gymnastics clubs in the U.S.
I think it’s important to note the creative and wide ranging approach to marketing the movie, the targeting of specific demographic niches and the personal involvement of the director as well as the cast member who started the MySpace page. Also, though Disney did a tv campaign when they took over the page, it failed to double the number of friends on the MySpace page, a testament to Bendinger’s intensive approach to networking on MySpace.
All in all, a satisfyingly complex campaign in tune with the times. However, in a backhanded compliment to that effect, film critic Peter Sobczynski described Stick It as a “brainless and soulless example of marketing masquerading as moviemaking“.
Official site: Stick It
