The sun was shining and the mountains couldn’t have looked any more inviting, but Playback did the responsible thing Friday morning and hit up the Maverick Marketing for Indie Film panel Friday morning at the Whistler Film Festival.

In front of an audience of independent filmmakers, a panel including Katherine Dodds, founder and creative director of Hello Cool World, Danish Vahidy, director, theatrical marketing, Mongrel Media, and international film business consultant Peter Belsito, sought to share their hard-won wisdom about what works and what doesn’t in today’s vast mediascape.

The bottom line repeatedly hammered home by all the panelists? It doesn’t matter what medium you use, you have to know your target audience. It really is that simple.

“Marketing begins when you sit down and you have the idea for the film and you think in that moment, who’s going to see the film,” said Peter Belsito. “That’s when you start thinking about it and it never ends.

“It comes from the filmmaker,” he continues. “They understand who they are making the movie for. What you have to do with distributors, you’ve got to explain to them what their ideas are.”

Dodds had an especially interesting perspective, having built “viral” campaigns (for the time) for ’90s NFB documentary Manufacturing Consent, and 2003’s The Corporation.  Despite the ease of reaching target audiences created by technology, she emphasized, the fundamental idea of researching an audience, finding influencers and compelling people to become ambassadors for your product are the same as they’ve ever been.

Dodds dazzled the audience (or me, anyway) when she pulled out a poster featuring The Corporation‘s trademark corpo-man logo and “Occupy” creative, made four weeks ago when Reuters listed the film as one of the movement’s most influential cultural references. Despite the film being seven years old – and despite the fact that Hello Cool World is going pro bono on the work – they continue to sell merchandise on Hello Cool World website and after the Reuters article came out, web traffic to the site jumped 50%.

That, she said, is the power of taking the time to carefully, painstakingly cultivate an audience and continue to cultivate them long after a film has been released. Check out their site for The Corporation creative and ongoing creative efforts for 2009 doc 65 Red Roses.

For more perspective on indie film marketing, check out Playback’s Fall 2011 issue (page 17) and for the latest and greatest in marketing from Canadian brands in the ad world, check out our sister publication, Strategyonline.ca, which keeps a daily tally of everything new in the ad world. Specifically, check out strategy and Playback‘s recent AToMiC awards, in which we explore the most intersections between advertising, media and technology.

Following the marketing presentation, we checked out the mountains for a few hours – so sunny! – and then headed off to the apres reception at the Westin, where we learned more about upcoming transmedia event Merging Media from Christine Lim-Labossiere and talked more theatrical marketing with Mongrel’s Vahidy about the still-secret campaign in development to support Sarah Polley’s Take this Waltz.

The day ended with the Brightlights Pictures Whistler Film Festival White Carpet Party at Araxi, the evening’s hot ticket, where indie filmmakers, financiers and industry execs mixed and mingled around some of the fanciest food of the festival.

The best conversation of the night? Talking with Canadian composer Daniel Ingram, who composes for the Vancouver-animated My Little Pony Friendship is Magic, about “bronies.”

What’s a bronie? A grown man who loves My Little Pony. They are legion. Nope, not making that up. Even Wired wrote about it. They do fan art, go to conventions and flock to Ingram’s Facebook site. Now that’s some strange stuff.