The Hunger Games just enjoyed a record-smashing opening weekend, fueled in part by an impressive social media strategy.
The campaign is a case study for how movie studios should be marketing their films on social, and provides a broader lesson in content marketing for any brand.
The Social Media Strategy: An Outsider’s Perspective
The Hunger Games’ social media team put together an immersive, multi-platform campaign that focused on three of the main themes that run through the novel.
- They created 13 Facebook pages, one for each of the Districts from which the Hunger Games contestants are pulled from, and captured each of their unique characteristics. A Facebook app allowed people to identify with the individual districts as well.
- They created a Twitter account – @TheCapitolPN – for the oppressive Capitol that hosts the games and forces the contestants to fight to the death. It tweeted news, information, and warnings in character.
- Finally, a Tumblr blog was created called Capitol Couture that focused on the fashions of the characters, which were used in the book to further define the Capitol from the people of the Districts.
Individually the accounts let fans customize their experience according to their interests and where they prefer to engage online. Taken together the multiple platforms gave people who hadn’t read the books everything they needed to know about this fictional world by immersing them in the culture and conflicts of it’s society.
In short, any barriers to becoming a part of the community of Hunger Games fans were removed. This allowed moviegoers an opportunity to be just as emotionally invested in the movie as those who read the books, priming them for social sharing.
The social media strategy helped fuel an extremely successful opening for the movie franchise.
A Look at the Numbers
Between Thursday, March 21 and Sunday, March 24 The Hunger Games generated over 3 million conversations on the social web.
The vast majority of conversations were not surprisingly found on Twitter as people flocked to the micromedia site to rave about their excitement for the film and weigh in with their opinions.
Removing the Micromedia trendline allows us to better see the other platforms people used to talk about the film. Facebook was the second most-used platform with just over a hundred thousand conversations.
A Case Study to be Emulated
The Hunger Games social media campaign is a case study for other studios to emulate when releasing films, but there are also some general lessons to be learned for any brand.
- Content should give fans everything they need to know about your brand.
- Chose social media platforms that deliver your message to your customers where they live online and that will cater to your brand identity.
- Create an inclusive community around your brand that will inspire people to share your content and talk about you.
Facebook and Twitter are traditionally seen as the “must use” platforms for content marketing on social media. We’d love to know the creative ways you are using various social media platforms to market your brand and stand out from the crowd. Feel free to leave your comments below!
[Flickr photo by Kendra Miller]
