Tran Phuong Thao, Director for business and marketing at theBHD Co. Ltd, said current marketing and distribution strategies are making ithard for Vietnamese films to access European and American markets. Filmmakershave just paid attention to the domestic market as they thought the domestic audienceare more important, and films are distributed in international markets onlywhen they make a hit locally.
Besides,comedies are more popular in the domestic market as they can easily access thelocal audience, but this genre is not a favourite choice of internationalwatchers, she pointed out, perceiving that how to distribute Vietnamese filmsto global markets remains a big challenge.
Apart from content-related hurdles, producers in Vietnamhaven’t built detailed production plans, leading to a failure in distributingfilms to other countries, Thao added.
Winnie Lau, former head of Asian production and distribution ata subsidiary of SKE, held that although Vietnam has a developing cinema market,production cooperation remains limited among the local film producers. Other countriesin Asia like China and Japan share similarities in culture, market, andproducers, so it is not too difficult for their films to access global markets.
Meanwhile, Nguyen Pham Hoang Quan, CEO of media company ProductionQ,said one reason behind limited film marketing and distribution strategies isthat producers have yet to truly understand film marketing. They need to learnabout their target audience, introduce outstanding points of their filmprojects to attract watchers, and change audience access approaches.
Producers who plan to distribute film to internationalmarkets need to make thorough preparations, including devising detailedstrategies for marketing on different platforms to access as many people aspossible. A successful film project in other countries needs effectivecoordination between the marketing staff and producers, he opined./.