(Public) Companies exist to make their shareholders happy. Whichever marketing tactic is chosen, online or offline, they need to executed properly with the proper ROI structure in place.

Someone earlier make a good point about these tactics helping the indie film scene more than the major releases.

Creating a facebook batman account probably would not do much to help ticket sales. But the fact that people talk about it with these tools, organize groups to go see the movie, etc. does have an impact.

Maybe that is the beauty of it. It is hard to game the system, but easy for people to influence their small sphere.

WB knew fans would be scouring the net looking for any bit of news or information about the movie. Why not give them what they want and at the same time give them some things to do – because the movie isn’t coming out for another 16 months!! It worked and Nolan and company are reaping the benefits.

Throwing some ideas out there – what about a Twebinar Sneak Preview of a film. Fans are selected to see a screening of a film and are asked to Tweet about it. Fans can follow the twitter stream to see what its all about?

Or what about having inspiring screen writers to write a film – using Plurk, Twitter or any of the microblogging applications available.

How cool would it be to have a studio ask fans to make their own trailers that would be shown and used to promote a film!!?? I mean Juno was written by a blogger.

Social Media and Movies can play well together and I’m excited to see what develops!!

Create and engage a community of movie-goers with behind-the-scenes experiences, facts and data (and there must be a veritable wash of this in the industry!) and you potentially have a group you can product test, trial movie ideas and really create long term value for the company, stakeholders and, the actors potentially.

It would take a fairly long term view of the industry to put into place, but would likely cost a fraction of what any new movie costs to advertise and promote through “traditional” advertising and, longer term, could create a valuable platform where push advertising is no longer needed, the pull and interaction of an engaged audience helps shape and create the movies they demand.

Rather than “if you build, they will come”, “if you find out what they want you to build, then more will come”

People are so entertained and passionate about movies the most successful way to make it all work is to simply give people a place to talk. Why start and end the conversation with a widget you can install on facebook?

Rather a place where movie goers could talk about the topics surrounding videos, rating videos, and commenting on videos would make blockbuster an online film destination rather than just a netflix rival.

Hell create some “Dark Knight” mad libs and post the top 10 funniest ones and promote the creators. There are tons of ways to have UGC and Social Media mixed in that engages people more than joining another group.