West Orange Classic Film Festival

Challenge

Give a boost to a local film festival

The West Orange Classic Film Festival presents a different classic film each week, often accompanied by a guest speaker, filmmaker, critic, or other special program. The challenge was that promoting the festival as a single eight-week event made it difficult to communicate what made each screening special.

Strategy

Eight Films. Eight Campaigns. One Festival.

Rather than promoting the festival as a single event, I treated each film as its own mini-campaign—eight films, eight campaigns, each designed to engage a different audience, increasing the number of potential ticket buyers. Using imagery and content from the films themselves, each weekly campaign gave moviegoers a new reason to come back.

Execution

A new campaign every week

Each screening received its own coordinated promotion across email, social media, the website, and other digital channels. The creative changed from film to film—highlighting the movie, its stars, its cultural significance, and that week’s guest—while maintaining a consistent identity for the festival as a whole. As one screening approached, promotion intensified. Then the campaign immediately shifted to the next film, keeping the festival visible, fresh and giving audiences a new reason to pay attention every week.

Interesting note: I always got a spike in sales with each email. Conventional wisdom held that members would unsubscribe, but the only members we lost had never bought tickets.

Outcome

Boffo boxoffice

The film-by-film strategy built momentum throughout the festival rather than relying on a single promotional push at the beginning. Individual screenings attracted their own audiences, multiple programs sold out, and continued promotion kept the festival visible throughout its run.  More importantly, the approach created a repeatable marketing model: one festival, eight films, eight opportunities to connect with an audience. The results were “dramatic,” with increased ticket sales, the festival’s first sold-out performances, revenue, and donations.

 « Matt & Meera | Enslaved Africans Rain Garden