Whitevector Report: Cinema releases and the significance of social media
In the first of a new series of features, online discussion specialist Whitevector assesses the level of discussion around two recent movie releases…
It has long been recognised amongst those planning campaigns for movies that word-of-mouth is a key factor in determining success at the box office. Some films (The Blair Witch Project is one of the most famous examples) build their success entirely on word-of-mouth and PR, others use advertising (on-and-off line) to promote the film and to generate discussion and interest around its release.
Whitevector is a company that measures discussions on the internet as an input to brand marketing. Analyses of these online conversations can provide valuable data and insights derived from what consumers are saying about brands. The Company’s main product is Chat Reports, a web-based service used by agencies and (through them) marketers. The service is easy to use and allows versatile applications to support marketing planning and decision making.
Here, Chat Reports has been used to assess the level of discussions around two recent movie releases, Slumdog Millionaire and Milk. These two have been chosen as both were supported by traditional advertising; both were nominated for BAFTA and Oscar honours; and one of them has a name that is shared by a dairy product (being able to distinguish between mentions of Milk the film and milk the drink is clearly key).
Slumdog Millionaire was launched at the Telluride film festival in September 2008. The film was starting to generate some online discussions as early as the end of 2008, despite it not being released in the UK until early in January 2009 (although it had enjoyed a limited release in the USA in November 2008). Slumdog cost around US$15m to make, much the same as Milk which was launched in the US at the end of November.
The chart below shows weekly discussion levels around Slumdog and Milk from October 2008.
Several points of interest emerge from this volume analysis:
- Milk launched in the UK on January 30th, and was heavily promoted. The impact of the launch on the volume of discussions is clearly shown. Slumdog launched earlier but online buzz built slower.
- It’s important to use a system that can separate the generic from the specific in use of language. The chart below references the movie Milk. Even if discussions were analysed so that the words ‘milk’ and ‘film’ or ‘movie’ had to appear in same discussion in order to be included, we would have picked up a lot of irrelevant buzz, the volume numbers would look completely different, and the analysis would be highly misleading.
- Second, we have analysed both blogs and discussion forums. Blogs are often difficult to tie down to a location beyond using language as a proxy, but there are methods for gathering (for example) UK related blog postings. Discussion forums on the other hand contain clues as to location of origin and we are thus able to allocate sites to country of origin. In this example we have used general English blogs, a sample of UK related blog postings and UK-specific discussion forums.
- As the data is strongly UK-based, Slumdog is more strongly associated with winning the BAFTA’s than the Oscars. If we use only UK related blogs and UK discussion forums, the difference between BAFTA’s and Oscars becomes even more pronounced.
- The major driver of online discussions around both movies is the awards; the BAFTA’s in the UK, and the Oscars in the US. The BAFTA’s took place on February 8th; the Oscars on February 22nd. The peak in the volume chart below shows the impact clearly.
As stated, Slumdog was already being talked about online at the end of 2008. Furthermore, Whitevector’s sentiment analysis shows that this discussion was overwhelmingly positive.
The positive peak coincides with the Oscar ceremony, as discussions over the contenders, the likely winners, and then the actual winners hotted up. In this case there are unusually few negative comments around the film – as a general rule online discussions tend to throw up a similar number of negative and positive comments, as contributors inevitably disagree with the positions taken by those with whom they are engaged in discussion.
It is also informative to probe into the topics most closely associated with Slumdog Millionaire. One could hypothesise that many of the discussions would have been around the city of Mumbai, or around the broad issue of poverty in the slums there, but in fact most of the associations concern the two stars Dev Patel and Freida Pinto (see below).
The size of the blob in the chart above illustrates how strongly the film is associated in online discussions with the seven topics selected for analysis. This analysis graphically illustrates the point made earlier concerning interest in the BAFTA’s over the Oscars. But both shrink in comparison with the two stars.
Communication planners can use the data generated from systems such as Whitevector’s to help them plan online activity, and to understand better the impact of marketing on consumer discussions and (ultimately) reaction.
There seems little question that online discussions contributed to Slumdog Millionaire‘s success. As at now, box office receipts worldwide total in excess of $290million. Milk has so far taken around $46million.
To contact Whitevector CEO Tommi Lehton, email: tommi.lehtonen@whitevector.com