Is there a movie that somehow teaches you about marketing?

What percentage of a movie marketing budget usually goes towards social media marketing?

• This includes Twitter and Facebook account management, ads to get more fans for the title, viral marketing and other non-standard ways to market new releases. This does not include Google Ads, ads on IMDB and other movie or general websites.

• Answer:

  If you're talking about ads, creative costs, and other things, I would lump this all under "digital" rather than "social media".  You're probably thinking about all internet/mobile related marketing but this isn't how marketers look at the budget or the campaign.  Just to be clear, there can be a commitment toward a particular type of marketing like social media but it may not necessarily be reflected in the budget.  Budget allocations are a function of internal accounting controls and fiscal accountability. Percentage spent on X, Y, or Z, in reality, is difficult to assess. The campaign is integrated even though the budget is not.  The budget is broken up into several cost categories (the two biggest being creative and media).  When there's a strong justification to increase social media marketing, these other departments are the ones that are likely to see their budgets rise.  I also look at it in terms of timing.  By that I mean how much needs to be spent during the pre-launch phase, the release period, and post-release.  The level of commitment for each hinges on a number of factors like how much awareness already exists, the cost of media, and other considerations.  Social media marketing will get dialed up for titles that require early amounts of investment upfront to build buzz or intensify engagement over time. The scale of the film, its genre, and its audience play a big part.  In the case of an indie film, a large percentage could be devoted to online ads or social media.  A small project often doesn't have the money to make an impact through traditional advertising or is so unproven/experimental that it warrants an equally daring marketing campaign. A testosterone-dripping action or comedy title could similarly command a larger share of the budget.  Young males spend tons of time online and playing games so the expectation is that you'll have to take into account things like in-game advertising, pre-roll videos, rich media, and other expensive forms of marketing. Family films don't have big digital budgets.  First of all, young kids aren't on social media.  There are laws that restrict marketing to kids.  It's not useful for this demo (though I suspect this might change over time). As someone who has had a say in where budget dollars were allocated, I can tell you that awesome and creative ideas lead to money being spent.  So, for example, if you have a brilliant ARG (alternate reality game) that's sure to lead to all kinds of attention from the press and word-of-mouth it will probably get funded.  Marketers will "find" the money in their budgets for these things or will advocate increasing the overall budget to senior executives.  But bear in mind, most people in my position look at the entire campaign and how it all works together.  Updating Twitter and Facebook accounts mean little unless you can procure or develop interesting content to generate engagement.  (read: additional creative assets or content).  Despite what the public at large may think, videos don't simply go viral.  Even if you produce a piece of content that has potential for excellent pass-along it will need some paid media behind it to reach a tipping point.  Social media (or any other discipline for that matter) never operates in isolation.  If an organization is smart about marketing it will understand everything is integrated and make necessary adjustments to make sure that every part of the marketing mix is working together even if the budget itself doesn't fully explain the commitment to various areas like social media. It costs a studio very little (about a few thousand dollars) to setup and maintain a Facebook and Twitter presence for their products.  There are usually a handful of staffers and a bevy of agencies who are hired on a project-by-project basis to handle this.  To estimate how much social media marketing is actually performed or needed is the variable/difficult-to-determine bit.  To illustrate, say we came up with an idea to do a location-based game in partnership with Foursquare at Comicon which culminated in the unveiling of exclusive, never-before-seen footage.  There's an obvious social media component so some funds need to be dedicated there.  The footage itself is a creative/content cost.  Getting press/bloggers to cover it is a PR expenditure.  Buying engagement ads on Facebook to promote it after the fact is media.  All of these costs were accrued to generate earned media primarily through a social media activity but as you can see, from a budget standpoint, it's a much more difficult thing to quantify. In all practicality, whether one is administering a budget or pitching business I think it's vital to look at the big picture.  Finance is concerned with budgets.  Marketers are concerned with campaigns. Budgets are necessary but like analyzing baseball stats vs. actually watching a baseball game they provide a limited perspective; when it comes to marketing a product they are only prescriptive up to a certain point.