Mike Birbiglia & Ira Glass Trying To Skype Into Every Viewing Party Of Their Movie

from the connecting-with-fans dept

Fri, Oct 12th 2012 1:33pm — Mike Masnick

If you haven't heard, comedian Mike Birbiglia and This American Life's Ira Glass made a movie, called Sleepwalk With Me, based on Birbiglia's act/one man show/book (all of which are hilarious). They did it as a small indie production and have been going crazy coming up with cool ways to connect with fans and get them to support the movie -- such as by doing a ridiculous number of live Q&As, creating cool videos, having a "war" with Joss Whedon, and much much more. Their latest move is particularly cool. The video has now come up on various Video On Demand (VOD) platforms, and they've been encouraging people to hold viewing parties at home tonight... and to make it more fun, they're going to try to Skype or Google Chat into as many of them as possible: I'm curious as to just how many they'll be able to do -- and how long they'll talk to anyone (and how well they'll go), but I'm looking forward to seeing the results. Either way, it's yet another cool way of connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy (CwF+RtB) that's been enabled by the digital age.

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Filed Under: cwf+rtb, ira glass, mike birbiglia, sleepwalk with me, video on demand, viewing parties

10 Comments

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jupiterkansas (profile), 12 Oct 2012 @ 2:05pm

Lots of clever marketing with this movie. Too bad it's not turning into box office.
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out_of_the_blue, 12 Oct 2012 @ 2:29pm

Fans aren't difficult to "connect with", it's the rest...
For instance, I'm pretty sure wouldn't watch these two even if free, never have. Nor would I pay a cent to find out whether I'd like them. That's not just me, but a general problem. You're only preaching to the choir, limited audience...

Cause, Mike, IF you're ever going to spread... whatever it is that you imagine your notions to be, still looks to me like advertising, getting noticed in the first place, is where one should concentrate, cause people got rich and famous long before the Internet, it's almost automatic once to wide public notice. However it happens.
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Anonymous Coward, 12 Oct 2012 @ 2:41pm

Re: Fans aren't difficult to "connect with", it's the rest...
Surely connecting with fans improves the 'word of mouth' effect no end. Or do you only think one dimensionally?
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Anonymous Coward, 12 Oct 2012 @ 5:08pm

I am guessing the 3 or 4 required phonecalls won't tax their time too much.
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jupiterkansas (profile), 12 Oct 2012 @ 6:06pm

Re: Fans aren't difficult to "connect with", it's the rest...
Nothing wrong with preaching to the choir if it pays the bills.
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Mike Masnick (profile), 12 Oct 2012 @ 11:46pm

Re:
Yeah, because no one likes the movie at all.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/sleepwalk_with_me_2012/

Oh, wait. Actually plenty of people love it -- and they've been able to use the marketing power of This American Life to push the movie for months. Nah, no one's going to be interested at all.
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Anonymous Coward, 13 Oct 2012 @ 5:47pm

Re: Re:
As always, you mistake "liking" a movie for actually being willing to sit down, plan an event, get some friends over, watch a movie they have already watched, and hope like heck that two guys happen to call.

Nothing like missing the big jump! It's those holes in logic that always make your posts so interesting. You forget about basic things like response rates, success rates, and things like that.

Carry on. Keep me laughing!
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Anonymous Coward, 15 Oct 2012 @ 1:03am

Re: Re:
You know, I figured I would go look and see, now that this promotion is over...

ZZZzzzzz. Nothing going on out there. The official twitter accounts don't have much, Mr Glass's account is on hiatus, the movie last update was the 8th.

So I went to look for some numbers. Wow. Production budget 1 million dollars, 1/3 of which came from public radio (there's a good use of public money, right?), and a stunning domestic gross of just over 2 million. Talking distribution costs, ads, and the like, it's unlikely that this movie did much more than pay back the investors and a few good meals for the producers.

So even with the "marketing power of This American Life", not much is going on. If anything, it seems to show that all of the support in the world can't overcome the basics in the movie business, making a movie people actually want to see.
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jupiterkansas (profile), 15 Oct 2012 @ 7:47am

Re: Re: Re:
it's unlikely that this movie did much more than pay back the investors and a few good meals for the producers.

And what more does the movie need to do? Sounds like a success to me.
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hermes, 19 Nov 2012 @ 12:43am

This is a good marketing campaign. I learned a lot from it.
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