The importance of promotion and marketing activities increases every day alongside the production process of the films in the cinema industry. The resourcefulness of the digital world has big advantages in conducting promotional activities for cinema. This chapter to evaluates social media, which is used in film promotions around the world. Also examined will be Facebook, which accounts. While deciding the variables, the year of 2016 was chosen because it had the most movies to come out and it was the year in which Facebook was the most used social platform. There is not many studies about the relationship between the Turkish cinema industry and social media in last ten-year span. While providing new and up-to-date information this chapter will create a foundation for different ideas to form on how social media can be used more effectively in the cinema industry.
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The world is in a closer relationship with advancing technological and scientific innovations day by day. As Huisman (2000) stated, many important and rapid qualitative and quantitative changes occured in relations between people and communication devices with the invention of cinema and radio and with that, television and multimedia and data highway. There are no more limits, the languages are no more an obstacle and the time and space has lost its old importance.
Social media, an advantage of internet and new media, caused important changes on communication diciplines and traditional media structure with its widepsread areas of usage. Social media tools enable people to arrange their affairs and also meets the need of information, entertainment, intelligence and socialising. Social media tools became widespread with mobilisation. And the cinema industry tries to use social media tools effectively so as to reach the target audience. Social media tools are now one of the means of media that is used from the beginning of the film production chain to the end.
Every film that comes to the theaters are a new product, and they need to be introduced, positioned and marketed during their short and fragile shelf-life to the customer. In order to successfully end this short period, the campaigns, marketing and advertising strategies of the big production companies start before the shooting of the film and continues with a constant revision (Akyol & Kuruca, 2015, p. 67).
Social media is an advantageous tool in many ways for the cinema industry. Direct connection to the target audience, simultaneous sharing of text, pictures, video and various images and interactive structure makes social media tools more preferable to the traditional media tools. Social media provides a more “direct”, “low-budgeted”, “fast”, and “applicable for feedback” communication way.
The audience can comment on the film during or after watching the film, and these comments made by the audience can affect other people’s interest and decision of going to that film in a positive or negative way thanks to the social media. Every member of the indusry -cinema companies, producers, directors, cast, technical team, screen writers, cinema students- uses social media individually and institutionally.
Social media is also useful for announcing different works used for the promotion of the motion pictures for long years such as teasers, movie posters, galas, interviews and actor-fan meetings. It is of great importance to inform the audience about various subjects such as the plot of the film, cast and characters of the film. Other than the movie posters, teasers and characters, a selection of scenes from the film is published and special works are carried out for social media. These kinds of exercise enable the film to reach out to a wide and curious audience before the release date. Continuation of the same exercise after the film’s release keeps the interest alive for a long time and is advantegous for film screening and sequels. Therefore, the target audience can reach many information about the film starting from the idea to the process to the time that it reaches to the audience and more.
This study generally discusses social media and the relation of films’ promotion in Turkish Cinema Industry. The answer to the main question of “How are the films promoted in social media in Turkish Cinema Industry?” is sought in this study. Content analysed within the scope of the research were analysed under the categories of “Photo,” “Video,” “Text,” and “Visual.” The messages shared under these categories are classified according to the content of the sender and the findings are analysed and sorted according to the sharing frequencies.
Cultural elements, as transferred to the digital medium, offer new features to the cultural field with the features of the digital medium. In this interaction, cultural elements are reproduced and appear in different forms. Especially art has a great advantage in this sense. The cinema, which is a cultural transporter, shows a tendency from conventional communication channels to digital communication channels in terms of promotion and marketing. Social media, where speed and interaction are intense, has a great importance for cinema whose popular and commercial side is overriding. In addition, social media is creating a very suitable environment for meeting the target audience. The cinema companies that use this environment also reach the target population and reach success in box office.