Tesar-Reynes

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I stumbled upon this great example of Internet Marketing the other day. It’s the online campaign a couple of indie filmmakers undertook for their picture Four Eyed Monsters.

Four Eyed Monsters is most known for being the first movie to be broadcast on YouTube in its entirety.

The movie tells the true story of how NY filmmakers Arin Crumley and Susan Buice met. They start a romantic relationship online and agree to never meet in person.

In the process, they decided to make a movie about their courtship.

Though the indie flick fared well on the film festival circuit, they couldn’t find a distributor.

So what did they do? They turned to the Internet.

A Gold Mine for Reaching Your Audience

Crumley and Buice decided to use the Web to get in touch with the people who loved their film. They figured if they could build an audience who would pay to see the film, they were taking a step in the right direction.

They took advantage of new technology. They started a daily video blog.

At the time, iPod just came out with their video iPods. Video podcasts were starting to emerge.

The filmmakers started producing weekly podcasts of their tale, offering insight into their ongoing battle to market the film.

The tactic paid off. After one week, 14,000 people subscribed to the podcasts. The N.Y. Times wrote in article about the phenomenon.

Next, they collected e-mails and zip codes from fans of their movie. Doing so allowed them to find the most profitable cities to screen their film theatrically.

Their film was showcased on Indiewire.com, further spreading the word.

The hype built quickly. Fans offered to pass out flyers in the streets and help get the film screened in their town.

They built a Heartmap on their Website where people could see who else was a fan of the movie. It was like a google map with a bunch of little hearts popping out of it. Each little heart represented a fan.

As Crumley stated, “It created an implicit social network just for the film.”

They started cold-calling theaters. It took a little convincing, but they were able to screen the film in six major cities across the U.S.

The film did well. They received good returns on their ticket sales, a favorable review from the N.Y. Times, and got nominated for two Spirit Awards.

And here’s something that’s unbelievable. They became the first film to be screened in Second Life.

In Second Life’s online world, avatars shuffled into a virtual theater to go see the movie.

Meanwhile, in the real world, viewers were able to chat with Crumley and Buice as they watched the film.

Further Screening Online

At this point, though the filmmakers had made some money, they had also racked up $100,000 in debt from their day-to-day operations.

Their solution? They decided to screen the movie in its entirety on YouTube. It was the first feature length film ever to do so.

They offered advertising space.

They got sponsorship from Spout.com. For everyone they got to join Spout.com, Crumley and Buice got $1.

46,000 people signed up, which translated to $46,000 for the filmmakers.

Next they posted the film to MySpace, which made them more revenue. As buzz about the film spread more people bought the DVD.

Crumley and Buice are now happily out of debt. They have created not only a great little film, but also a cult following, and a do it yourself case study every online marketer should know about.