The Real Reason Disney Released That ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Trailer Over Instagram

Via Forbes.com:
On Thursday, Disney took to Instagram to release a 12-second teaser for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. As has been widely reported (check out the analysis by Forbes’ Scott Mendelson), this allowed the studio to generate a ton of attention (as if a new Star Wars movie has an trouble getting attention), while releasing just a few seconds of new footage.

But the Instagram trailer release is important for another reason: For such an important and popular brand, Star Wars has a rather underwhelming social presence. When you watch a movie trailer on an typical website (or, if you’re particularly old school, in a movie theater), the studio’s engagement with you ends when the footage does. By turning trailer-viewers into social media followers, the studio can extract real, quantifiable, and long-term value from these viewers.

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