Another day, another workshop at Cannes Film Market's NEXT Pavilion. On the second-to-last day, the European association IPEDA (Independent Pan European Digital Association) presented two of its latest cutting-edge business cases: the TIDE Experiment and Walk This Way.

Aimed at strengthening the European film and VoD industry, IPEDA is a non-profit association responding to real business needs from its members, and helping them out with film distribution and marketing.

The Film Agency CEO Sarah Calderón illustrated the two IPEDA-powered initiatives, together with their coordinator, Alexia Krief.

This experimental approach to distribution consists of the day-and-date release of five movies in more than 15 European territories, set up by a conglomerate made up of Europe's top film distributors.

"Day-and-date strategies will soon play a major role in the distribution process, but we're not stopping there," said Krief. "We believe that a festival-to-date scheme might be crucial in boosting simultaneous releases in key festival selections and on VoD platforms, as well as widening the audience potential. Of course, marketing is key to promoting these films, and so are the various cross-promotional tools, so that's what we are mainly investing in."

Krief then addressed the Creative Europe-backed project Walk This Way. The initiative is dedicated to the screening of 34 films on VoD platforms across Europe through direct financial support for technical and marketing expenses. The films are not available in all of the EU countries, and they are released in packages, not individually, except for the Premium titles – ie, films with a strong commercial potential, which can be exploited as standalone works and/or used as the driving force behind a collection of titles.

Walk This Way boasts the support of leading international aggregator Under The Milky Way and digital marketing company The Film Agency. Its blog, which incorporates six languages, is proudly powered by Cineuropa, and managed by Laura Nanchino and Andrea D'Aquino.