BFI to use digital to tap into film fans
Film charity BFI is to launch new products across digital and social media to raise awareness of its work and address perceptions about its image.
The roll out is being led by Manchester City’s digital executive Richard Ayers, who has been working as the film charity’s digital business development consultant since the turn of this year.
He unveiled the four digital products the BFI is set to launch in the coming weeks at Chinwag and Our Social Times’ Facebook Marketing conference in London yesterday (18 July).
The organisation is also looking to brands to help it augment these products and roll out further digital activity through partnerships.
Ayers lamented the lack of awareness and understanding of the film distribution, publishing and curation work the BFI does.
“‘The BFI’ is actually the worst name in the world. It doesn’t just do British films, it doesn’t just do films and it’s not an academic institute… We need to get the word out there about what we do and we definitely have a remit to work with brands to do that,” he said.
The charity is set to leverage the 1.5 million records it has on its website to help users discover films via a “mindmap” on its website, which will be visually superior to its current directory or other film databases such as IMDB.
The BFI is also set to capture the “nation’s memory of film” as part of its database, which will build in content from people in the film industry as well as details the general public has shared via its social media pages about things such as the first horror films they ever saw or the “greatest movie of all time”.
It will utilise its Facebook page to ask people to rank their top 100 films from a list of recommendations or to offer their own suggestions. This data can then present those users with further recommendations of films they may like, or observations that they like a lot of films with a certain actor.
On Twitter, the charity is set to link users to a page that takes on a Zeebox-style format drawing from all the BFI’s resources – such as interviews, social media, magazine articles, photos and video – to give context to certain films or actors and “add value”.
Ayers said: “The aim is to help people enjoy, understand and love film more.”