Teaching the Content

This page is designed for anyone teaching a course where students or volunteers will use guerrilla-marketing techniques to market a real event.

The materials are presented here as if you are preparing students to work at a film festival. But you are encouraged to pick-and-choose to fit the needs of whatever event, course or workshop you are teaching and to customize according to your own schedule. If you are training volunteers or students to work on the marketing of a non-film cultural event, you still can use most of the materials here, and you might even want to organize your course as we have, employing four chronological sections:

If you find our FFMP materials helpful (and especially, if you adapt our materials in a way we haven’t yet thought of) please let us know how this website worked for you.

Before the Festival Announces the Selected Films

GETTING ORGANIZED

Customize Course Schedule

Determine the festival’s schedule and begin customizing your course schedule. We suggest making a timeline that follows the general steps laid out in this course outline, however feel free to modify the tasks or the order in which they are accomplished to suit your needs.

We typically start our course three months before the festival, but even if you only have a week before the festival there is still much that can be accomplished with these materials.

Course Syllabus

Write the syllabus for your course, keeping in mind the dates of the film festival. Depending on how you have to budget your time, you can pick and reorganize the content. Here’s a link to a sample syllabus:

When the course begins, collect information about the skill levels of each student. One way to do this is to use an online form, such as a Google Form. Here is a link to a sample questionnaire and a tutorial about using Google Forms:

COMMUNICATION TOOLS

We’ve had great success using project management software to keep the participants up-to-date and engaged with the work of marketing films at a festival.

Using an online project management tool (such as Basecamp) is optional, but if you have a large number of participants and/or films you might want to consider using such software to keep participants informed and motivated.

Various companies provide inexpensive or free project management software that helps in organizing teams and monitoring their progress. We’ve had good luck with one online application known as Basecamp, but there are other project management software tools available that provide similar services. For the purposes of this website we’ll refer to Basecamp, but you can substitute your own project management tool(s).

We like Basecamp because documents, assignments, and milestones can be posted to Basecamp as the course progresses. Each team can also post their work and progress to Basecamp. Using Basecamp will require some preparation on your part – creating accounts for participants, giving them access to the project, and creating message categories for your assignments and teams.

If you are running a large group of participants, here is a link to a document that will detail how you can use Basecamp:

Basecamp also offers comprehensive help to get you familiar with the program:

As we have said, using project management software like Basecamp is optional. If you only have a small number of participants, and your needs for monitoring communications and what has been accomplished are small, you can simply use email (e.g., have the teams cc you on all email and send out emails about accomplishments). We’ve found Basecamp is worth the money and the time it to takes to set up because Basecamp provides services (e.g. archiving all communications, managing a shared calendar, sending mass messages, creating groups for each team/film, etc.) which simplify the communication between teams and the job of the teacher orchestrating all that activity.

Project management software like Basecamp is especially valuable to teachers conducting online courses, or festival staff who do not have the ability to get volunteers together and therefore must communicate online. For example, when a team finishes a task (like creating a blog for their film) the team members will post a message on Basecamp (e.g., a message that contains a link to that blog). Having access to one organized website where you can monitor all the participants’ work really helps a busy teacher.

INTRODUCE THE FESTIVAL

We’ve found that the operations manager of the festival can provide a great introductory lecture for students and volunteers who are unfamiliar with how festivals operate. FFMP participants need to understand the goals of filmmakers and the festival organizers for that particular festival. The history of the film festival can be explained in an introductory lecture, as well as what is at stake for the filmmakers (e.g. are they looking for distribution?, to spread a message?, etc.) The lecturer can also proceed to specifics about how the film festival operates including ticketing, events, festival selections, juries/audience awards, etc.

At this point, participants can be given access to the Basecamp account (or whatever communication and organization tool you have decided to use) as well as any other blogs or websites created for the course.

We’ve found it’s helpful to create a new message category for each assignment you create in Basecamp (see tutorial). That way, when the participants post their work, it will show up in the category for that assignment and keep the Basecamp organized.

BLOG ASSIGNMENT

If your participants are not experienced with blogging, it’s a good idea to get them started before they start marketing a film for the festival. Here’s a sample blogging assignment that will get your participants comfortable with creating an online presence for a film before they are assigned the marketing of an actual festival film:

PUBLICITY AND PR LECTURE

Give a lecture on publicity, public relations, and ways of contacting the media. If possible, have a marketing or PR representative for the festival come in to give this lecture. This lecture should be designed to get participants familiar with writing business letters and press releases to media professionals before they are assigned a film from the festival. Here are some tutorials about contacting the media and writing business letters, cover letters, and press releases, as well as a suggested assignment to follow the lecture concerning press releases.

MARKETING PLAN ASSIGNMENT PART 1

Screen a sample film and discuss how to market that film.

The following assignment exists to get participants familiar with building a marketing plan before they are assigned a film from the festival.

SOCIAL MEDIA LECTURE

This lecture exists to get participants familiar with social media tools and how professional marketers are using them. Even if all your students are familiar with Facebook and Twitter, a brief review of the features of these tools that leads into a discussion of how social media can be used to do more than just connect socially with friends is a great idea.

Tutorial: How to Use Social Media Tools

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After the Festival has Announced the Selections

ASSIGNING THE FILMS

After the festival has selected the films that will be in the festival, it’s time for the teacher to assign the guerrilla marketing teams.

At UCF we have found that 3 students per team is a good number. If you are working with a small group of participants you may assign only one person per film, or you may use 2 or 3 person teams to market a select few films. In the UCF course, we typically assign our teams to each of the 20 Florida Film Festival competition feature-length films (10 narrative and 10 documentary). If we have enough students, we also assign student teams to sidebar films as well.

Inevitably, some films are more marketable than others. This provides an interesting challenge and learning experience for the teams that get the “tough sells.”

Getting the Filmmakers Involved

Once you have chosen the films that you would like to include in the course, the festival should contact the filmmakers to tell them about FFMP. It’s very important that the filmmakers understand the project and the role of the students. Some filmmakers may be resistant to the project at first. We have found it usually helps to use the term “street team” when discussing the work that the participants will be doing. Filmmakers should be reassured that the festival staff and other professionals are handling primary media outlets and ordinary marketing, and that the student teams are handling the “guerrilla marketing.”

We have found that an introductory email from the festival about the FFMP is the best way to explain the opportunity to filmmakers and to get filmmakers to “buy-in” to the project. Feel free to refer any filmmakers to this FFMP site for more information.

If a filmmaker doesn’t want to participate in the FFMP at this point, we recommend assigning those students to another film.

Organizing the Teams

If you’ve used a skills questionnaire, this is the time to review the participant data to assess their skills. We try to balance the teams so that more experienced participants are working with real neophytes. Each team is then assigned a film they will promote.

Once your teams are determined, create new groups on the Basecamp for each film. Basecamp calls these groups “companies.” Then move the participants from each team under their film’s company. This will help you keep the teams organized in Basecamp. You can also create new message categories for each “company” (i.e., team/film) and require the teams to post their progress under the appropriate message category.

Distributing Screeners

Screeners should be made available to the teams to become familiar with the films. The participants should be informed of the importance of keeping track of the screeners and making no copies since many festival films have not yet received distribution. Screeners should be returned once viewed.

Marketing Plan Assignment Part 2

Participants must get together with their team to write a marketing plan for their assigned films, building on what they learned in the previous assignments.

FFMP Street Teams get their screeners and begin to discuss their marketing plans.

If you haven’t already had them write a marketing plan (see MARKETING PLAN ASSIGNMENT PART 1 above), here is a document that will guide them on writing a marketing plan (this time as a team) for their assigned film:

You should review the draft marketing plans from each team. If there are changes that need to be made, they should be made before the participants share their plans with the filmmakers.

Teams Contact Filmmakers

After you have had a chance to review the draft marketing plans, the participants should contact their filmmakers. All the team members should work on drafting the initial letter to their filmmakers, but only one team member is authorized to send the letter (or make the phone call) introducing the team. We’ve found filmmakers prefer to hear from just one member of the team to start.

Once the filmmakers have responded favorably to the initial contact, then the team can send a second email, presenting their draft marketing plan for approval. Typically, the filmmakers and the participants then begin a dialogue about how to market the film.

FFMP Street Team discusses their draft marketing plan with “New Low” filmmaker Adam Bowers.

As noted above, some filmmakers may initially be reluctant. We’ve also found that some filmmakers will be slow to return student emails or otherwise become uncooperative, even after expressing initial enthusiasm. If, at any stage, a filmmaker stops participating, the students can be encouraged to proceed on their own or they can be assigned to another film.

NOTE: Participants must have the filmmakers’ approval before implementing the marketing plan or any other major step during this course.

It is also suggested the teams create a Gmail account specifically for promoting their films. This will help all of their emails stay organized and archived in one location. Here is a document that will help participants become familiar with Gmail and the entire Google online suite:

Sharing Collateral Materials

Filmmakers often have postcards, posters, and other collateral materials already prepared.

We have found that one mailing address should be provided to the filmmakers for sending all of their print materials. That’s because the film festival will generally want to take the printed materials they will need first. Once the festival has what they need, the street teams can use the remaining materials. We use one centralized location (e.g., the festival headquarters) for the participants to take materials as they need. Consider creating a sign-out sheet to track what is taken.

Additional Promotion Tools

Once the marketing plan meets the filmmakers’ approval participants can begin building blogs, EPKs, utilizing social media, developing and distributing print materials, and contacting the media. Here are some additional tutorials that will be helpful:

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During the Festival

During the festival, participants will promote heavily. The work done during the festival, often with the teams interacting with their filmmakers and the potential audience face-to-face, usually is the most fun, has the most effect on ticket sales and creates the most memories.

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After the Festival

After the festival the participants will complete a final report. The final report is important to provide the course instructor and filmmakers with a final review of the work done as well as to provide advice for future participants in the project.

We encourage you to send your students’ final reports to us at filmfestmarketing@gmail.com.

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HOW TO USE THIS WEBSITE


HOW TO USE THE FILM FEST MARKETING PROJECT TO MARKET YOUR FILM

HOW TO ADD TO THE FILM FEST MARKETING PROJECT MATERIALS