Independent film distributors are a lot like arts marketers — some would say they are arts marketers. As independents, they lack the studio space or production capacity of the major studios. Instead, they look for completed films (at film festivals and such) to package and deliver to the world. Like all other arts marketers, therefore, they are selling a product they don’t have the opportunity or the right to alter. And so begins the chase.
This sunday’s New York Times Magazine magazine (login required) featured a story on one such independent distributor, Bob Berney of Newmarket Films. Berney has marketed such challenging independents as Monster, Passion of the Christ, Whale Rider, and Memento, among others, to great commercial success. Now he’s working with a film with a market-killing subject: a relapsing pedophile in The Woodsman, starring Kevin Bacon.
His tactics? Emphasize the elements of the film that will resonate and intrigue an audience. In the case of the Kevin Bacon film, the media spots and publicity focus on a dark secret, a troubled past, and a personal struggle with internal demons. Berney also relies heavily on word-of-mouth, web marketing, and other methods that encourage a recommendation engine among those that have seen the film. One film director said this about Berney’s strategy with one challenging film:
”Bob didn’t want to change the film — he tried to rework the system to fit the movie.”
Arts marketers also live in a world where they cannot change the product they sell — at least not its direct content. For very good reasons, creative process and production are insulated (not always effectively) from the marketing machine. And the resulting experience isn’t always the most obviously engaging to an audience, or resonant with their experience.
But successful independent distributors might have some useful ideas for connecting an audience to difficult and challenging work. And goodness knows, we need all the help on that subject we can find (for those that care, I wrote an entry on a similar subject last year).
Says one fan of Berney’s work, an investor in the current film:
”Bob Berney has made art profitable, and that’s an art in itself.”
