Twilight's online marketing driving digital sales

Unless you have a tween girl, odds are you have haven't heard of author Stephenie Meyer or her immensely popular Twilight series. Scores of tweens and teens, as well as many of their parents, however, are eagerly anticipating the movie version of the first book in the series, which opens next Friday, November 21.

The online marketing for the film has been astounding. It's a complex, multifaceted outreach effort to fans and new customers, comparable with what the Obama campaign did online before the election. The online campaign has generated a huge amount of buzz for the movie, and a surge in online sales for tickets, books, and the upcoming film soundtrack.

In fact, if you need proof that the Web can encourage young people to buy music, look no further than the soundtrack sales data. Billboard announced yesterday that the soundtrack had reached the number one spot on the charts, selling 165,000 copies in its first week of release, 29% of which (48,000) were digital copies, making it the second highest for online sales since the company began tracking them. The soundtrack marketing effort has been highly successful, ranging from videos released on author Stephenie Meyer's site to exclusives available for fans depending on format and place of purchase: iTunes has a digital booklet and three additional songs, while the physical CD contains a poster from the movie, with several different posters randomly placed in the CD cases. In addition to the Billboard ranking, the soundtrack currently sits at the top of the iTunes chart, as well as #4 on Amazon's MP3 Albums chart, and #3 on Amazon's music chart for the physical CD. Amazon is also seeing huge sales for the books, with Twilight: The Complete Illustrated Movie Companion at #37, and the book the movie is based on at #5 two years after its original release.

Online ticket sales are booming as well, spurred by everything from movie trailers debuted exclusively at different sites to widgets available for social networking sites. Those who purchase presale tickets from MovieTickets.com or Fandango receive a code for a free music remix from iTunes. Evite has customized invitations for inviting friends to see the movie. CafePress has official movie-related items. And the movie has an official channel on YouTube, allowing fans to embed everything from the trailers to the television commercials on their Web sites. Harry Medved, spokesperson for online movie ticket site Fandango, noted the phenomenal success of the marketing campaign, revealing that sales for tickets for Twilight are outpacing those for the Disney tween sensation High School Musical 3 for the same run-up to release. And while advanced ticket sales aren't necessarily a good barometer of how a movie will open, Twilight is currently accounting for 58% of Fandango's sales, which is considerable when you factor in the latest Bond film, Quantum of Solace, is opening a week before Twilight.

Medved noted that Fandango has an informal survey the site is taking of users indicating interest in purchasing pre-sale tickets for Twilight. Over 2000 have responded, and the results show some interesting trends. Of those who completed the survey, 41% say they are online all the time, and another 34% say they are online several hours a day, and 4% have their own Twilight fan site or series-related blog. They are also social media-savvy, with 20% saying they "always check" MySpace and 23% "always check" Facebook. The age spans also seem to indicate that the book and film have a wider appeal than the "young adult" audience they are geared for; 41% of intersted ticket buyers are 25 years and older, and 29% couldn't think of another film that appealed to the whole family as they believe Twilight will. He notes:

"We were expecting that the film will have a broad range of appeal. Based on the informal survey, we are seeing a wide range of ages interested in this film."