Blogger Reid Jones poses for a portrait at the premiere for “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” in Los Angeles on April 13, 2015. For the last year, he’s written more than a post a day for fan site Moviepilot about the Marvel universe.Jordan Strauss/The Associated Press
Clad in his pyjamas, Reid Jones often blogs about Marvel superhero movies, with starry ambitions of one day becoming an entertainment journalist.
A few weeks ago, the 16-year-old woke up to that opportunity when he was invited to conduct red-carpet interviews with the stars of Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron during the Los Angeles premiere.
"It really felt like it was a dream," says Jones, who travelled with his father from Kennesaw, Ga., to the premiere of the movie that hit theatres on Friday.
Major Hollywood studios such as Disney-owned Marvel are anxious to win over superfans, especially those who help build excitement online among other youngsters ahead of a movie's debut. While the fan connection has long been cultivated at conventions such as Comic-Con or Disney's Star Wars Celebration, young writers such as Jones – whose posts have been read nearly 11 million times – are increasingly being courted at events once reserved for traditional media outlets.
This outreach is important for marketers, who call people like Jones "influencers" because they reach an under-25 crowd of frequent moviegoers not as easily reached by the traditional 30-second TV ads that advertisers typically use to reach their parents. Fading are the days when movie critics at newspapers, magazines and other publications set the tone, particularly for the big-budget superhero movies that can make or break a studio's annual revenue target.
"When you're reaching young people, you have to go to where the authorities on culture exist," says Angela Courtin, chief marketing officer for Relativity Media, the studio that has co-financed the Fast & Furious film series and is releasing action comedy Masterminds this fall. "They're no longer in bylines of The New York Times or the Los Angeles Times. They're now on YouTube and Snapchat and Instagram and Vine."
Many of these influencers write blogs for sites such as Moviepilot, which draw a large following of the younger audience marketers covet. According to Google Analytics, 37 per cent of site visitors are under 25 years old, and 71 per cent are under 35.
Moviepilot Inc. CEO Tobi Bauckhage says that last fall, he and his co-founders decided to change the direction of the movie fan site to take posts directly from readers, and that is when usage began to take off.
In March, it had 17.3 million unique U.S. visitors, more than double that of a year ago, according to comScore.
Bauckhage attributes the growing popularity to fans like Jones, the Georgia teen who for the past year has written more than a post a day for Moviepilot. Recently, he pored over a trailer and deduced – correctly – the hidden nature of the new character, Vision, in Avengers: Age of Ultron. He also figured out how two distinct weapons are actually part of one giant one that will determine the universe's fate in the two-part Avengers sequel three years from now.
"People like Reid knew more about specifics than some of our editors did," says Bauckhage.
The company rewards contributors with seats at early movie screenings or swag such as action figures, dolls and mugs. The most popular ones, such as Jones, are awarded with paid contracts as freelancers – his was $1,000 (U.S.) a month – although Jones and the site said that arrangement had temporarily ended as school got in the way.
Jones says the arrangement is fair, and he's looking forward to restarting a paid relationship with the site. His father, Bart Jones, says he's proud that his son took the initiative last year to turn his love of Marvel movies into a job.
"They've paid him for his contributions. They certainly paid him well with the trip and the experience," says Jones, 47. "I don't see any other avenues offering this type of experience to 16-year-olds. I think it's great."
The younger Jones wrote after the red-carpet event that the movie was "infinitely better than the first" Avengers, but called a mid-credits scene that teased future movies "frustrating" because it "leaves us with so many more questions than answers."