Back to Part 1 > The Story is the Thing, By Luck or Design, Marketing = Telling the Story?…

Measuring Success

So now onto some of the hard numbers of success. You can check out the infographic to the right to get some additional highlights, however the main success metric for the show creators has been the video views. Each LBD episode boasts about 300,000 views on average (comparable to successful niche television programming). This clearly reflects a quality “lean back” experience, but there are other numbers that show how much this content engages and inspires its audience. Do a search for “the lizzie bennet diaries” on Google now and it returns over 3.5 million pages of LBD content; this includes pages from the story itself, articles written about it, social media memes created, and fan frothing of the highest caliber.  The first LBD episode with over 1,000,000 views has spurred over 2,100 fan comments, while the exciting episode 60, has received over 500,000 views (100,000 of which were received in the first 24 hours) and over 7,000 comments. Keyword research shows that people are searching for “the lizzie bennet diaries” over 12,100 times every month (which compares to other modern retellings such as “pride and prejudice and zombies” with 9,900 or the Bollywood “bride and prejudice” with 22,000 searches). Continue reading “[CASE STUDY] Digital Marketing for Transmedia: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries – Pt. 2” »

Recently the online creative community’s collective head exploded when a crowdfunding campaign for a movie about the long cancelled TV show Veronica Mars exceeded its $2 million goal on Kickstarter by over 285%. But I, and many others in the digital crowd, were even more impressed by the modernized Pride and Prejudice web series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries that also ran a campaign at the same time and exceeded its goal of $60,000 by 771%. I was lucky enough to recently speak with LBD’s transmedia producer Jay Bushman who generously shared his experience of this wild screen media ride. In this issue of From Search to Screen I explore the journey of the Lizzie Bennet Diaries so far and pass along lessons in digital marketing learned, especially when it comes to owning your own success and finding, engaging and galvanizing your audience across multiple platforms. Continue reading “[CASE STUDY] Digital Marketing for Transmedia: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries – Pt. 1” »

Search engine optimization is far from dead. It is simply evolving, and doing so more quickly than ever before (and I’ve been doing this a LONG time). As Internet search is such a fundamental channel for getting your content discovered, it is critical for film, TV, web series and transmedia producers to understand where it is headed. In this issue of From Search to Screen, I take a look at the four key touchpoints you need to be addressing as part of any SEO strategy: Continue reading “The 4 Key Touchpoints of Evolving SEO” »

What does digital mean to you? Until recently, I naively assumed it meant the same thing to everyone (and you know what your mama said about assume). It’s always important to define shared terms, especially when it comes to strategic planning. And as digital is seen as the wave of the future, the magic bullet for the evolving film and television business, it is VERY important to define what it means. After a three+ month hiatus I return to From Search to Screen to explore the digital question, especially in regards to the opportunities and challenges it provides for screen media (and as inspired by my good friend Nova Alberts – former digital media leader in Saskatchewan and now Yukon Film Commissioner – and the partners at Shift Media Group). Continue reading “Defining Digital (and what it means for the screen media business)” »

In 2011 a grand experiment in transmedia and social TV launched in Canada. It was a documentary television show called Battle Castle that told the story of six pivotal sieges of European castles throughout medieval history. It was also a slick website, a couple of different online games and a very robust social media campaign. This kind of transmedia storytelling experience had not really been tested before for a factual TV series and saw the Canadian television producers bring together international, digital and transmedia partners to realize their vision. This issue of From Search to Screen takes a look at the biggest digital marketing success of the Battle Castle story, the social media campaign. It broke new ground and was held up as an example of what social TV should aspire to at the recent Storyworld Conference in California. Continue reading “[CASE STUDY] Digital Marketing for Television: Battle Castle” »