The following post contains the final social media strategy to promote the recently released independent feature film, Rising From Ruins, part of the Independent America documentary series produced by HRHMedia.

About

The Independent America documentary series focuses on the struggles and challenges faced by small businesses and business owners, as well as the communities such businesses occupy under the threat of “Big Box” invasion.  2005’s The Two-Lane Search for Mom & Pop took the documentarian, Hanson Hosein, road-tripping across the United States, capturing stories of hardship and determination in the face of growing mega-corporate encroachment.  Unfortunately, August 2005 brought devastation to one location the filmmakers were unable to visit for Mom & Pop until much later.  Thus, 2008’s Rising From Ruins returned to the scenes of post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans to document the growing struggles faced by NOLA residents and small business owners as both government and big business continue to attempt to execute a difficult and controversial recovery – one that hardly seems to include ‘mom and pop’.

Communicating an Important Message: The Survival of Small Business

The second feature from Independent America is about the post-Katrina survival of small businesses in New Orleans.  As an independent feature, Rising From Ruins faced myriad communication and marketing challenges in today’s social media space, a space that is continually leveling the playing ground for both studio and independent productions.  In late 2008 and early 2009, against a backdrop of media noise, and already faced with potential waning public interest in Katrina-related features, the once scattered presence of this project’s promotional content throughout several web services like Vimeo and Facebook may not have produced the scale of impact Independent America had first sought.  Therefore, during Rising’s 2009 roll-out at the Seattle International Film Festival, a more concentrated approach to engaging web chatter and to sharing content about Rising From Ruins in certain social networks and through micro-blogging tools like Twitter might have had a more worthwhile effect in generating support. But, Independent America already knows that such concentrated engagement alone is not what this project needs.  That is why they struck a deal with AOL’s SnagFilms documentary service, which in turn holds the promise of online distribution through both Snagfilms and, potentially, with the increasingly popular Hulu.com.  Though, despite such achievements, Rising needs a more robust social media push – especially true coming on the heels of Rising‘s debut at the aforementioned Seattle International Film Festival.

Communication Problem: According to the Client

Independent America wanted to make as big a splash as possible with Rising from Ruins‘ SIFF performance.  As mentioned, an aggressive but scattered social media push by the film’s creators occurred prior to the Festival.  Eventually, two screenings drew notably-sized crowds, but it is still too early to measure the extent of post-screening buzz that might have been generated.  Nevertheless, this was the client’s problem: how can they turn the SIFF debut in to greater exposure for the film and future demand for the film through a launch at Hulu.com and through DVD sales, and how can they give the film some legs for the near future, all using social media?

Communication Problem: From the Experts’ Perspective

If Independent America wants to grow through social media, then it needs a centralized social presence due to its small size.  A mega-corporation can afford to maintain a dozen accounts with a dozen different services – people understand such an entity possesses a centralized brand identity already.  So, Independent America, as a mostly unknown “brand”, cannot remain scattered throughout the social web.  It needs to establish itself as a focused brand, generate useful content that still communicates its message aside from the films (see Sinclair), and, last but not least, bring its audience together.  How could such a brand presence be achieved?

Developing a New Vision for a New Brand

The themes central to Independent America scream out “discussion”.  Issues of small business VS. big business ooze with philosophical and political debate.  And people love to debate in the social web.  But, as Independent America stands, just two films with a few social media web video clips and official websites to share, that is not enough by itself to foster real discussion on the web.  Like Heidi Sinclair and Paul Gillin would argue, this brand needs to extend itself towards generating content outside of what it already is – which is just a couple of interesting documentaries with otherwise deeply-debated themes about American small business.

How to Foster the Discussion

Independent America realizes that it can afford to try something big.  Social media can provide “big” with even minimal effort, due to the immediate and insatiable nature of web culture where small forays can pay huge dividends.  So, go big!  In that context, a blog is not enough.  A Twitter account is not enough.  Posting trailers for the film on Facebook is not enough.  Instead, as mentioned, a centralized space where new content can be generated by this devoted crowd, a crowd interested in the Big Box debate, needs to be established.  This needs to be a space in which the web community interested in debating and organizing around Independent America’s subject matter can find one another, champion their separate causes, and grow (or just argue about) a movement to save small business together.  Creating a new social network entirely is what is (and was) needed.

Strategy

It’s simple: we have created and are now building up a new social network with Ning.com, entitled “Independent America: Where Do You Stand?”.  This new social network exists to foster and drum-up the debate surrounding the place of big business in “small town” America.  Users can create profiles, write their own in-network blogs, and start forum topics about whatever they wish to discuss related to mom & pop America.  Most importantly, though, they will be strongly encouraged to post videos documenting their own stories, their local communities, and their political or idealogical positions.  In other words, this site can take a scattered on-line conversation, one that is floating in many different web spaces, and give it an unofficial focal point.  A social media director can guide things along at first to get the ball rolling.  Prominently feature Independent America: Rising From Ruins through embedded video promotional content and trailers, all of which serve as the catalyst for the discussion.  Ultimately, the site is not about the movies – it becomes a new source of content about the subject matter of the movies.  It establishes a place that anyone who is interested and passionate about the subject can make their voice heard and debate the messages and opinions of others.  Furthermore, users can take on the role of documentarian in their own communities and cover the subject in their own words, posting these stories and video mini-docs to this new “Where Do You Stand?” site.  How do we know this can work?  The Pickens Plan and MyBarackObama.com are two perfect examples of previous successful implementation of new social networks surrounding controversial but passionate material.

Implementing Where do you Stand?

So far, we have created the new site and begun to attract users and populate it with seed content.  We are encouraging all users to take control of the conversation, to help evolve the site in to what it will hopefully become – the web home for all matters related to the Big Box debate.  Ultimately, this strategy will require ongoing supervision and incubation from a handful of caretakers.  We will fill that role for now.  We hope that this social network will be adopted by others more passionate about the material in the near future (perhaps within the first 6 months).

Forecast

This is an exhaustive social media strategy, but a necessary one.  A grassroots discussion underlies the themes at the heart of Independent America’s films, and this grassroots discussion must be tapped.  Merely focusing on generating buzz for Rising From Ruins screenings and DVDs will wind-up being intolerably less effective.  An on-line home needs to be established that fosters the debate and allows users to take ownership of the ideas behind the film.  Without doing so, Independent America: Rising From Ruins becomes just another one-way salvo in a two-way world.  Undoubtedly, this site could become the go-to place and neutral authority for the big box debate, because it will be a place everyone can film, blog, argue and share their stories.

Prepared for Hanson Hosein’s Social Production course, Spring Quarter 2009, Master of Communication in Digital Media program, University of Washington, Seattle.