AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

Variety

In partnership with Filmmaker magazine and publishing houses Faber and Faber and Random House, Focus Features has launched the website FilmInFocus.

The company calls the venture “a destination point and a haven for film lovers around the world.”

The site is aiming to go beyond promos and trailers, cultivating a community of cinephiles through original content and discussion of film. Links to other sites and articles will be embedded throughout.

While such a strategy is not unprecedented in the film biz, it is rare for a movie distrib to sponsor a site with such ostensibly nonsales-related goals.

Of course, marketers in entertainment have long sought to blur the lines between ads and content so that loyalty to content eventually can be converted into revenue for the main sponsor’s product. And Focus concedes the site will definitely have a promo element.

…read on….