Exclusive | I had to beg for US$ 2000 to build a website: 20th C Fox's Bettina Sherick

Everyone agrees digital is the way forward in today’s world. Two three years back, the scene was a little different. People were skeptical of being introduced to it but then everything has its day and time and now certainly is the time to go digital. In conversation with Bettina Sherick, Senior Vice President Strategic Digital Marketing, 20th Century Fox International sharing with us her experience of going digital and her outlook towards the times ahead.

Bettina oversees the digital marketing strategies and digital content development for the international theatrical business. Her experience includes managing the launch of over 100 international digital marketing campaigns for film releases. She has also spearheaded the development of proprietary technologies to enable the quick launch of versioned digital content globally.  Bettina was a speaker at adtech and her topic was: Marketing the Cinema Experience in a Digital World.

Below are the edited excerpts of our talk with her.

Adgully (AG): Give us a brief idea about what you are going to speak on in adtech.

Bettina Sherick (BS): I think sometimes when people hear what I do as per my title, I am selling movies on mobile per se Ipad to watch, but that’s not the case, what I do is work with marketers around the world to come up with strategies to engage people with our products on these devices and convince them to go and watch these movies in the cinema the way they are to be seen, as they were made to be projected on screen. I am here to give an insight as to how do we bring about this, using the example of Life of Pi. This movie is the second biggest movie of Hollywood in India and it was told to us that it is going to be an impossible experience to market this movie. I am excited to show to adtech audience what we did to bring the movie to life through the digital media and the social media platform.

AG: What according to you are the three things to concentrate on to promote a film on the digital platform?

BS: We are actually working at four areas on which we need to concentrate. Firstly trying to ensure we have the video content to make a good trailer, video clips, ad features, content that is specifically used to promote a film. The next thing is sociality which is content that is easy to share with people on social media platforms and mobility which is content that is easily viewed on mobile devices. It doesn’t necessarily mean a mobile website but it means there are videos easily to be seen on youtube and games and other things that help promote the brand. Last   thing is discoverability by which I mean that someone searches for content on Google and youtube and that is easily to be found and watched.

AG: What Should the Indian filmmaker remember while making content for such kind of media?

BS: You cannot sell things to today’s audience. There were marketing paradigms in the past, you would shout out your message and people would hear that. But nowadays there are so many different messages to tell people that why they need to go and watch this movie on screen rather than stay back at home and engage in a conversation with their friends on facebook.

AG: Share some of your works that you are really proud of.

BS: Life of Pi certainly and Taken 2. Our audiences actually taught us this; Bryan Mills played by Liam Neeson became an extremely popular character and they started taking pictures and giving him names like he is not the person to be messed around with and you would find these means all over the internet. So I got my team over and asked them to utilize this and connect it to the fans of Taken and so we started the Tuesday means where we started putting up content on Bryan Mills every Tuesday for his fans to connect with him, and then we took it to the next level with Taken 2 when we had content available for it. So we started putting up pictures of Bryan Mills and allowed the fans to put up caption for it and download it for their own use. This was a hugely popular trend that we saw.

AG: Can mobile device be an important tool to market a movie?

BS: Absolutely. They already are, for when you see a poster of a film the easiest way to connect to the film is through your cellphone. You pick it out and google the information and that is when you would want that the content that is available is the best representation of your work and that is what I was talking about when I said that one of the key areas to concentrate on is the discoverability factor.

AG: Do you think Indian studios are using the digital medium to market the movie to the optimum?

BS: My colleagues in terms of the Hollywood movies want to ensure the maximum exposure for a film on the digital platform. They really understand the idea of discoverability and sociality very well and they have a great video content presence on youtube and I am very proud to work with this team.

AG: What % of the budget allocated for a movie should go into to market on digital media?

BS: It is not possible, for if I am going to limit myself to 10-15% of the budget of my film I am going to go all wrong. I need to understand the story the content and also have the idea as to what do I want to show to my audience. With these criteria very clear in my head I can definitely go ahead for my job will be done. So the key is to know the medium and not what other people are doing in the entertainment space and the other companies are doing. What actually resonates with you, what you really like should be done without being afraid to do the new. Try something new, not everything works but until and unless you know what does not work you would not be able to get the idea that works surely with the audience.

AG: What challenges did you face to bring about the digital transformation and convincing the clients for the same?

BS: I have been working with Fox for the last 12 years and I had to beg for 2000 US dollars to build a website and when I made a passionate argument for why we need to go ahead and do something new, I got an exploratory budget to work on it. I would make sure that people would work on it and experience it themselves and show how consumers would experience it so that one can get along with it. Initially I would be told that it is just me who wants things on the digital platform and I would have to prove that it’s just not me who is going digital, and now the exciting thing is that people come up to me and ask me  what I think of a certain idea on the digital ground. So it’s a complete shift in interest. If I had given up two three years ago before my engagement with Fox I would have perhaps not have been a witness to this complete shift.

AG: What kind of innovative marketing strategies do you suggest to promote a film?

BS: India has a screen crunch to exhibit when there is a release of more than two films. Do you think going digital to exhibit a film is the way forward?

That’s a very curious question. I do not support the exhibition of films on the digital medium at this moment but this does not mean it is a bad idea, definitely no. It is an idea that is yet to come.

AG: Your last thoughts to the industry professionals

BS: Now more than ever we have the ability to hear the voice of the fan and it is very important not to dismiss that voice. It is very easy to say that, fans are turning up so we need to concentrate on those who are not turning up. But we tend to forget that our fans that connect to our product will bring in new people to be engaged with our product so when you do things you need to keep in mind that you have to do something that your fans would love to share it on facebook and twitter with their friends and take their friends along with them to watch the movie. I By Rabab Rupawala [rabab(at)adgully.com]