By MCN Editor editor@moviecitynews.com

“BULLY” TWITTER CAMPAIGN DRIVES MASSIVE INCREASE IN AWARENESS AROUND BULLYING

Posted Wednesday, March 7th, 2012 - Comments Off on “BULLY” TWITTER CAMPAIGN DRIVES MASSIVE INCREASE IN AWARENESS AROUND BULLYING
Be Sociable, Share!

#BullyMovie Campaign to Date Sparks 100 Times the Usual Conversation

NEW YORK, NY – March 7, 2012 – On Monday, The Weinstein Company (TWC) ran a highly successful campaign on Twitter to drive awareness around the issue of bullying in the United States.  The #BullyMovie effort, inspired by the film BULLY, which will be in theaters on March 30, resulted in a significant spike in conversation around the issue of bullying and a massive 100x increase in conversation about the film on Twitter.

“We believe this movie has real power to raise awareness and increase empathy for this important issue.  That belief has been confirmed for us in the last few days,” said TWC President of Marketing Stephen Bruno. “Not only did the Twitter campaign inspire a jaw-dropping number of conversations, it drove people to act, which has been our goal from the beginning with this film campaign.”

The Promoted Tweets from @BullyMovie, the film’s Twitter account, were seen by millions of users around the country, who were highly engaged with the topic:

  • The #BullyMovie campaign had an average engagement rate of more than 36%, meaning that one out of every three people that saw one of the Promoted Tweets took action in some way – by retweeting, replying to or favoriting the message, or clicking through to watch the trailer or sign a petition to change the film’s rating. This far surpassed the average 3-5% engagement rate for Promoted Tweets.
  • Twitter users retweeted messages from the #BullyMovie campaign thousands of times, and mentioned the film in more than 7,800 Tweets.
  • The best performing Tweet –“Watch the @bullymovie trailer and join the fight to STOP BULLYING in schools: chn.ge/Afgpmt VIDEO: bit.ly/znJ8C0” – attracted over 17K clicks and 1,190 retweets and an engagement rate of 37.5%.
  • Views of the BULLY trailer jumped by nearly 10x to 213,000 views.

“The #BullyMovie campaign drove a dramatic increase in conversation and compelled thousands of people to take action. We’re pleased to see the way The Weinstein Company is creatively using Twitter to drive awareness and encourage discussion around this important issue,” said Twitter president of global revenue Adam Bain.

As the success of the #BullyMovie Twitter campaign exemplifies, the support for this cause is growing every day in a very grass roots way. A Change.org petition, started last week by Michigan high school student Katy Butler, urges the MPAA to change the rating on BULLY from R to its deserved PG-13 rating. Just yesterday, the petition received an exponentially large amount of signatures. Butler will deliver the petition the MPAA today.

KATY BUTLER’S CHANGE.ORG PETITION TO MPAA FOR PG-13 RATING

TWITTER CAMPAIGNS

With Twitter’s Promoted Trends, users see time-, context-, and event-sensitive trends promoted by partners like The Weinstein Company. These paid Promoted Trends appear at the top of the Trending Topics list on Twitter and are complemented with Promoted Tweets that help amplify the message to an even wider audience.

“BULLY” TRAILER

ABOUT “BULLY”

Directed by Sundance and Emmy-award winning filmmaker, Lee Hirsch, BULLY is a beautifully cinematic, character-driven documentary. At its heart are those with huge stakes in this issue whose stories each represent a different facet of America’s bullying crisis. BULLY follows five kids and families over the course of a school year. Stories include two families who have lost children to suicide and a mother awaiting the fate of her 14-year-old daughter who has been incarcerated after bringing a gun on her school bus. With an intimate glimpse into homes, classrooms, cafeterias and principals’ offices, the film offers insight into the often cruel world of the lives of bullied children. As teachers, administrators, kids and parents struggle to find answers, BULLY examines the dire consequences of bullying through the testimony of strong and courageous youth. Through the power of their stories, the film aims to be a catalyst for change in the way we deal with bullying as parents, teachers, children and society as a whole.

ABOUT THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY

The Weinstein Company (TWC) is a multimedia production and distribution company launched in October 2005 by Bob and Harvey Weinstein, the brothers who founded Miramax Films in 1979. TWC also encompasses Dimension Films, the genre label founded in 1993 by Bob Weinstein, which has released such popular franchises as SCREAM, SPY KIDS and SCARY MOVIE. Together TWC and Dimension Films have released a broad range of mainstream, genre and specialty films that have been commercial and critical successes.  TWC releases took home eight 2012 Academy Awards®, the most wins in the studio’s history. The tally included Best Picture for Michel Hazanavicius’s THE ARTIST and Best Documentary Feature for TJ Martin and Dan Lindsay’s UNDEFEATED. THE ARTIST brought TWC its second consecutive Best Picture statuette following the 2011 win for Tom Hooper’s THE KING’S SPEECH.

Since 2005, TWC and Dimension Films have released such films as GRINDHOUSE; I’M NOT THERE; THE GREAT DEBATERS; VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA; THE READER; THE ROAD; HALLOWEEN; THE PAT TILLMAN STORY; PIRANHA 3D; INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS; A SINGLE MAN; BLUE VALENTINE; THE COMPANY MEN; MIRAL; SCRE4M; SUBMARINE; DIRTY GIRL; APOLLO 18; OUR IDIOT BROTHER; I DON’T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT; SARAH’S KEY; and SPY KIDS: ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD IN 4D. Currently in release are MY WEEK WITH MARILYN; THE ARTIST; THE IRON LADY; CORIOLANUS; W.E.; and UNDEFEATED. Upcoming releases include BULLY and THE INTOUCHABLES. Recently wrapped was SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, and currently in production is DJANGO UNCHAINED.

TWC is also active in television production, led by former Miramax Films President of Production and current President of Television Meryl Poster, with credits including the Emmy® nominated and Peabody Award winning reality series Project Runway, spin-off series Project Accessory and Project Runway All Stars, the VH1 reality series Mob Wives, and the critically acclaimed HBO comedy/crime series The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency which also received a Peabody Award. The company is currently in pre-production on the martial-arts epic Marco Polo for Starz as well as production on the second season of Mob Wives and the newest installment in the series’ franchise Mob Wives Chicago. TWC additionally has 17 series in different stages of development, including The Nanny Diaries, being adapted for ABC by Amy Sherman Palladino (Gilmore Girls).

# # #

Be Sociable, Share!

Posted in Movie City News, Press Releases | Comments Off on “BULLY” TWITTER CAMPAIGN DRIVES MASSIVE INCREASE IN AWARENESS AROUND BULLYING

Comments are closed.

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon