The SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT Asset for growing your Indiefilm Career RIGHT NOW

Last week I wrote about how distribution has changed over the last several years.  This week, I thought I’d expand on the number one most important thing for independent filmmakers when it comes to building their brand and marketing their movies. What is it?

AUTHENTICITY

Gone are the days when you could simply push out your product with a cool poster and bomb  trailer that had nothing to do with the film and expect to make a lot of money.  If you’re going to be a creator, especially one who focuses on selling content to millenials you’re going to have to make sure you’re authentic about it. Here’s why
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Authenticity makes you more relatable

Most people (especially younger people) have been watching insane amounts of media from a young age.  As such, we’ve learned to tell when someone is full of it.  Most of the time, we can tell when people are playing a character (even if that character is TOO idealized a version of themselves) and when they’re not telling the whole truth.  The rise of youtube and social media has shown us that millennials crave authenticity. If you want to relate to your audience, you’ll need to be authentic. 
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Authenticity helps you build stronger relationships with your community and fan base.

Steve Lack: Audio
Donald Evans
Clever Username

Ashley P.
Judah J.

Similarly, if you’re not authentic, it’s very difficult to build a relationship with your audience or your community.  It’s not the 80s any more.  You can’t just blast out music and ads in pink windbreaker, puffy shirt, big hair, and stripes socks and expect people to buy your movie.  Every brand tries to build a relationship with their potential customers using various social media platforms.  However, you can have the advantage, if you’re careful about it. 

Major brands are such a large collection of people it’s not possible for them to maintain an authentic, personal brand.  As such, they generally need to spend a huge amount of money on advertising and sponsorships to keep moving their products. ​

You on the other hand, need only be authentic and work to speak for your audience in a relatable and non-condescending way. 
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Authenticity helps you organically grow your brand reach

Paid growth on social media is expensive.  Authentic, valuable content has more viral reach, and as such it will help you grow your brand, your impressions, and as a result your audience.  If something seems extremely corporate or sponsored or unrelatable, nobody is going to share it. Most filmmakers can’t afford the fees to boost content regularly enough to build their entire brand by it. 
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Authenticity correlates to higher reviews

I talked about this at the top of this blog, and in much more detail in last week’s blog.  But you can’t just sell your film as something other than it is any more.  If you do, the reviews will suffer.  If you made a wonderfully written break in narrative time thriller and then it gets marketed as a heart racing action film, people are going to be pissed.  I would be too, if I was expecting Commando and got Memento.

Thanks so much for reading!  If you want to know more, you should join my mailing list for blog digests of blogs just like this one, as well as an awesome film marketing resource pack.  That button is below on the left.  I don’t just write about film distribution, I also do it.  If you still need distribution for your film, you should consider submitting it.  That link is on the right.