Unlocking the Power of AI for Film Marketing: A Guide for Movie Distributors and Marketers

As a film distributor or movie marketer, you’re constantly striving to engage (and grow!) increasingly distracted audiences through captivating campaigns.

• You work with creatives, people passionate about movies and people who care about the film’s success, but in this fast-paced industry, time is an increasingly limited resource.
• You’ve heard about Chat GPT and generative AI.
• But have you considered how this could fit into movie marketing workflow? 

At usheru we’ve been testing and experimenting with dozens of tools, and we will offer a frank and honest perspective into how they can play a supportive role in your marketing strategy and your film company website optimisation. We’ll offer some suggestions on how to get started and some best practice tips, all while keeping things approachable for those new to Generative AI.

1. The AI for Film Advantage: Why You Should Consider AI Generation Tools

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming marketing in other industries and its place in film is no exception. Working with AI tools can bring the following advantages to your workflow 

• Efficiency: AI tools can quickly generate content ideas, copy, and even visuals, saving you valuable time and resources. This enables content creation at great scale.

• Personalisation: AI algorithms can analyse audience data to create tailored content, making your campaigns more relevant and engaging. Use AI to identify topics most popular with audiences, or alternatively run human-made content through AI to add personalisation for advertising, territory-specific content and more. 

• Creativity: Within creative industries, the human flare is still key – each movie has a unique voice defined by the creators and the marketing team. AI can support your creativity through generating new ideas and bringing fresh inspiration to your campaign.

2. Finding the Right AI Generation Tools

If you’re diving into the world of AI for film you may soon be overwhelmed by the amount of options.  It’s essential to choose the right tools that align with your needs. Here are some popular AI generation tools to consider:

• OpenAI’s GPT-4: The one we’ve all heard of (and that provided suggestions for this article!) In its own words: “This advanced AI model can generate human-like text, making it ideal for crafting compelling copy and creative content ideas.”  

  • Note that many other tools currently use Chat GPTs underlying/API technology, but other AI generators are sure to become available soon. 

• Repurpose: For any type of content creators, Repurpose.io can make your life a LOT easier. Want to make TikTok from your press interviews or Instagram friendly trailers? This technology can intelligently cut snippets of video or audio files to reuse across other platforms. For those working in digital marketing, it’s a game changer. Be sure to review pieces before putting them back out there, and practice your use of prompts to get more accurate results for your needs. We’d also suggest checking out Descript or Lately.ai as other great tools with similar functionality.

For more suggestions check our reference list at the end of this blog post.

3. Integrating AI into Your Marketing Workflow: Best Practices

Once you’ve gotten to know the benefits and options available and are ready to take the next steps, here are some recommendations on how to seamlessly integrate AI for film into your marketing workflow:

• Start Small: Practice your prompting by asking AI to create simple, short pieces such as social media posts, or requesting brainstorming suggestions for engaging campaigns. You’ll quickly learn how the technology works and can build skills in how to get the most out of it. 

• Collaborate with AI: AI is not your replacement, it is a tool to support you – Seeing it in this way will allow you to use its output as a starting point to inspire and inform your own work, or to add to it through up-to-date knowledge of global trends and keywords.

• Test and Refine: Continuously evaluate the performance of AI-generated content and fine-tune your strategy based on the results. This will ensure your marketing efforts remain effective and authentic. Read more about A/B Testing in our blog article here.

Some Chat GPT prompts you might want to experiment with

• Rewrite this synopsis so it places more emphasis on e.g. [genre] [star] {story}

• Write 5 engaging movie marketing taglines for the following film (add relevant details, synopsis etc)

• Suggest 5 grassroots marketing campaigns that could be activated for this film

• Suggest 5 other comparable films similar to this title (NB ChatGPT currently has no knowledge of events after September 2021)

• What are some effective ways to incorporate diversity and inclusivity into this film’s marketing campaign?

It’s not clear yet if AI is the new frontier in film technological advancements, although the majority of the excitement around it would indicate it may be. Either way, generative AI tools have brought a cascade of new possibilities for marketing and in particular for movie marketing. These tools can enhance your team’s efficiency and greatly increase your output, save time in personalisation, cut research time and empower you and your team to focus more on creativity, voice and strategy refining. 

By working with the best appropriate tools for your needs, practising and improving how you work with them and following the best practice guidelines, you can successfully integrate AI into your workflow and see measurable rewards in your marketing efforts.  

Caveat: this field is moving FAST and new tools are emerging all the time. We’ll aim to keep this piece up to date but as we mentioned, the best way to learn is to dive in yourself! 

Remember – there are no limits here, so let your imagination run wild with possibilities and experiment.