daisy my love! just saw your tags on the my trailer post. hard agree. I actually forgot there was a specific website for the doc and had no idea about the ig page until yesterday. which considering I'm deep in louis' ass isn't a good sign about it reaching many people. any way give us some more thoughts please cos I love when you talk about social media stuff
So most of my marketing / social media production experience is in music and culture festival promotion and independent food brands, so I’m probably not the best person to be critiquing how a documentary is being marketed. But, as I said in my tags, setting up new social media accounts for All of Those Voices reminds me so much of when clients have wanted to set up new channels for separate parts of their businesses in the past and I’ve had to gently remind them that essentially doubling your social media output is extremely difficult, especially when it takes a team of people nowadays to deliver content for the main platforms. In Louis’ case it’s not really doubling social media output, because neither he, LTHQ, or AOTV seem to have a social media strategy driving any of the comms. So…doubling what? Not much tbh. But that doesn’t mean AOTV doesn’t require its only comms strategy. The reason I don’t think it currently does (and tbh it’s a bit late now if there isn’t some kind of plan) is because the documentary was announced on 8th February. It’s now 19th February. WHERE WAS THE CONTENT IN BETWEEN THOSE DATES??? Tickets go on sale on 22nd February and so far they’ve *checks notes* posted one static Instagram image and 2 TikTok videos. Louis’ posted about it, LTHQ have posted about it I think, but I still don’t see any solid evidence that whoever is managing comms behind the scenes is doing anything more than making it up as they go along. Is there no marketing budget for this? If not, why not. And look I think it will become more obvious what kind of documentary this is when tickets go on sale, and what I mean by that is how many cinemas it’s actually going to be in, how many cities. And I also think the lack of content might be more evidence of some of / all of the following:
Existing fans being the primary target audience. If existing fans are the primary target audience, you don’t really need to do a lot of promo. Louis’ fanbase are loyal and dedicated and have proven time and time again that they’ll buy tickets, merch, and music regardless of the level of promo. Would it be nice to see more content to get fans excited about the documentary? Yes. But it’s not essential in terms of selling tickets. I’ve seen some people mention that Louis’ latest stunt (and the media coverage it generated) is evidence that the target audience for AOTV is wider than just fans, but to be honest I think the mention of the documentary in the stunt media coverage was secondary to its main aim; allowing Louis to present himself to the world in the way that he wants to be perceived. In its very, very simplest form, publicly dating a woman makes it much easier for Louis to include footage of pride flags in the documentary (I don’t believe Louis is bi but as a bi woman: don’t get me started on the biphobia here!) THAT SAID, if the documentary is mostly aimed at fans, most of whom believe he’s not straight, why bother. It’s a mystery. More about my thoughts on the stunt here and in my tags here.
Lack of social media management experience from LTHQ (just look at their TikTok content - it looks so out of place on a platform that’s built around authentic, unpolished content)
Louis not wanting to participate in artist-led social media promotion in the same way as, say, Niall does (sorry to compare the boys, Niall’s just a really good example of artists partaking in promo - take his new releases as a good example and just his general approach to social media)
I’m intrigued as to what promo will be like after 22nd February once tickets have gone on sale. I’m guessing it’ll probably be content that’s aimed at getting fans excited rather than promoting the documentary to the general public / indie music fans. If it were me, I would have used this time between the announcement (8th February) and tickets going on sale to:
Tease clips from the documentary. We already know the documentary’s going to have a clear narrative. The synopsis lays this out perfectly. Clipping parts of the documentary that show tension building / conflict would be the best bet here
Release behind the scenes content (footage of Louis being interviewed for the documentary for example)
And from 22nd February, once tickets are on sale, I’d hope to see:
Retargeting people on social media who’ve interacted with the AOTV channels (paid social)
Retargeting people on social media who’ve interacted with Louis’ channels (paid social) - this is a great tactic following the assumption that people who aren’t Louis fans may have looked him up on Instagram after seeing media coverage of the stunt
Retargeting people who’ve visited the AOTV website - this works through pixel placement via cookies
OOH (out of home) ads - billboards, bus stops, tube ads etc. In the UK these are mostly booked through a company called Global or Clear Channel - Louis I have a contact at Global who I booked a campaign with last year hit me up! lol
More behind the scenes content / short clips from the trailer specifically created for social (eg. IG Reels in 9:16)
Press interviews. In an ideal world Louis would go out and promote the documentary on radio (BBCR1 and Capital FM in the UK would be perfect but knowing what promo’s like for Louis that’s probably not going to happen)
A lot of this obviously depends on having an actual marketing budget for AOTV and people who’s job it is specifically to promote this documentary, and to be honest it’s disappointing to see yet another half-hearted approach to marketing something of Louis’. To be honest Charlie Lightening’s done more to promote AOTV than anyone has so far. I wonder how he feels about that. I wonder how that compares to other documentaries he’s produced.
Anyway, sorry this got long. Like I say I think a lot more of how they plan to approach promo will become clear over the coming days so, as always, we sit back and see what happens.
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