Exclusive Q&A Interview: Movie Marketing (Part 1)
We’ve hit on the growing importance studios have placed on marketing their movies several times over the last 18 months including here. And it just so happens we find ourselves smack in the middle of an interesting marketing campaign by Paramount to generate buzz over their new release Paranormal Activity. Furthermore we may be on the front edge of the phenomenon called Twitter bombing. Since part of what we’re about here on GITS is to learn about the business of movies and how it relates to screenwriting, I figured why not do a week-long focus on movie marketing.
To that end, we are fortunate to have an insider’s take on the subject. Our expert, who prefers to remain anonymous, has worked in marketing for one of the big movie studios for 7 years, first involved with specialty /indie-films, then moving up to the studio’s major motion picture division. I submitted 12 questions to her and got back 12 informative answers. We’ll go through them over the course of the next five days. Here are the first two questions and answers:
Q: Please enumerate the various aspects of what a movie studio’s marketing department is involved in.
A: A studio’s marketing team is made up of several different departments that each have very specific functions. Publicity teams are responsible for generating and managing publicity for each film, utilizing any of the talent from the film (can be actors, directors, writers, etc). Junkets, premieres, cast appearances on TV and at award shows are all handled by the publicity team at any given studio. Creative teams are responsible for creating TV spots, radio spots, trailers, one sheets, print ads, outdoor campaigns, etc for any given film. Media teams are responsible for all aspects of paid advertising for a film. The media department is given an advertising budget, and has to work within that budget to create an overall media plan. They decide where all of the films advertising dollars are spent, whether it be in broadcast (TV and radio), print (newspaper and general print), outdoor (billboards, bus sides, bus shelters, etc) or online.
And those marketing budgets have skyrocketed over the last decade:
The average production budget of a major studio movie reached $70.8 million in 2007. But to sell that movie to the public, studios spent another $35.9 on marketing for a total budget of $106.6 million per picture.
This means that when a studio decides to greenlight a movie, they have to anticipate spending on average at least 50% of the cost of producing the movie to market it.
Q: What are the major platforms (e.g., TV, radio, newspaper, online) that studios target when marketing a movie?
A: In my experience, television is where most of a studio’s advertising dollars are spent. Because a television spend (network, cable and local) can be measured in rating points against specific audiences, it remains the most trusted and utilized form of advertising for films. Newspaper advertising has certainly seen a shift in the last several years, as it’s seen as “old” and perhaps a dying media type. Online advertising has definitely seen growth over the years, and I’ve noticed that more and more of a films given advertising budget is shifting towards online media. Radio advertising is rarely used by the studio I work at unless there is a really great creative idea driving it, however I do know that other studios often use radio advertising to promote their films.
Note the growing focus on “online advertising.” On cue, here is an article the other day from The Wrap: “Friends of Facebook: Studio Marketers”. Social networks are ubiquitous, viral — and what’s more they’re free. Sounds like a marketing department’s dream:
“Couples Retreat” doesn’t hit theaters until Friday, and it hasn’t had any festival exposure to speak of. But the Vince Vaughn comedy already has more than 13,000 “fans” on Facebook grabbing production stills and video clips provided by Universal.
Better still, it’s got the fans taking all that stuff back to their own pages to share with their friends.
With the youthful, moviegoing audience watching less TV than ever, studio marketers have begun to aggressively mine what has quickly become their preferred media platform — the web.
The article describes how studios used the Web to promote Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Paranormal Activity, 9, Zombieland, and other recent films.
“This is just where the audience is now,” said David Singh, executive VP of creative content for Disney of the use of social networks by studio marketers. “Something like 70–80 percent of frequent movie-goers under 25 visit Facebook eight or nine times a day.”
Today, pretty much every Disney release has a robust Facebook marketing component, with the studio’s interactive marketing team spending what Singh estimates to be about 40 percent of its time and resources on social media endeavors.
40%! Clearly this ‘non-traditional’ media is becoming ‘traditional.’
So as we’ve learned from our anonymous marketing expert, movie studios have these big marketing departments comprised of publicity teams, creative teams, and media teams. The studio gives them a budget per each film and it’s up to the marketing department to figure out how and where it will make its best use of those dollars.
Here’s the thing: They’re not just competing against other movies. They’re competing against everything that can grab consumer’s attention — TV, online gaming, Twitter, texting, videogames, etc. And in this day and age where consumers are bombarded by advertisements, one huge challenge in marketing a movie is how to cut through the noise and get a message across to potential moviegoers?
But first, the marketing department needs to figure what ‘story’ they want to tell about the movie. We’ll get into that in tomorrow’s post and start to see where decisions by a screenwriter can help a movie’s marketing campaign — or make it a tougher task.
NOTE: Please understand I’m not implying that screenwriters have to think like marketing people. Rather I’m saying we should at least know how they think. What we choose to do with that knowledge is entirely up to us.
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