We've made a no budget indie movie with:<p>No studio
No distributor
No movie stars<p>Our goal is:<p>to gross $1m and fund the next movie<p>It's sounds quite impossible. But we've come up with a strategy:<p>Everyone who registers to download the movie will get to display a picture, logo or text of their choosing on a billboard in New York's Times Square.<p>Prices start from only $10 upwards. So for as little as $10 you can get any message / image / logo (as long as it's not obscene and you own the rights) up on a Times Square billboard.<p>What do folks think about this and could this be used as a cheap form of marketing for startups?
This is a novel concept. There's an emotional satisfaction that you get out of this. If you ran the ROI numbers on the advertising it probably wouldn't play out, but if you wanted to brag at a cocktail party that you had your company advertised on a Times Square Billboard, then yeah it's worth $10.<p>I don't think this is a cheap form of marketing for anyone because the ROI doesn't probably make sense. However, it might make sense as a novelty ad/gift or something to that effect.
I don't think it will be as successful as you think, and my reasoning for that is that it really doesn't have much to do with the movie. Don't get me wrong, it's a cool idea and you should do it for the novelty if you want, but if you really want to increase sales you should do something relevant to the product you are selling.<p>It's probably too late for doing anything with this, but if you do more movies you should consider doing an ARG (like ilovebees, the beast etc.), and I think this would be effective because you are hitting an online audience by releasing a movie that you download. Unless you are pro at creating ARGs, or unless you really put time into it and have a bit of luck it probably won't introduce commercial success, but it would definitely open your film up to a small niche.<p>Another interesting thing is pricing models, and I think that it won't increase sales, but if some people want to pay more money for extra stuff, they will do so and it will help increase revenue. A good example is at <a href="http://joshfreese.com/" rel="nofollow">http://joshfreese.com/</a> (I promise I'm not affiliated, just a favourite musician of mine who had success with this model)
I don't think anything is impossible. Heck, take a look at the Million Dollar Homepage: <a href="http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/</a><p>Nonetheless, you do have to convince 100,000 to do it (if they all took the cheapest option). That is quite hefty.<p>I think you may have to set your sights a bit lower, but it is worth a shot. Try to raise some funds via Kickstarter or IndieGoGo - both have a heavy focus on indie films.<p>Good luck
There was a while ago the "1 second film" idea. I really liked that one and contributed as well. By donating money you received credit as a producer on IMDb. Unfortunately after the listing of producers went up into the thousands, IMDb stopped that game and the project died away. Might be interesting for you to read up on how they did it: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1_Second_Film" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1_Second_Film</a>
Any specifics as to the content or genre of the movie? (Many companies wouldn't want to be associated with certain kinds of content.)<p>How large (as % of the billboard) are the picture, logo, or text?