Tales of Blogging Passion, Part III.

One of the elements of discovering passionate bloggers that I find so exciting are the ways in which a given blogger embraces all of the tools and functionalities that are available to convey his or her message in a better, more compelling, more reader-friendly way. We’ve all seen blogs in which each post is served up without bells or whistles, a straightforward presentation that gets right to the point and moves on. That’s fine in some cases, and I’ve read the work of some extraordinary writers online who prefer this kind of stripped-down gig.

But when you find someone who is truly entrenched in the world of blogging, who can influence their readers through the use of new and innovative widgets, who absolutely evangelizes and engages the concept of blogging as true community interaction - and who happens to write smartly and with infectious enthusiasm about their topic…well then you’ve pretty much defined “blogging passion”.

All of that and more describes Chris Thilk at Movie Marketing Madness. As a savvy marketer, a terrific writer, a wildly prolific blogger and as an old-fashioned, self-avowed movie geek, Thilk brings a ton of expertise, excitement and insight to his work on MMM. Daily on his site you can find quickie posts on movie trailers and posters as well as longer, more thoughtful and thought-provoking pieces on why movie marketers do what they do, why they ought to change their thinking, or what might be coming to the world of movie marketing in the future. And Thilk tempers his movie posts with occasional forays elsewhere that are every bit as compelling in their prose and impact. In fact, it was a post of his back in August of this year - this piece right here - that first inspired me to create this Tales of Blogging Passion series in the first place.

Actually, let me back up for just a minute. The very concept that Thilk writes about movie marketing on a daily basis kind of blows my mind. There’s no shortage of movie news sites in the bloguverse, and a great many of them tend to post the same news with the same links as all the rest of them, who are mostly all linking to each other. I read them to find out what’s happening and to decide if there’s anything there I want to write about. But I read Thilk’s site to learn not just what’s going on, but also the impact, the implication, the comprehension and appreciation that many other pure “news” sites lack. Anybody can pass a press release along and get a traffic bump from it, and I’m not innocent of that myself. But Thilk brings an enhanced level of interest to everything he writes, a casual professionalism and sagacity that is every bit as entertaining as it is infectious.

And for a guy as wildly busy blogging as he is, he makes it all look pretty darn easy.

Thilk maintains and/or contributes to no less than four sites at any given time. There’s Movie Marketing Madness naturally, as well as christhilk.wordpress.com, his personal site for off-topic bits and pieces. He writes for Open the Dialogue through the PR agency he works for, and also freelances on MarketingVOX. I’ve read him on Brandweek and he’s been quoted and interviewed by the LA Times and a host of others. Oh, and he’s got a Twitter site. And a wiki. And he’s also started work on a movie marketing book for which he’s invited the blogging community to participate. And great ghost of Kubrick but the dude has also somehow found the time to have a family life with a wife and two kids.

Are you getting the idea of the blogging passion I’m talking about? This is a guy who finds the outlets where the community is hanging out - the people who are compelled to learn and read about what he knows - and he feeds them like nobody’s business. That kind of excitement, of zealous contribution to the discussion is entertaining and pretty damn contagious. Plain and simple, Thilk loves to blog and takes it seriously in its evolving power to reach, influence and - shocking! - make money. He told me:

It’s just the idea that any niche can now have its community. This stuff just wasn’t possible with mass media being the only game in town. If something wasn’t going to find an audience - and advertisers - it wasn’t an option to put into print. But now the advertisers are seeking out the niches and their passionate members and allowing them to thrive. That’s amazing to me all over again just about every day.

I’ll wrap this up now because I’m in danger of circling back around to my point with a sense of redundancy that’s extraordinary even for me. Quite simply, I read just about every piece Thilk posts on Movie Marketing Madness because he writes with the precision of a professional writer and the fanaticism of a true movie fan. Here are some additional and excellent resources:

• Thilk writes long-form posts on MMM that analyze all the separate elements of a movie’s marketing campaign upon its release. This is the one he wrote up for No Country For Old Men.
• Here’s a great piece that relates the evolution of Facebook to its impact on movie marketing.
• A brief but excellent post on how the last-seen-decades-ago Indiana Jones movie should market itself to those online youngsters.
• Thilk considers these posts his “best of MMM”. That’s kind of fun to say: “best of MMM”.