Once upon a time, when the movie studios would come out with a new movie release, they would build advance buzz for the film by doing a Press Junket.
Back then, this meant renting out conference rooms in major cities across the US to screen (some or all of) the movie; catering an expensive lunch for the press; and flying the movie’s talent far and wide for Q&A sessions with the media.
But, times are a-changing. For one thing, what it means to be a member of the "press" is murkier than ever. Correspondents often operate remotely from their mother publication, print media's well-chronicled struggles are changing the underlying news product itself, and the web is catalyzing a myriad of long-tail oriented new media models.
More fundamentally, though, marketing budgets just aint what they used to be, and many movies (and virtually all DVD releases) just don’t warrant the marketing spend for a traditional Press Junket.
Enter the The Virtual Roundtable, an on-demand hosted solution that enables media operators to host and manage virtual media press junkets online.
Powered by my social media platform company, vSocial, The Virtual Roundtable has now successfully been deployed across more than 20 virtual media junkets for DVD releases (distributed by vSocial client, Disney), such as Wall-E, There Will Be Blood, Lost, Sleeping Beauty, BOLT and Pirates of the Caribbean.
How The Virtual Roundtable Works
The way the solution works is that it features a role-based system with simple and intuitive management interfaces for Press, Talent, Moderators and Publicists to:
- Present/watch video reels of any length (even full movies);
- Participate in Question and Answer sessions;
- Moderate Q&A between the Press and the Talent granularly and easily;
- Do so securely, robustly and reliably.
The service automatically captures, shares and archives a transcript of all of the questions and answers between the press and the creator/producer/distributor of the media, maximizing retention and dissemination of the conversational flow of the junket.
Best of all, it’s inexpensive, customizable from a branding perspective and can be deployed very rapidly (such is the beauty of Software-as-a-Service).
For more information on The Virtual Roundable solution,visit vSocial on the web by clicking HERE.
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