SOCIAL MEDIA AND FURIOUS 7
Could this Franchise Become Universal’s First Billion Dollar Baby?
Furious 7
Traditionally delayed openings indicate problems with production, storyline, early tracking numbers.
Furious 7 suffered from a different delay Death of a major star in the film and franchise
How did the delay impact the outlook for the film initially? Philip Seymour Hoffman – Mockingjay Part 1 Heath Ledger – impacted the Dark Knight Brandon Lee – The Crow Robin Williams – Nightmare at the Museum 3 James Gandolfini – Enough Said
Universal’s Choices
Shutdown production and not resume Tweak the script, review usable film
and restart production at a later point with a delayed release date (original July 11, 2014) … WHY?? Massive popularity of the street racing
franchise AND the death of actor Paul Walker in November 2013
Fast and Furious 6 generated $788.7million worldwide during the Summer of 2012
Universal Strategies
Director chose NOT to kill Paul Walker’s character, Brian O’Connor, even in light of fan expectations
Incorporate unused clips from previous films and Furious 7 completed footage
Use Paul Walker’s brothers as stand-ins for the actor Let Dwayne Johnson be the “Rock”
Previews requested that the ending not reveal Paul Walker’s character’s fate
Unique Aspects of the Film Simultaneous sequel to two previous
Fast and Furious films New director, James Wan, from the
horror genre (The Conjuring, Saw) Trend of increasing the length and
intensity of the action sequences
Universal Results
Worldwide gross the largest for an April opening at $384m
Widest release in Universal’s history 4,003 theaters domestically 10,500 screens in 63 territories
excluding Russia, Japan and China slated to open later
Previous April record holder was Captain America: Winter Soldier at $95M in 3928 theaters
Why IS Furious 7 a Success? Paul Walker
Established fans and others will want to come see the resolution of the character and the Paul Walker storyline
Vin Diesel After the death of Paul Walker, Vin Diesel became one
of the most liked FB celebrities with 87 million fans currently. He now has creative control of the franchise following Tokyo Drift’s weaker b.o.
Social Media FB, YouTube, Twitter, and InstaGram footprint all well oiled
machines Diversity It’s far more than a car movie!
Social Media and B.O. PredictionsB.O. Prediction MoviePilot $135M Facebook
Movie Pilot Studies Social Data and Box
Office trends
Can Digital Data Accurately Predict Success and monitor marketing effectiveness?
Vin Diesel 87 million likes
Franchise 54 million likes With remaining cast
300M+ likes … without looking at remaining social media options
100 million views of the trailer within 48 hrs. (271M total)
Above avg Buzz of .56%
Additional Social Media
YouTube Twitter
18 million views of trailer in first 48 hours
135 million total YouTube views of trailer
Logged more than one million tweets prior to opening
Massive tweet counts helped overcome a more average search volume
Social Media and Predictions Transformers: Age
of Extinction Opened to $100M Half the twitter
volume Slightly higher
search results
Guardians of the Galaxy Opened to $94.3
million 319,000 tweets 382,000 searches
Social Media Tracking
Digital Data
FB fan numbers are a good indicator of fan awareness Even months before the release Fan counts particularly important for films
with younger audiences Older target audiences will have lower fan
counts PTAT (People Talking About This
More precise but fickle number, heavily driven by content strategy and media spending
Social Media
YouTube trailer counts are important for measuring early awareness
Buzz ratio percentage of unique viewers on YouTube that have “liked” the video and given it a thumbs up
More than 40 million views means mainstream box office domination Lacking solid view numbers a very bad
sign Were the views bought or organically
driven?
Social Media
Twitter Good real time indicator of excitement and word of
mouth, coming closer to release or following PR stunts Mainstream, comedy and horror do particularly well on
Twitter around release dates Assess hashtags and last seven days of search!
Search Solid indicator of intent moving towards the release
date as search titles aware of and are thinking about seeing
Particularly strong with family titles and fan driven franchises
Wikipedia traffic a conclusive proxy for Google Search volume
Fast and Furious Franchise Success of Soundtracks
Music cues the emotions in the film AND pumps up fans for the film release
Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth’s “See You Again” #1 on iTunes (1.2x Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk) Video includes tribute to Paul Walker
Building momentum of the series even in light of the absence of Vin Diesel from films 2 and 3.
Product Placement
Dodge “The franchise has been good for Dodge and
Dodge has been good for the franchise” Dodge sold 600,000 cars in 2014 for about
4% of the market. 96% not buying Dodge Product placement puts Dodge in front of the
consumer! 6500 Dodge Challengers sold in March. This
was their biggest month ever 707 hp HellCat street racing model .. Stopped
taking orders because can’t keep up with orders