Lionsgate Theatrical Marketing Vice President Owen Ward founded Disruptive Strategies Group to bring the tools and secrets of award-winning global marketing to independent producers, non-profits, businesses and political organizations. 

The time has never been better for independent film producers to get their work in front of the right audiences. The studios' stranglehold on distribution is over - there is a plethora of streaming and direct-to-consumer digital channels available now that were not tenable even five years ago. 

At Disruptive Strategies Group, we believe that independent producers can and should have control over building audiences around their films and missions, and we have been pleased to help independent producers do exactly this over the last 15 years. 

 

About Owen J. Ward
President and CEO of Disruptive Strategies Group

5 Hollywood Reporter Key Art Awards including Best Horror Trailer and Best Action/ Adventure/
Horror TV Spot.
 
13 Golden Trailer Awards including Best Drama Trailer and Best Drama, Horror and Thriller TV
Spots

In his role as Vice President, Theatrical Marketing for Lionsgate, Owen led creative marketing to efficiently execute effective campaigns using limited staff and extremely tight budgets. He and his team established and leveraged relationships to create multi-platform strategies with Print, Digital and Traditional Media teams as well as Exhibition, International and Home Entertainment groups. Outside the company, they built and maintained relationships with key filmmaking, research, media and creative partners as well as key regulatory groups and guilds such as the DGA, WGA and MPAA. They also oversaw Spanish language campaigns targeted to the lucrative and rapidly growing Hispanic market.

Some campaigns from Owen and his team are:

  • Academy Award winner Precious
     
  • The Expendables, Lionsgate’s highest grossing picture at the time reaching over $100 Million in
    domestic box office
     
  • Saw, the highest grossing horror franchise of all time
     
  • The highly successful Tyler Perry franchise including Madea Goes to Jail
  • Specialty and documentary titles such as Away From Her and Bill Maher's Religulous
     
  • Family films such as Alpha & Omega
  • Special shoots including Saw 3D audience reaction footage which formed the
    backbone of the successful campaign, shot in 3D with teams who collaborated on Avatar.

 

The Burden: Fossil Fuel, The Military and National Security
Independent Film

An independent filmmaker approached us looking to raise funds and awareness for his documentary on the military dangers of America's dependence on fossil fuels, The Burden. He needed to raise money to complete the film and meet film fesitval submission deadlines, and generate buzz to support his festival applications.

We began with an ambitious four-week Kickstarter campaign to raise funds. Our campaign centered around a robust website built on NationBuilder, which made it easy to share updates and add new signups to our email list. We launched a robust email blasting campaign, targeting our followers multiple times per week. Contributions always spiked around emails, and NationBuilder made it easy for us to keep sending them. We created an online event around the campaign for the whole month, offering behind-the-scenes looks, swag and other bonuses to our to help create a real community around the message of the film. 
 
We exceeded our $50,000 goal before the campaign ended and the film went on to become a festival darling.