I’ve spoken on this blog before about Jon Reiss, filmmaker and author of Think Outside The Box Office, the authoritative guide for finding and building an audience for your low-budget indie flick.
Jon has now gone a step further and established the best iPhone app integration with your film. You can read Jon’s post announcing the app over on his blog, but here’s the key part of it:
This is an app to share the graffiti and street art you love with others. It is free – and is intended to create a broader community around Bomb It.
Rather than simply using the app as another platform for selling his film, what Jon has created is another way to engage his community. He’s adding value to his audience, giving them a way to talk, debate and share while still pushing (but not overtly) the BOMB IT brand out there.
By keeping the app BOMB IT-branded, the people who know him and his film will start to use it and share it with their friends (from with in their community and, thus, the target audience for the film) and spread the word. More awareness = bigger target audience = more views. But, significantly, Jon’s not trying to expand beyond his identified “niche” – he knows who is audience is and how to cater for their needs; textbook indie movie marketing.
Any producers out there looking to enhance their film’s brand with an app would do well to study what Jon has done here, which comes back to the same story we push time and again: know your audience, give them what they want and give them more than they expect.
Engage, converse, offer value. It’s a simple equation that too many filmmakers frequently skip over.