Hard as it may be to recall, before it became a $2.9 billion global phenomenon with 17 Academy Award wins to its credit, The Lord of the Rings trilogy was considered a real long shot. While many factors contributed to LOTR’s incredible success, there can be no doubt that the campaign behind the films stands as a landmark in internet marketing.
Cast your mind back to… 1999. A time when ’social’ was not part of the new media lexicon and studio legal departments sent out cease and desist letters to anyone who posted Star Trek images or copyrighted materials. Fans were considered infringers.
That was when I wrote a memo to New Line management laying out a strategy for working with fans in a new and completely open way. We would offer a continuous flow of information, create a dialog, and simultaneously tap into the passion of the filmmakers and the passion of the core audience. Most people thought I was nuts.
Luckily, there were some notable exceptions. Mark Ordesky, the executive producer on the film, was completely supportive, as was the director Peter Jackson. We launched the www.lordoftherings.net website two-and-a-half years in advance of the movie release and nine months before the first frame of film was shot.
It was a gut thing. New Line had always been about grass roots marketing; why couldn’t that be extended into this new medium? As the film went into production and we turned on the communications tap, it was a consistent challenge not to be reactive to the gossip and false rumors surrounding the production. But we stuck to our guns, built direct relationships with key connectors, and let the product speak for itself in the form of a steady diet of images, clips, and behind-the-scenes news. Opening the kimono turned out to be our secret weapon.
The commitment of time became intense – there were some 400 Web sites are dedicated to the movie trilogy and several hundred more focused on other Tolkien-related themes. When people talk about this “new social media Web 2.0 thing,” I have to wonder where they’ve been. The web has always been about the social thing… that and good old-fashioned hard work.
In the end, some 50 million people passed through the LOTR website and the films made history. It was a wild ride and I learned a great deal. I also built relationships that I continue to cherish nearly ten years later. One of those is with Peter Jackson, with whom I am honored to be working once again.
In the press release announcing our relationship, Peter says: “Gordon’s stewardship of the online social dialogue and new media campaign for The Lord of the Rings trilogy was very impressive and contributed to the movie’s eventual success.” Then he adds: “He has the utmost respect for our fans.” And there you have it, the secret behind it all.
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[...] LORD OF THE RINGS. At a time when “social” was not yet part of the new media lexicon, studio legal departments regularly sent out cease-and-desist letters to anyone who posted Star Trek images, and “fan” was considered another word for “copyright infringer,” we convinced studio management to work with fans in a new and completely open way. We would offer a continuous flow of information, create a dialog, and tap–simultaneously–into the passion of both the filmmakers and the core audience. Most people thought we were nuts… but it all turned out pretty well. [...]