Avatar takes social media to the next level

The movie Avatar passed the $1 billion mark last weekend as the fifth movie ever and might well pass Titanic as the movie most seen ever. I haven’t seen it yet and it’s probably a great movie with amazing special effects, but my angle is as usual not on the technical side, but on the wonders of marketing.

With a marketing budget of 150 million USD, you can make a lot of noice on the market place and we’ve been served the regular commercials, ads, the McDonald’s kit, and trailers. What is more interesting though is the use of social media.

The team behind Avatar has understood the necessity of communicating rather than informing. Finding early adopters that will spread the word. Avatar has its own community with news, discussions, blogs, it has a Facebook page with 733.000 fans… Quarter of a million fans on a Facebook page! Of course it also has a Myspace page and a Twitter acoount with more than 20.000 followers. What makes all these people so interested in a movie that does not yet exist?

Of course it’s about expectations. On July 23rd, the first tweet from the official Avatar Twitter profile, saying simply:




Just an announcement, followed by others. While the number of followers grew however, the discussions, retweets and replies became more regular than the announcements. Discussions around Avatar Day rather than information about it. Discussions around trailers and the game rather than informing.

For the rest of us, that don’t have 150 MUSD to play with, we still have a lot to learn from the Avatar way of marketing. Not only did they spend the budget on traditional marketing channels, but put a lot of effort into the mix of new and traditional media in a clever way. Avatar is one of the most expensive movies ever made, but on the bottom line, the revenue will be something out of the ordinary.

I might even see the movie...