How Can New Films and Shows Build Promotional Volume with Social Media Snippets?

Film producers and streaming platforms are adopting a new strategy to attract viewers towards their content. In the age of an abundance of entertainment options, they are increasingly releasing short clips or snippets, usually lasting between five and 10 minutes, on social media channels like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. These clips reveal major dialogues, scenes, and songs of the titles to get the viewers hooked.

These clips are circulated across channels on the studio and platform's accounts via collaborations with content creators and entertainment portals. From introducing pivotal characters to revealing major story arcs, these clips provide an in-depth insight into the content.

Industry experts suggest an effective way to build volume and generate buzz around a film or a show through means other than just the trailer and traditional marketing techniques.

However, some experts caution that the strategy can backfire when significant chunks of content are available on social media for free. This can dilute the need to sign up and pay to watch it in theatres or on an OTT platform.

Girish Dwibhashyam, vice president, strategy and business head at DocuBay, a documentary-streaming platform, said, “The attention span of audiences on the internet is low and it takes a lot more to get someone hooked to your content than before. Especially for platforms or producers that do not boast of huge budgets, more clips increase the chances of the content going viral organically, since merit is no longer the only criterion for content to catch on to viewers’ algorithms."

While most of the clips are promotional videos including trailers of movies and shows, celebrity interviews and songs posted by the production house or OTT platforms, influencer-led content also contains snippets of storylines.