CNBC Business | DEAD CERT

DEAD CERT

Getting your product featured in the right movie can boost both your sales and your image … and its not too bad for the film industry either. Colin Brown reports

Who better to sell a Volvo than a vampire? Millions of young teenage girls now swoon over the Swedish car-maker after seeing brooding actor Robert Pattinson tool around in a C30 in the first Twilight film. That movie sucked in $383m at multiplexes worldwide and turned the silver hatchback into an object of collateral lust. And yet Volvo never set out to capitalise on the Twilight phenomenon – probably because the film’s core demographic would never have been seen dead before in such a sensible set of wheels. They weren’t old enough to drive it anyway.

Although the car got a full four minutes of screen time, practically unheard of in product placement terms, Volvo concedes that Twilight was a missed opportunity in terms of building concerted awareness. But once bitten, never again shy. In the run-up to the late November 2009 release for the sequel, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, Volvo went into over-drive on cross-marketing, embracing social media, interactive games and sweepstakes throughout North America, France, Germany and the UK.

The fact that the sequel revolved around the Volvo XC60, a family-friendly crossover with even less youth appeal than the sporty three-door that starred in the original, was beside the point. The campaign sought to infuse the entire brand with sex appeal. And if young mothers who had become fans of the book could be tempted into considering a Volvo, so much the better. “This movie gives us an audience who haven’t acknowledged us before,” explained Linda Gangeri, Volvo’s national advertising manager, at the campaign launch. “It lets us break out of the paradigm of being seen only as a safety brand.”

Arguably, Volvo was itself playing safe by only sinking its teeth into the Twilight bandwagon after the franchise had caught fire. But such caution is shared across the entire advertising landscape, particularly when it comes to product placements and other forms of brand integrations. In a depressed economy that demands short-term results and demonstrable returns on marketing investment, agencies and their advertising clients are steering clear of anything but the most sure-fire media properties. Everyone remembers Tourism Australia spending US$26m on supporting Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, in the belief that the 20th Century Fox epic would do for Oz what Lord of the Rings did for New Zealand. Poor reviews and worse box office receipts boomeranged in the agency’s face.

For the filmmakers and their studios, however, the risks are almost non-existent – even though money rarely changes hands these days. For them, it’s a matter of free props and, above all, finding ways to stretch their advertising dollars at a time when global marketing costs can top €70m for a single Hollywood release. An example is the latest high-profile partnership between Paramount Pictures and American Airlines. In the upcoming film Up In The Air, George Clooney plays an executive whose job it is to fly around the US and fire people. His secret ambition meanwhile is to rack up 10 million frequent-flier miles. Racking up almost as much screen time as Clooney is American Airlines, whose logo, planes, flight attendants, lounges, not to mention its now fabled frequent-flier programme, feature prominently. In exchange for this product placement, the airline gave director Jason Reitman free filming access to its terminals, planes and the Admirals Clubs. In a post-modernist flourish, the airline even launched a Find Yourself Up in the Air contest for its frequent-flier customers.

Significantly, American Airlines is represented by Rogers & Cowan, a Los Angeles public relations firm that handles some of Hollywood’s biggest stars and has worked closely with Paramount and LeeAnne Stables, the studio’s head of worldwide marketing partnerships who helped get Burger King, Mountain Dew and General Motors to be partners in the 2007 blockbuster Transformers. In one of the most visible product placement deals ever struck, all of the Autobots in the toy-inspired film were designed after GM cars, and according to director Michael Bay, the deal saved him €2m on the budget. Ironically, despite bolstering sales of the 2010 Chevrolet Camaro, the auto giant itself could not be saved; GM filed for bankruptcy in June 2009 as the combined film franchise was crossing €1bn milestone at the global box office.

The Transformers movies were a massive success for the studio and the Hasbro toys that inspired the films. But who knows now what will become of the upcoming flood of toy-inspired offerings including Barbie and He-Man And The Masters of The Universe. Universal Studios’ overall deal with Hasbro includes a film based on Monopoly to be directed by former adman Ridley Scott. “In an era where brands have become the new stars, such films have become big opportunities,” proclaimed the studio’s then co-chairmen Marc Shmuger and David Linde. Neither man stayed long enough in the job to find out if they are right.

Even enduring classics can lead to some surreal associations. Earlier this year, a marketer of celebrity-driven drinks known as Iconic Brands struck a deal with Paramount Pictures’ licensing arm to develop, produce and market The Godfather Italian Organic Vodka. These and other too-good-to-be-refused deals fall under the catch-all umbrella of branded entertainment. That term encompasses all cross-promotions, production placements and ad-sponsored entertainment across every media platform including movies, television, videogames and the entire digital diaspora.

As a segment of the communications industry, media investment bank Veronis Suhler Stevenson reckons branded entertainment is the fastest growing of all right now: total spending in this area had reached €15.6bn by the end of 2009.

Numbers like these have convinced the independent film industry, starved of financing in the wake of Wall Street’s collapse, that brands will become their next big patrons. In the US, several online matchmaking platforms have been created to facilitate exchanges between content and brands.

Last month the UK Film Council appointed partnership agency Film Tree to develop “advertising-funded opportunities in film production”. The company says it is in talks with brands on behalf of UK producers on eight different projects and that brands could take equity stakes in films, or acquire distribution rights, as well as being integrated into them.

However, even with these opportunities, sponsorship of independent fare continues to take a back seat to product placements in safer Hollywood films, with guaranteed global distribution, as well as in events and virtual gaming environments.

“Independent producers will need to become more sophisticated when selling brand opportunities in their films – and agencies will need to be less risk-averse than they are right now,” says Adam Erlebacher, co-founder of online brokerage PlaceVine. “There had been attempts to create an auction platform but those were trying to automate a business that is very face to face. This is not an industry that can be reduced to a click-to-buy. We have essentially created an online dating service. The best advice we can give is that producers should start thinking about brand integration early in their process, particularly in this economy, when companies are seeking a higher return on investment through direct marketing channels. You need to find a brand that is completely aligned with your film. We can help in that matchmaking process, but once you have hooked up, those discussions go offline – we don’t go on their dates.”

Independent production companies may also find themselves in competition, at least for talent, from the advertisers themselves. A number of top agency agglomerations, including Publicis, Omnicom and Interpublic Group, have recently launch in-house production divisions in order to generate story-driven content on behalf of their clients.

Much of what will stem from these propaganda-producing entities will be in the form of webisodes and mini-films, albeit on lavish budgets. But one ad agency, the UK’s Mother, went all out and engaged cult British filmmaker Shane Meadows to direct a full-length film, Somers Town, on behalf of Eurostar.

As an infomercial, Somers Town could not have been any more discreet in terms of product placement. The only clue to its funding source were the locations in and around London’s St Pancras Station, a tactic designed to draw attention to Eurostar’s new London terminus. Yet the film generated an estimated €870,000 in PR for Eurostar for less than it would have cost to make a 30-second TV ad. British Airways, a competitor, even paid to play it in-flight.

It’s debatable whether Somers Town success can be replicated. Industry experts believe that Eurostar was plugging into Shane Meadows and his fan-base, rather than the film itself. Such brand-name filmmakers are in short supply – which helps explain why The Walt Disney Co. has been busy buying access to a range of demographics by loading up on a roster of diverse household names including Steven Spielberg, Jerry Bruckheimer and Guillermo del Toro plus Pixar and Marvel Comics. Similarly, former NBC chief Ben Silverman is seeking content creators for his new outfit, Electus – building, in effect, an advertiser-sponsored, multi-platform version of United Artists.

Continue along the same path and we may be witnessing the twilight years for old-style, product placements and crude sponsorships, but a new moon rising for branded talent.