With more than 13 million registered users, Eventful.com helps people find, create, share, and promote events in their local market. Its main feature is the “Demand It!” service, a social media platform that enables audiences to request events for their local market that are not yet scheduled.
“Most of the presidential candidates including [Barack] Obama and [John] McCain and others used it in the last election cycle to give their supporters the ability to influence where they went on the campaign trail,” says Jordan Glazier, Eventful.com’s chief executive officer. “We’ve seen authors use it. We’ve seen comedians use it. Dane Cook used it recently, where almost 600,000 people demanded him in their markets. The rock band KISS just used it to route their whole North American tour.”
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On November 11, Ryan Seacrest Productions became the site’s latest star client. In a strategic marketing and technology alliance, the radio and television host and producer will use Eventful.com to allow his audience to give input on programming topics, “Demand” celebrity guests, and enter contests and promotions like “Ryan, Rock My Town!” where fans will help choose the location of a free concert from season eight “American Idol” contestants.
But it is a little horror movie that has broken all records — box office and Eventful.com’s own — that first raised the Web company’s profile.
mediabistro.com spoke with Glazier recently about how his company helped Paranormal Activity find an audience — or helped audiences find the film, depending on how you look at it — and what’s in store for Eventful.com down the road.
What role did Eventful.com play in the Paranormal Activity campaign?
[Senior vice president of interactive marketing] Amy Powell and her interactive marketing team from Paramount approached us; they were familiar with the “Demand It!” service. They really wanted to get the fans to participate in the process of releasing this film because they genuinely weren’t sure where to release it or how broadly to go with it. We worked very closely with them to develop a social media campaign using our “Demand It!” platform.
What that means is our team designed the micro-sites and the widgets and the landing pages and the whole flow of the competition. Then jointly, we marketed it to our user base to get our — at the time — 11 or 12 million registered users participating in the competition. And likewise Paramount leveraged their own outreach through the social media world. But basically it got viral very quickly. The platform is integrated into all of the social networks, so when you demand Paranormal Activity in your city, the next page you see is, “Hey, great! Share this with your friends!” And you can “Tweet” about it, you can share it on Facebook, you can post it on MySpace with one click — send an email to your friends, etc. So we made it very viral and very easy for people to share with their own individual social networks.
| “When entertainment properties, event organizers, the studios, or the concert promoters engage the fans and give them the power to influence and be part of the process… we see that succeed time and time again.” |
Why do you believe this particular film — this $15,000 film — was so well-suited for this type of grassroots “Demand It!” campaign?
First of all, I think the film is really good, and the early read coming out of people who saw it at the pre-screening at college campuses. It got a lot of good buzz that started from that. I think also it was the fact that the film was not going into a nationwide release and people really wanted it to. I don’t know that it’s specific to Paranormal Activity; I think fans in general thrive on being part of the process. When entertainment properties, event organizers, the studios, or the concert promoters engage the fans and give them the power to influence and be part of the process… we see that succeed time and time again. I think that Paranormal Activity benefited from simply the concept of letting the fans be part of the process and letting them have a sense of ownership and participation in the release platform for the film.
Is this the first major studio or even independent studio that Eventful.com has helped generate and engage demand for films?
Yes, this is definitely the first major studio and major motion picture release that we have participated in. We have seen some activity at a very small scale with some documentary films that have used it in the past to find out where they had demand for a release. This is the first time it’s been used by a major studio for a major release.
Do you think this type of online polling-slash-“Demand It!” campaign will be used in the future for more films?
I do think it will. We’ve had a high volume of interest from other studios. What’s interesting about it is the platform is incredibly flexible and customizable, so in Paranormal Activity‘s case, the question that was posed to the fans was, “We will do a nationwide release if this hits 1 million people demanding it.” I don’t expect that specific call to action will be replicated. What I would expect is that it can be used for everything from release and distribution to casting to content to where the premiere takes place or the time of the release, etc. There are so many different ways to use the platform.
| “I almost fell out of my chair because we’ve never seen a campaign do 1 million… I was thinking it would take weeks to get there. It took less than four days.” |
I read that the initial benchmark was at first 100,000 people demanding the film, but it quickly got up to 1 million and you set the benchmark higher. How did you know that this campaign was steamrolling its way to be even more successful than you had thought?
As the campaign rolled out, we were originally expecting to do it in one phase, but it ended up having multiple phases because it was going so successfully. It was really done on the fly and based on the ongoing success of the campaign.
The first phase involved Paramount using Eventful.com’s “Demand It” to determine which 10 cities got an early release of the film. And for that we expected — this is just based upon experience — we estimated that there would be about 50,000 people participating in that, but there was no benchmark, no hurdle that it had to go past for that release to take place.
But based upon how engaged the fans were and being part of the process and the word of mouth and the viral wildfire that was spreading, Paramount came back to us with another really creative idea. They said, “We are thinking about going nationwide with this, but we aren’t sure, so let’s let the fans decide. Let’s put a big target out there and if 1 million people demand the film nationwide, then we will roll it out nationwide.” And when I heard that number — I was out of town. Our head of marketing called me to give me an update on it — and I almost fell out of my chair because we’ve never seen a campaign do 1 million. KISS did over 500,000. Dane Cook did over 500,000. But those are some of the bigger campaigns we’ve seen, so 1 million was a large number for us. And I was very conservative in my expectations about whether we would hit that or not. That’s another way of saying “skeptical,” but we hadn’t seen it before, and I was thinking it would take weeks to get there. It took less than four days.
So it totally knocked my socks off how engaged the fans were in the process and how viral it got and how much people cared about it. Part of it is just giving people the ability to participate because they thrive on it, and a big part of it is because the film was really good and people are coming out of the theater and telling their friends, and their friends want to see it, too.
| “Something we are on the cusp of rolling out is using our ‘Demand It!’ platform in conjunction with broadcast to enable listeners and viewers to influence broadcast content.” |
How or why did you start Eventful.com? Did you know this type of platform would be the future, and did you always envision it as a marketing tool or just something for fun?
Eventful was started by Brian Dear, a serial entrepreneur. The concept was one which he had been envisioning for years which is (a) to help people “never miss an event again” by providing an easy to use and comprehensive service that informs users about what’s happening in their city and travel destinations — Brian was tired of finding out about events after the fact and wanted (for his own benefit as well as for others) the ability to be in the know in advance of events. Secondly, (b) Brian developed the Demand it! service out of a desire to have a say and an impact in influencing which events and performers occur in his local market. He wanted to help consumers be part of the process and to make it easy for event organizers to identify where demand exists for future, as-yet-unscheduled events.
What sort of innovations does Eventful.com have down the road or up your sleeve for the future? Are you working on anything new that expands on what you offer people to grow their audiences?
So far, the platform has worked really well around influencing the location of events, and something we are on the cusp of rolling out is using our “Demand It!” platform in conjunction with broadcast to enable listeners and viewers to influence broadcast content; in other words, which guests come on shows and things like that.
Tips for building online buzz for your event
1. Keep it simple. Contests and competitions should be easy for your audience to understand. Glazier says that a “creative twist” can sometimes serve as a barrier to involvement.
2. Enable seamless integration across key social networks. Once fans demanded Paranormal Activity in their cities, they were immediately prompted to invite their friends to do the same through Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter.
3. Broaden the outcome to a large group of participants. Something that hundreds or thousands can enjoy as opposed to “two lucky winners” raises the likelihood of audience participation.
Jennifer Pullinger is a freelance writer and book and film publicist in Richmond, Va. Visit her at JenniferPullinger.com.
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