By Jennie Osber
The TV show Veronica Mars has become the fastest Kickstarter project in history to reach its goal as of earlier this week. The show’s creator Rob Thomas and star Kristen Bell were behind the project, getting it out to the public through social media. Thomas spoke to WB executives and they agreed to allow the cast to make the movie if they were able to raise enough interest and the money for production in thirty days. They needed to raise 2 million dollars to cover all of the costs and fans were able to raise that much money in about 4 hours! They raised their money in record-breaking time and currently only a few days into the project, the Veronica Mars movie has raised over 3.7 million dollars with the rest of the month still to go. Thomas, Bell and the rest of the cast were able to accomplish this with amazing fans and also very skillful public relations tactics.
Veronica Mars is a perfect show for a Kickstarter campaign because it has such a strong cult following and loyal fans willing to spend the money to get the word out there. Fans congregated over different forums and social media outlets to help promote the movie. Even though the show was cancelled in 2007, fans are dying to see a Veronica Mars movie and find out what has happened to their favorite characters after all these years. Luckily for the cast and crew, the fans did a lot of the promoting for them. They got the hashtag #veronicamarsmovie trending on twitter and Kristen Bell began tweeting to her one million followers, who then got the ball rolling. Within a few hours, thousands of people were backing the movie and telling everyone they know to help too.
The smartest thing that Thomas did from the public relations perspective is offer different incentives for all of the different levels of donations. For the smaller donations of $10 or more, fans were able to receive a copy of the script on the day of the movie’s release. And the prizes only increased from there. By just pledging a little bit more money, people could get Veronica Mars t-shirts, behind-the-scenes updates, personalized messages from the cast and signed copies of the official movie poster. However, the biggest prize of all for one lucky Veronica Mars lover was getting a speaking role in the movie for just a mere $10,000. With so many different prizes, the Veronica Mars team is creating so much buzz around the movie as well as positive feedback in the media. Websites like Kickstarter allow for projects like this to be possible because people can donate from the comforts of their own computers. Bell and Thomas will continue to campaign to raise even more throughout the rest of the month. Regardless, they did achieve their goal of finally being able to create the Veronica Mars film.
Image courtesy of http://cdn.pastemagazine.com/www/articles/Veronica%20Mars%20Cast_NEW.jpg?1363186244.
Jennie Osber is a sophomore, communication interest major with a psychology minor. Along with PRSSA, she is a member of the National Service Sorority, Gamma Sigma Sigma and the UDress magazine. In the future, she hopes to work as a public relations professional for a non-profit organization.
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