The final instalment of the epic franchise, Twilight is FINALLY here, girls, boys and even mums worldwide are fighting to be the first to see the last film in the series. Whether you’re team Edward, team Jacob, team Bella or simply prefer not to play you can’t deny the epic success of one of the biggest phenomena’s ever.
But what made what started out as a small independent film, into one of the biggest franchises of all time, was the first ever movie saga to gain 1 million followers on Twitter and 23 million Facebook likes?
When you look past the handsome stars of the movies and the visual effects, in fact when you strip everything back you end up with something pure and classic. Simply put, a timeless love story, boy meets girls, girl falls in love with boy, boy falls in love with girl, and boy turns out to be a vampire. So not every story has vampires and werewolves, but in classic love stories there is always an element of doom. With the added touch of fantasy in Twilight, the added doom became something more exciting than a war, coma or evil prince.
So what has Twilight got to do with what PR companies should do when it comes to their campaigns?
Strip everything back.
Twilight became a social media success because it played on its strengths, which were simple ‘Team Edward or Team Jacob.’ They gave their fans the power to debate online and become the voice of the franchise and boy did they speak up. When the release of Twilight New Moon hit our cinema screens, there were 81,000 tweets a day about the film. This social media traffic drew in attention from around the world, and people, whether they loved or hated the movie franchise, were still tweeting about it.
The Facebook page for twilight in Germany got the fans of the films to interact with the Facebook site for Breaking Dawn, they got fans who couldn’t attend the premier to send photos of themselves onto the Facebook site with their arms outstretched to create the longest virtual human chain, the relevance of this… I’m not too sure, but it worked. According to the site socialbakers.com the Facebook page received more than 13,000 new fans in one month. Of course, timing and targeting were key to the huge social success; they focussed on a key event, related to the franchise and played on it.
Effectively, what Twilight has done is bring together people of all ages from all over the world to their online discussion boards to talk about their most loved books and movies. The Facebook page simply offered up a signed script for people to win so long as they tweeted about the movie. The end result was social media traffic beyond their wildest dreams, the first movie ever to reach more than 1 million twitter followers!!
Summit studios have brought together and connected millions of fans by combining their love of the Twilight saga and social media. The Twilight online platforms have become a meeting ground for fans of all ethnicities, languages and continents to share one love. What has become important is the voice of the franchise; the more people that are talking about the ‘epic’ movies, the better. Companies need to utilize social media, draw on its strengths and get people talking and tweeting. Twilight is on a larger scale entirely and differs from many other online campaigns, but you can learn from what they have done. Businesses need to create a social interest, one that stirs discussions, excitement and debate; they just need to know what that will be.
