TARGETED SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING: MYFLIX - SEVEN TI
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3). Targeted Social Media Marketing – In 2017, Warner Brothers Archives and Digital Services decided to consolidate their catalogues under Turner Classic Movies and Criterion Collection onto a single site, FilmStruck (launched in Oct., 2017). The marketing of FilmStruck was focused “almost entirely” through Targeted Social Media (although Warners would not reveal to Ad Week if there were additional paid placements or in-kind promotions on Warner-Brothers related websites or media). Warners is also not formally announcing how many subscribers it ultimately obtained for FilmStruck. But they shuttered the venture in November, 2018 due to a poor performance of subscribers vs. the costs to promote the site. An analysis of what happend with FilmStruck validates the business plan for MyFlix in several ways: it shows that Targeted Social Media Marketing can be a tremendous tool towards building subscribers and traffic... but only as PART of a multi-faceted consumer outreach campaign. The FilmStruck demise also shows that streaming portals that are OVERLY SPECIFIC to one category will struggle to compete against site with higher profile titles (or, in the case of MyFlix, sites with HUGE programming options spanning a variety of genres and entertainment product categories). MyFlix can use Social Media in a very targeted manner, focusing on users that have specifically indicated interest in independent films... or which have been tracked via web use or cookies from having previously visited major film sites.
A reasonable “comp” digital streaming venture for Myflix to measure against is the RLJ-Owned ACCORN MEDIA / ACCORN TV. This streaming site consists of approximately 1,200 “British TV” related properties (many from the BBC and Channel 4, and many that appear on PBS), plus approx. 2,000 independent films, including about 300 titles under the Urban Genre’ category. As a publicly-traded company, RLJ releases its statistics on subscribers, and recently announced via Reuters that it had over 700,000 monthly subscribers (paying on average $8.99 per month).
In late 2018, Discovery Channel founder John Henricks began an aggressive marketing push for his Science / Documentary streaming venture, entitled CURIOSITY STREAM. This specialty streaming channel offers approx. 1,800 programs to its members, with a monthly access fee of $2.99 (Standard Definition) and $9.95 (4-k definition, where available). Despite the limited quantity of programs (and the specific nature), industry estimates place the total count of monthly subscribers for CuriosityStream at 1.5-million, which suggests a current monthly gross of $4.4-million and about $54-mm per year based solely on the “standard” definition subscription model. It's too soon to evaluate if the super-specific genre' model of Curiosity Stream is a good concept... or one headed in the direction of FilmStruck. Regardless, MyFlix plans to offer hundreds of documentaries and science-appeal programming from the libriaries of existing supplier partners to the venture.
http://hannoverhousemovies.blogspot.com/2019/...plans.html
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