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