You know the old adage “It’s really difficult for marketing companies to market themselves?” (pretty sure we just made that up) Well, its true. We say it all the time- after all the awesome client work we do on a day-to-day basis and the other THINGS that happen to run a business, there leaves little time for actual marketing or showcasing the work we are proud of.

While we are doing our best to keep our website up to date and blog from time to time, the best place to see what we’re up to is probably Instagram (where we DO actually post. Occasionally) and Twitter. In case you missed any of our announcements or what projects we worked on this year, we thought it would be fun to do a look back at all we did in 2015. And it was a LOT!

YallWest

In April, we had the pleasure of finally meeting our client, Lauren Sabel IN REAL LIFE (or IRL as the kids say) at YallWest (the West coast version of YallFest) in Santa Monica, California! Beyond hitting the panels and the Epic Reads booth where we happened to walk up right as they were giving away Lauren’s book to a lucky fan, we also met for some one-on-one time to talk about social media and how Lauren could continue integrating it into her writing and marketing.
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Twilight Storytellers Fan Contest and Set Visit

With our client Fickle Fish Films, 2015 was the year of Twilight! In late 2014 it was announced that there would be a fan contest for female filmmakers to continue to tell the stories Twilight began with short films. In the Spring we held a contest for fans to get a chance to be Fan Correspondents on the set(s) of these short films!

In a few short weeks in May, we did FIVE set visits in New York, California and Vancouver, Washington. Check out these behind the scenes reports we featured on Fickle Fish’s website direct from the fans themselves!

 

San Diego Comic Con

We LOVE getting to go to San Diego Comic Con each year. It’s part fun (well, it’s ALL fun), part networking and part work for us. This year we through our first party on behalf of That’s Normal.That’s Normal is the pop culture and entertainment company and website we also own. Not only did we get to hang out with and meet a bunch of readers who were also at the con, we got to spend time with some of our awesome team members (We manage a team of 18 writers and 6 social media members!)

Twilight Storytellers Premiere

If you’ve ever been apart of the production of a movie you know it’s a marathon and NOT a sprint. Add in a contest, set visits and fans and we’re talking Iron Man level’s of endurance. In July, we were so excited to be part of the premiere of the Twilight Storytellers short films at the Arclight Hollywood. Along with screening the shorts, there was a Q&A with Stephenie and the filmmakers before the films officially premiere online and were open for voting.
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Kids vs Monsters Premiere and Home Entertainment Release

Our client Dark Dunes Productions released their film Kids vs. Monsters in late September and we were there for the bright lights and cameras during the red carpet premiere. It was a great night at the Egyptian theater where most of the cast and crew attended plus a whole lot of Disney show talent!

We worked with Dark Dunes and their distributor MarVista Entertainment on social media promotions and fan and influencer outreach throughout October and November and had a great time promoting this quirky film!

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Forever Twilight in Forks

As a kick off to the 10th Anniversary of the release of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight and a lead up to the release of her Life & Death story, we organized an appearance at the annual Forever Twilight in Forks event including an eight hour book signing! Our feet our still recovering. Along with the signing we selected two amazing BookTubers to join Stephenie for one-on-one interviews, video making and they even got to (unknowingly) announce Life & Death with Stephenie on Instagram.

Grab a tissue…

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Annual Business Planning Retreat in Seattle

In the midst of our BUSY Fall, we were able to get away for a few days, just the two of us, for our annual business planning retreat. This year we went to Seattle and spent a few days in the Pioneer Square neighborhood. We’re still buzzing off all the caffeine we drank during our 8 hour 2016-and-beyond goal planning meeting. We washed down our coffee and relaxed with some great meals in the neighborhood we stayed in featuring our favorite thing to eat together: oysters! We were so relaxed we forgot to take a single pic. Whoops!

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New York Comic Con

This is the second year we attended NYCC and we love how different it is than SDCC yet still such a great con. This year our schedule was packed. We kicked off our time with Stephenie Meyer at her panel with MTV’s Josh Horowitz.

Friday we got a chance to see our client Mallory from Dark Dunes Productions with fantasy author Myke Cole and sit in on his panel.

And we capped off that day with a few of our favorite book tubers: What they say goes in the book world! And they’re sweet as pie. .

Twilight’s 10th Anniversary

To help celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the release of Twilight we created the hashtag #Twilight10 which was used across social channels including Stephenie’s Publisher Little Brown Books for Young Readers and the official Twilight profiles. Not only was it a way to share information and memories we also created a #Twilight10Art project that encouraged readers to share their Life and Death themed art online. .

Yamasong Set Visit

As Yamasong began to wrap principle shooting we were able to visit the set to capture content of the film along with the director Sam Hale and producers Sultan Saeed Al Darmaki, Mallory O’Meara and art director, Gavin Robertson. 2016 should be a very exciting year for this film featuring the voice talents of Nathan Fillion, Abigail Breslin, Whoopi Goldberg and George Takei. .

Life and Death Release

SURPRISE! On October 6th when fans opened their 10th Anniversary Edition of Twilight the received the shock of their life (and the best kept secret of our lives!) when they found that instead of just a Thank You to fans from Stephenie, she had completely rewritten the Twilight story, gender swapping the main characters from Edward and Bella to Beau and Edythe.

The book release included stops at Good Morning America, books store signings across the country (with guest Jake Abel) and a panel at New York Comic Con! We organized some special interviews with BookTuber XTineMay (and here) and the news site (and Twilight fans), Hypable.
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Phew, we’re exhausted! 2015 was an awesome year of growth for us as a business and personally (and in frequent flyer miles) and we are so excited to see what this year brings!

Let’s do this 2016!