Studio marketer on the digital campaigns “Barbie” and “M3GAN”; Twitter calms down with hopes TikTok won’t be banned – CinemaCon

Digital and social media marketing heads at major studios said today they sincerely hope the US government’s threat to ban Tiktok never materializes, so important has the platform become for movie launches. They also want Twitter, which is owned by Elon Musk, to join forces as it is also an important platform for Hollywood.

“Personally, I don’t think TikTok is going away, at least not anytime soon in the US,” Alex Sanger, EVP, Digital Marketing, Universal Pictures, said at a CinemaCon panel hosted by Deadline’s Anthony D’Alessandro today .

“We’ve been using TikTok since it was called Musical.ly,” he said. It was important at the time: “During the pandemic it became even more important and it will remain so. We find it a viable platform for almost all our films. M3GAN was definitely one of them. And we don’t really have to do much. That trailer dance got really crazy,” he said of the eerie movements of the life-size marionette atop the Empire State Building that occupied the platform.

President Joe Biden is threatening to ban the service over data security concerns, as it is owned by giant Chinese internet company ByteDance. Sanger also noted recent very successful campaigns for Jurassic world domination And Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.

Danielle Bekas, Associate Executive Vice President, International Marketing, Warner Bros. Pictures, spoke Barbie, whose first photos also went viral. “We started to see that we have something, we have something people want to talk about and get involved with.” This film also exploded on Tiktok, which in itself is a “big driver” and because fans share content on their own social channels.

In a hard-to-imagine Tiktok disappearance scenario, there are other solutions: YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, Snapchat’s Spotlight (platforms that would reap huge rewards if it weren’t for Tiktok).

There’s also Twitter, although it’s gotten a little complicated.

“We have seen that some of the people we work with on a daily basis are leaving and not being replaced. There are still wonderful people. There are many changes in their service and products,” says Sanger. Uncertainty also includes issues with brand safety and confusion around tick marks. “It is worrying. This means that it is a real-time conversational platform. That’s where we are closest to the audience. It really is a town square.”

Bekas agreed, calling Twitter “a finger on the pulse of what our audience is saying.”

“If you’re trending, you know it’s hot,” she said.