Fandoms hold a lot of power on social media platforms, Tumblr in particular. Fan-run blogs and Twitter accounts and Facebook pages provide some very effect word-of-mouse advertising for films and television shows. A Fandom is the name given to those who share a strong interest in a fictional world, such as The Hungers Games, Harry Potter, BBC's Sherlock, Supernatural, for a longer listing look here.
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| Image representing Word-of-mouse communication |
'For any given culture, there will be some acts that a person would prefer to preform not for money, but for social standing, recognition, and probably, ultimately, instrumental value obtainable only if that person has performed the action through a social rather than a market, transaction.' (Benkler eBook)
Though many members of Fandoms will be entirely aware of the promotional value of their social media pursuits, as stated above, it is not something that they do for monetary gain; it is simply their personal desire to express their devotion to their Fandom.
The many different Fandoms take the power of the hashtag in their stride and provide a constant stream of posts connected to their fandom. An example of where a marketing team has utilised the power of Fandoms and hashtag sharing is BBC's Sherlock. #SherlockLives became very popular across social media in the run up to the third series of the show airing. The trend started when, without explanation, the BBC Twitter pages changed its name to #SherlockLives which immediately resulted in a mass response from the Fandom.
The popularity of #SherlockLives spread across Twitter and Tumblr and so the marketing team continued to utilise this, with #SherlockLives featuring in a teaser trailer for the series and also in a fictional blog post by the character John Watson.
The hashtag continued to be used even as the first episode of the series aired, and resulted in it trending in several different regions and time zones. Journalist Shaku Selvakumar says;
'The brilliant campaign orchestrated by @BBCOne to promote the third season of the much-anticipated Sherlock Holmes. By inserting the hashtag #Sherlocklives directly into the premiere episode’s programming, they tipped their hat to their audience which resulted in more than 365,000 mentions'
The marketing use of hashtags combined with dedicated and enthusiastic reaction from Fandoms demonstrates yet another way in which social media has provided new opportunity for film and television promotion.
Sources and Further Reading
Benkler Yochai, The Wealth of Networks, Chapter 4 The Economics of Social Production, eBook available from here
http://www.mydigitalfc.com/leisure-writing/bchaikhanab-world-social-tv-983
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