YouTube is like one big marketing experiment: the site attracts massive numbers and is run by a couple of starry-eyed kids looking for all kinds of ways to rake in the marketing dollars--so long as
they don't piss off their young user base. In its latest marketing venture, Weinstein Co. is paying the short-form viral video site to put the first eight minutes of its new thriller "Lucky Number
Slevin" on the site. The collaboration marks the first time a studio has put sequential film content on YouTube, and it may not be the last, should the experiment prove to be a success. One exec noted
that putting film content on YouTube is the best possible way to create buzz for a film, calling it "the No. 1 word of mouth Web site out there today." To date, several movie trailers have
successfully made their way to YouTube: "Scary Movie 4," for example, was viewed 1.5 million times. At a huge site like YouTube, which delivers more than 40 million video views a day, with 35,000 new
videos uploaded daily, it makes sense to go the extra mile and pay for some front page face time, cause it's easy for your content to get lost in there.
Read the whole story at The Hollywood Reporter »
