Film Festival Marketing Campaign for "A Simple Machine"

Project Overview

A Simple Machine is an independent feature film directed by Mark Alan Hoffman, a coming-of-age story about freedom, debt, and a bike. As the film prepared for its Cleveland International Film Festival screenings, the challenge was clear: how do you drive meaningful turnout, local buzz, and real audience engagement for an indie film with a very limited marketing budget?

That’s where Peaceful Media came in. Our goal wasn’t just to “run some ads.” It was to help the film show up like an event — something the local community could rally around — while proving that independent filmmakers can absolutely fill seats and build momentum with the right targeting, creative, and strategy.

Deliverables

Meta Ad Campaigns

Work With Us

Meta Ad Campaigns

Case Study Details

The Plan

For A Simple Machine, we focused on a hyper-local, festival-specific campaign designed to connect the film’s themes with the right communities in Cleveland. Rather than marketing the screening broadly and hoping for the best, we built a strategy around identifying the audiences most likely to care deeply about this particular film.

That included:

Cleveland-area indie film lovers
film festival attendees and arts audiences
bicyclists and cycling enthusiasts, given the film’s central themes
local community members interested in lifestyle, culture, and alternative ways of living

We also wanted the campaign to feel bigger than a screening announcement. So alongside the ticket-purchase push, we promoted a community-centered pre-screening bicycle ride that brought the spirit of the film into the real world. That move helped position A Simple Machine as more than just a movie; it became a local happening, a conversation, and a shared experience.

Results

With a highly targeted Meta campaign and a total ad spend of roughly $750, we helped drive exceptional engagement and turnout for the film’s Cleveland screenings.

Key outcomes included:

Two Cleveland International Film Festival screenings filled
3,300+ landing page clicks
Reach of approximately 67,000 highly targeted people in the Cleveland area
Cost per landing page click of roughly $0.20
Strong local engagement around the pre-screening community bike ride
A campaign that successfully translated the film’s themes into a real-world community activation

For a niche indie film with a modest budget, those results are remarkable. More importantly, they demonstrate something many filmmakers underestimate: you do not need a massive studio spend to generate attention and ticket demand — you need sharp positioning, great creative, and the right audience strategy.

Tech & Tools

This campaign combined lean-budget paid media with event-centered community promotion and performance tracking.

Key tools and tactics included:

Meta Ads for hyper-local audience targeting and ticket-driving campaigns
Geographic targeting focused on the Cleveland region
Interest targeting layered around indie film, festival attendance, cycling, and related lifestyle affinities
Landing page optimization to maximize click-throughs and conversions
Social ad creative tailored to both the screening itself and the related bicycle ride activation
Performance analysis focused on reach, landing page clicks, click-through rate, and cost efficiency

Conclusion

A Simple Machine is a powerful example of how independent film marketing can work when it’s approached with both precision and imagination. Instead of relying on passive festival exposure alone, we helped create a targeted, place-based campaign that moved people from awareness to action.

For indie filmmakers, the lesson is simple: your marketing should not begin and end with a poster and a trailer. When you understand your film’s emotional hooks, cultural overlaps, and local communities, you can create the kind of momentum that fills seats, sparks conversation, and gives your project a life beyond the screen.

”Working with Peaceful Media was a game changer for A Simple Machine. With a very limited budget, they helped us precisely target Cleveland indie film fans and cyclists, promote a community bike ride, and ultimately fill our festival screenings. This will now be our blueprint going forward for other cities and regions and has huge value.
Mark HoffmanDirector of "A Simple Machine"