It’s hard to stand out on TV these days but it certainly helps to have your own film festival. That’s something Turner Classic Movies (TCM) can boast, with the 7th annual TCM Film Festival taking over Hollywood’s classic movie palaces April 28 through May 1.

The festival is an opportunity to connect with fans, launch initiatives and establish TCM as something more than just a TV network.

Each year the festival has a different theme, and this year’s “Moving Pictures” allows for a broad and diverse programming slate that includes opening night film All the President’s Men and classics like Rocky and Network.

“The distinguishing factor this year is the plethora of unique presentations that touch on different aspects of film history,” said TCM’s Vice President of Brand Activations and Partnerships, Genevieve McGillicuddy, a programmer for the TCM Film Festival. “We have these every year, but we have more this year than ever before.”

The most unique of which is the revival of Smell-O-Vision for a screening of Holiday in Spain in the Cinerama Dome, which will be pumping out 20+ scents during the presentation.

“Every single festival that we do reflects the core value of the brand. The value is the context that we bring to the films,” said McGillicuddy. “At a film festival, the most obvious way in which context takes shape is bringing in experts, whether it’s someone who starred in the movie, produced, directed or wrote it, to talk about what that film means to them and share their insight. That’s central to what we do on the network. It’s central to everything that we do really.”

This year, festival guests include such luminaries as Faye Dunaway, Angela Lansbury and of course, the latest Lassie.

Seven years in, TCM has the marketing strategy down pat, utilizing its own air-time (and various Turner affiliates) alongside its social media platforms.

“We know the formula pretty well,” said McGillicuddy. “Obviously we do a lot of press around the event. But we don’t do a lot of out of home marketing. Frankly, we’ve sold out since year two, so there’s not a huge marketing budget around the event.”

This year, TCM streamlined its Twitter accounts, scrapping its TCM Film Festival specific account in favor of the overall umbrella of TCM.

“It made sense because we knew we could reach that larger audience for us on Twitter,” she said. “We broadcast interviews from the festival on our air, we also have a very robust festival website, which of course goes back to TCM.com, where we post information about what’s happening in Hollywood to our other social media platforms.”

The festival often acts as a launching pad for new initiatives, and this year TCM unveils TCM Backlot, the network’s first ever-official fan club.

“I’m super excited about this because I’ve seen how our other brand extensions, like the festival and the cruise and other things we’ve done over the years engages our fans. But they’re one-off’s or annual events, and they don’t reach the biggest audience we feel like we could,” said McGillicuddy. “We’ve had so much fun internally brainstorming, talking with fans, thinking about, ‘what could this be?’ It truly will be a fan-driven club in that we want to hear from people: ‘What do you most want?’ Our starting point is based on initial feedback.”

For an $87 yearly membership, fans will receive insider access to exclusive content (including podcasts and archival video), behind the scenes interviews and an ability to influence TCM’s own programming through contests and polls. You could even win a visit to TCM headquarters, to their movie ride in Orlando, or an opportunity to co-host a night of movies on-air.

At the festival this weekend, new members unlock access to Backlot-specific tours of the Academy film archive or the Hollywood Heritage museum, with similar initiatives planned throughout the year and around the country.

It’s obviously no accident TCM Backlot was launched a day before the festival, and that plans for a new streaming movie service with Criterion (FilmStruck) was announced the same week.

“The festival has always been considered a great launch platform for our key initiatives. In year 1, we did a sneak preview of a multi-part series called Moguls and Movie Stars. It doesn’t happen every year and we don’t necessarily consider holding back initiatives to launch at the film festival, but sometimes it makes sense to coordinate the timing on that,” said McGillicuddy. “There’s definitely conscious planning around launching at the festival. But it’s not the overriding factor for everything.”

In a statement, TCM general manager Jennifer Dorian added, “We are always looking for exciting and immersive brand extension opportunities and TCM Backlot offers just that - allowing fans the ability to go behind-the-scenes and dive deeper into the world of TCM, providing a consistently updated fan experience filled with entertaining content and engaging opportunities.”

You can smell the synergy even outside of the Cinerama dome. With networks constantly searching for ways to bolster fan involvement, TCM is the rare network with several successful annual events that inspire feelings of community.

“We challenge ourselves each year to put together a program that represents the best in classic film with an interesting variety of talent,” said McGillicuddy. “But ultimately the key to the film festival is the audience. We put this together from the beginning primarily thinking about that community experience and bringing in people from across the country. We’re really proud of the destination event that this has become. That is the most unique thing about the festival and what we’re most proud of.”

This weekend TCM is not only a destination on your TV menu, but in Hollywood.

[Image is courtesy of TCM]

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