SOME OF OUR FAVORITE I AM BIG BIRD PRESS (THUS FAR)

As you’re well aware, we’ve recently wrapped up a very successful Kickstarter campaign(thanks for your support, by the way).  While we’re slowly composing a post with a full breakdown of what went right and what we could’ve done better, one thing we’re really happy with is all the press we’ve gotten.  First, a big thanks to Amy, Chad’s special lady and our press officer extraordinaire, for pulling overtime to make all those stories happen.  Second, we thought we’d share some of our favorite clippings with you!

1. THE MERIDEN RECORD JOURNAL

This story, from The Meriden Record Journal, is cool for a number of reasons.  First, it was good to see the love the hometown paper gave Clay.  Love it!  Second, the shirt Clay’s wearing is actually a Sesame Street crew shirt designed by Caroll himself.  Third, and perhaps the reason this story made it to this list, is that it got picked up by the Associated Press and somehow found its way to a small town in Iowa where Clay’s grandmother was shocked to see her grandson in the local paper.  Global village indeed.

2. THE JAMESON SHOW

We’ve been interviewed by a number of journalists, but only one puppet.  Jameson, and his human friend Noah Ginex, were a ton of fun to chat with.

3. AIN’T IT COOL NEWS

Being featured in Ain’t It Cool News can go one of two ways: great or nightmarish.  They’ll tell you what they think.  Having their support made us feel like we’re doing something right!

4.  THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

Our first source for industry news is The Hollywood Reporter.  We love their “7 Days of Deals” section in which major industry transactions are broken down on a weekly basis.  It was a thrill to be featured there.  Side note: I frickin’ love Shia LaBeouf.

5. GOOD AFTERNOON AMERICA

It turns out that when Grover stopped by GOOD AFTERNOON AMERICA yesterday to talk about the importance of brushing your teeth, they chatted about I AM BIG BIRD.  We missed this!  Thankfully, HULU didn’t.  You can see Grover talk about a possible cameo about 10:30 into this clip (sandwiched between a 50 Shades of Grey segment and one about “How much cleavage is too much?”).  So many things are awesome about this clip, but nothing gets us giddier than knowing that Grover knows about our movie.  That’s just the best thing ever.

Hopefully, there’s lots more to come!

KICKSTARTER TIP 4: EMAIL IS SPAM, TWITTER IS GOLD

So, we had a little internal debate here at CPP not so long ago.  Chad suggested we should be Tweeting more.  I suggested we were Tweeting just the right amount and that Tweeting more would be obnoxious.

I was wrong.

We began Tweeting a lot more–interacting with fans, searching them out by who is talking about Big Bird or Sesame Street, jumping in on Twitter conversations, etc.  Ever since we’ve done that, we’ve noticed a continued, steady growth in the number of Kickstarter backers we have.  It seems that, even though the Twitterverse exists in the ether, when people feel directly connected to a project, even if they’ve only had a Twitter chat about it, they are much more likely to back the project.

We are still wary of clogging people’s feeds, but we’ve learned that it’s not enough to just go out and release amazing content from Caroll’s archives.  People need to feel attached to the project.  Directly engaging them on Twitter has done that.  And now, we’re noticing that the content we’re releasing is catching on more and our number of page views is rising.  Is it a coincidence?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

We’ve held back on emailing people a bunch–that’s just annoying–but Twitter has become a great way for us to reach fans and stoke the fires.  While we don’t want to just become noise, we seem to have found a Twitter sweet spot.  Our followers are growing–and so are our pledges.  Let’s hope it continues!

KICKSTARTER TIP 3: ANSWER EVERYONE

Hey folks!

So, we’re a week into our Kickstarter campaign and thought it was probably time for another update on where our heads are.

Before we get to the tip for today, we thought it might be helpful to share some of the other questions and frustrations we’ve faced.  Primarily, the biggest issue we’re having is getting our film out there.  Even though we sit over a quarter of a way to our goal with three weeks left, I think we all thought that our project would be more in the public by this point.

We’ve really tried to not spam people, so we attempted to get our project out into the world a number of other ways.  As we mentioned in an earlier post, we’ve hit the following:

Traditional media: We sent a press release out using PR Newswire, which, in theory, hits all the major traditional news outlets (note: this is a paid service).

Events: We co-hosted an event in Brooklyn where we screened clips from the film and interacted with fans.

Social Media: We’re releasing exclusive content (30-35 pictures and 3-4 videos per week) viaTwitter, which is subsequently posted on Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vimeo, YouTube andJux.

In terms of a success rate, it would seem that the social media campaign is paying off best.  When logging into Kickstarter, we can see that over a third of our pledges have come from people directed to Kickstarter by Twitter.  The press release hasn’t yielded much to this point, other than a few articles and minor mentions; we’ll have to wait and see if it winds up being worth the investment.  The success of the event is harder to gauge: we didn’t see a major bump, but we have seen people mention it across the internet and, though we don’t have evidence of it, we do have the sense that it fostered a loyal fanbase who will spread the news of our film by word of mouth.

We’re still trying to figure out the best way to craft our Tweets, which seems like a ridiculous thing to say, but it’s true.  Why?  We have friends who are extremely into Twitter and love this project, but have told us they haven’t watched our videos because they don’t click links on Twitter.  When we showed these same friends our exclusive video of Caroll and Jim Henson, they freaked out with excitement.  So, how do we get that video to people who will really care about it?  We’re still working on that and will report back.  We’re also trying to determine if it’s wise to put a link directly to the Kickstarter campaign in the Tweet or if that’s too much information in 140 characters.  Again, we’ll let you know what we decide.  Of course, if any reader has feedback on these strategies, we’d gladly accept it!

Ok, somewhere in here we’re supposed to give a tip, right?  Here’s today’s tip: answer everyone!   As soon as we launched our Kickstarter campaign, we were bombarded with emails and Tweets, etc.  It took a long time, but we have answered every single one.  We’ve even sought out comments on message boards to respond to.  We have found that this practice results in loyal fans who are willing to both pledge and encourage others do the same.

That’s about it for now.  We’ve gotta go scan Twitter for mentions of Caroll Spinney and make sure those people are pledging!

Much love,

The Copper Pot Crew