My Personal Lessons from Business Experts

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Preparing to launch a new business venture and preparing to produce a film share a very similar process. Factors such as economic climate, competition, demographics, and the people who make up the team all have to support the basic concept of the project. Not only do these components have to be solid in order to approach potential funders and investors but the ideas must be presented in an efficient business plan. This document acts as the voice of a project and is a reflection of the competency and vision of the entrepreneur.

Business expert Akira Hirai writes in his blog post “Ten Questions Every Business Plan Must Answer” about the importance of establishing a management team that impresses funders with their experience, ideas and overall ability to interconnect with the brand. Hirai states that the management section of a business plan is often the most highly scrutinized portion and recommends highlighting the strengths of the team. In my specific business plan, I have put substantial time and consideration into the type of individual qualities I would want to represent my brand.

Hirai supports this concept in another blog post titled, “Finding Helping Hands for your Small Business”, by advising entrepreneurs to look for high quality employees that can drive the business even when resources are limited. Employees that perform “above-average” can bring in twice the revenue that an average worker can and are worth the investment. I have made sure to highlight the fact that I desire experienced, hard-working and committed employees and I am willing to extend the resources needed to attain them. Similarly to how a cast of a film can affect its box office earnings, the talent of a business cast can drastically affect its success.

In addition to paying attention to what I am saying about my company and who I want to help me build it, I am also scrutinizing how I am conveying these needs. Small business expert Barry Moltz relays the importance of keeping verbiage clear and concise in his article “What Not to Say in a Business Plan”. I admit that I have a tendency to be overly verbose in my writing. While this “story-telling” style may be necessary in a screenplay, it is not appropriate in a business plan. I have consciously limited my word count and have gone through multiple times with the purpose of removing excess and unneeded information. I have also focused on formatting in order to be more appealing to the reader. By shortening my paragraphs and adding space between idea groupings, I have created a less intimidating document.

Most importantly, I have taken Barry Moltz’ advice from his blog post “Business Ideas are Meaningless” and have gone through and modified my business plan as my company has progressed. He explains that a plan is just ideas and can be molded repeatedly in order to provide the most impact. My mentality is, if the first execution is unsuccessful, I must modify the plan, shape the ideas and try again.

Creating a business plan is a daunting yet vital undertaking in the business creation process. A well-written document that highlights the appropriate features of a company can garner the attention, respect and potentially the resources of investors. Just as a film package must grab the attention of funders with facts, figures, projections, and a complete overview of the project, a business plan must include the same requirements. 

The Business of Film: Expert Opinions on the Importance of a Plan

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Film is a world of fantasy and storytelling where moments are created through ornate descriptions. A film production company however should be a well-oiled business machine that acts as the bones to allow creativity to flourish. Any business venture requires passion and drive, but without intelligent planning, there is limited chance for success. There are many experts who believe they hold the recipe for turning an idea into an investor’s goldmine using a strategic and well-written business plan.

Akira Hirai is the founder and CEO of Cayenne Consulting, which employs experienced management professionals and business plan developers from across the nation to assist entrepreneurs in writing successful proposals. Hirai himself has over 20 years in the industry and has opened two successful Internet companies. On the other side of the boardroom table, he has worked in management positions for various business development and financial service companies.

In Hirai’s blog, Hot Sauce, he discusses the “Ten Questions Every Business Plan Must Answer”. He explains the importance of addressing these key points when writing a proposal in order to garner a second glance from an investor. What is the problem, what is the solution, how much money does it cost, and who is going to solve the problem in a cost efficient manner? These questions must be answered and as efficiently as possible. Hirai expresses the importance of assembling and presenting a stellar management team. He relays, in his experience on both sides of the decision-making process, how investors place the most weight on the individuals chosen to carry out the mission at hand. His philosophy is “a good team can fix a mediocre idea, but a mediocre team is likely to fail even if they are pursuing a great idea”.

Akira Hirai also speaks about the importance of eliminating any verbiage that does not fit into his ten-question model, which is echoed by author and small business expert, Barry Moltz. As an advisory board member of Angel Capital Education Foundation, he has reviewed hundreds of business plans in an attempt to allocate funds to deserving and appropriate projects. He has put his expertise in print, writing four published books concerning building a successful business.

Moltz wrote in venture capital resource, VC Experts, about the importance of keeping language simple. Industry specific verbiage, clichés, and excess lingo only cloud the message and burden an investor with unnecessary time and effort to wade through the proposal. He explains how, many times, excess language acts as a mask to a poor conceived idea and investors are skilled at spotting these inadequacies.

No matter the business, the planning stages are vital for any degree of success. In an industry such as film where vivid scripts and elaborate sets are expected and praised, seeking funding and support for a production company requires restraint on those creative instincts. The great part about the film industry is the fluid way business and creative passion can mix to produce art.

Interactive Film Marketing: Creating A Virtual Movie Experience

Movie audiences are continuing to flock to their local Cineplex in record numbers despite a still struggling economy and increased ticket prices. In this day in age, film marketing has bypassed archaic print and radio advertising and jumped whole-heartily into online marketing campaigns. Audiences expect a film to have a website, Twitter and Facebook account; but just as the industry itself constantly evolves, so does the audience, and film marketers cannot afford to fall behind the times.

In true Hollywood fashion, as the movies have become grander, more expensive and interactive, so have the way they are advertised. Interactive film marketing has gone beyond social media connections, sneak peaks, and exclusive contests and has evolved into virtual movie experiences.

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Daniel Frankel of Paid Content discusses the success 2012’s box office hit, The Hunger Games, had in creating a virtual movie experience that engaged their target audience and changed the face of digital marketing. Knowing the imagery and elaborate descriptions the book describes of this future planet, Lionsgate Studios’ strategy was to invite people inside this world. They created virtual communities on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube that gave their fan base the chance to travel within the pages of their beloved book and experience the world for themselves. This caused a viral digital dispersing by fans that allowed The Hunger Games to open to a staggering $153 million.

The Hunger Games is not alone in creating worlds that digitally engage their fans into their interactive film marketing strategy. iMediaConnection reports on the virtual experience that 2012’s Prometheus created by teaming up with major retailers such as Verizon and Internet Explorer to help transport their target audience into their created distorted reality. This innovative campaign not only propagated the film, it brought a new dimension to the standard sponsorship. Instead of large display advertisements or glaring product placement, this campaign brought sponsors into the experience in an intelligent and seamless manner that is not assaulting to the audience.

Digital marketing is a constantly changing discipline that studio executives and filmmakers find difficult to completely grasp. Although interactive film marketing has changed the standard media platforms, the principles have remained the same. It is vital that studios facilitate a connection between their project and their target audience in order to entice people into the theater. Film audiences across all genres expect visual interest and excitement at the movies and a similar look and feel is assumed in marketing efforts.

Film has a magical ability to transport an audience to another world for a period of time and film marketers are beginning to incorporate this same technique in their advertising campaigns. By bringing the audience into an engaging space and time, marketers are succeeding in leading them into the theater and allowing film to do the rest.

Search Engine Optimization and Independent Films: Mixing Technology with Art

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Film publicity has had many faces over the last century from posters lining busy streets, large glowing marquees in front of theaters, illustrated newspaper advertisements, and elaborate movie trailers. The advance of the Internet led to full trailers with extra features posted online and the utilization of social media to promote films. Filmmakers have taken digital marketing one step further by incorporating Search Engine Optimization or SEO into their marketing campaigns. A practice once reserved for products and businesses, SEO has enabled a film’s website to appear in relevant searches, and in an age where everything is online, it is vital that filmmakers master this discipline.

Independent films famously operate on limited budgets, often times inhibiting artistic expression. When filming is concluded, there is usually very little money left over to put towards marketing and advertising. If used properly, SEO allows a film’s website to rank high on relevant searches and effectively gain attention, virtually free of charge. According to Zach Coffman from the Sundance Film Festival, it also tells potential moviegoers that a site is trustworthy and legitimate by Google (or Yahoo and Bing) giving it their “priceless stamp of approval”.

In a separate interview with Marketing Pilgrim, Zack Coffman relays that the most important feature in using SEO to market a film is to fully understand whom the target audience will be and therefore what keywords they would input into a search. The nature of independent film involves a very focused audience and it is imperative that a site grabs and holds the attention of the viewer. If it fails to do this, the competitor’s website might. 

Finding the appropriate keywords that will grab the audience can be generated by a keyword tool such as Google AdPlanner or be purely instinctual. Knowing the audience and their searching habits is key and the rest, according to Brick Top Productions, is ensuring the words are evenly spread throughout the site and remain relatively masked so as not to confuse or overwhelm the reader.

The independent film industry is built on raising awareness and creating communities around a film based primarily on word of mouth or “buzz”. With more and more individuals choosing the Internet to view films, it is only natural they use the same medium to research, find interesting projects and talk about them as well. Staying creative and experimenting with new ideas and techniques is important for filmmakers to do when making their films and their marketing techniques should be no different. What makes this pairing special is that the freedom and creativity of online marketing tie closely with the spirit of the independent filmmaker.