What Your Business Can Learn from Sharknado

Last night the Twittersphere blew up when SyFy premiered their latest original movie, Sharknado. Arguably, a film about sharks flying in tornadoes was not created to share some overarching moral or important life lesson, but we think there is still something to be learned from this film’s overnight success.

What can small businesses take away from the Sharknado trend? The power of social media. In an interview with BuzzFeed, movie director Anthony C. Ferrante explains, “There wasn’t a marketing budget on this thing.” According to Ferrante, his team simply released the trailer and spread the word. He credits the newfound fans and live tweeting during the premier for most of the film’s popularity. (We think the intriguing title helped.)

Social media – or Real Time PR™ – allowed Ferrante to engage viewers as the movie aired. People tweeted quotes, critiques, and even congratulated SyFy on the creation of a “new way to watch movies”.

No way is SHARKNADO as entertaining as the Tweets about it. Congrats, @SyfyTV. You’ve created a new way to watch movies.

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) July 12, 2013

Sharknado’s creators took advantage of social media to gain popularity and it worked. Our social media team even Googled “When does Sharknado air next?” in hopes of  finding out when we can view this marketing and PR success story for ourselves.

So today’s lesson is: Create a marketing storm of your own and make sure your social media plan includes a large amount of engagement with your target market. Use Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of Real Time PR™ to get your message out there and reach prospective clients.

Image Credit: Nemo

Published on: July 12, 2013