Whenever I give talks related to movie distribution invariably somebody in the audience will ask me my thoughts online piracy. And my response is always the same. If somebody wants to pirate your moive, they will figure out how to do it.
At one of my last talks, an enterprising filmmaker raised his hand and asked this question:
What would happen if I just took three-quarters of my movie and put it on some of the popular piracy sites? Do you think if people sit through half of my movie, they would want to buy the rest?
I have been thinking about this gentleman's question ever since. And I now realize that Piracy Pollution could potentially be a great, cost effective marketing tool.
Online Movie Piracy Pollution
What is Piracy Pollution? It's when you take a portion of your movie and pollute the piracy sites with it. Theoretically, if someone is willing to sit through three-quarters of your movie and watch it come to an abrupt ending – they may very well seek out other sites to finish the experience.
But if you did a good job polluting the piracy sites, while at the same time peppering the internet with legitimate online press releases (that get ranked by search engines and show up on websites) your viewer may be more apt to find your website and pay the necessary money to watch your movie.
DISCLAIMER: What I am about to propose can spread your movie all over the internet and can possibly diminish your marketing efforts. I provide this disclaimer, because if you attempt Piracy Pollution – it could backfire. Your movie could end up on weird, bad, adult and unrelated sites – And you won't be able to control this. So if you do something like this, do so at your own risk!!! (But then again, if your movie gets legitimately pirated, you'll have the same issues anyway.)
How To Create A Piracy Pollution Campaign
Here are five tips to set up your Piracy Pollution campaign.
- Make sure you have a movie website.
- Get your movie into (at least) the Amazon marketplace or others…
- Embed the Watchbox player or add a link to your marketplace on your website.
- Uploade a small portion of your movie on Torrent type websites. (Note: Make sure you record black for the last portion. This will assure that the run time matches the actual movie.)
- Distribute a press release announcing the release of your movie in legitimate marketplaces.
With this strategy, an effective Piracy Pollution Campaign could help your movie get discovered in all the wrong places. But again, if someone likes your movie enough to sit through half of it, they might be inclined to pay money to watch the rest. This is where your legitimate press may also help drive valuable targeted search engine traffic back to your movie website.
What do you think of Piracy Pollution? Leave a comment below.
