What: ICG 41st Annual Publicists Awards
When: Noon (arrivals, 11 a.m.) Friday
Where: BevHilton
Special Awards Clint Eastwood: Lifetime Achievement
Dick Cook, Disney chairman: Motion Picture Showmanship
Sandy Grushow, former Fox TV chairman: Television Showmanship
Walt Disney Studios: 80th Anni Tribute
For movie release campaigners, it's a brave new world.
Globalization and piracy have made day-and-date openings increasingly de rigeur. The Los Angeles press junket has become the L.A., New York, Tokyo and Sydney press junket. The MTV interview now includes the MTV online interview. And the DVD release party is just as lavish -- and talent-heavy -- as opening night.
As the scope and expense of marketing mushrooms, time has shrunk. More films compete for attention. The opening shot that announces each new movie --from sponsorships to TV specials -- carries more weight than ever before, and can be fired only once.
How to navigate this complex terrain? Marketing and publicity execs say the key is to be more strategic about where marketing money is spent, an equation that varies with each film. They also say balance is imperative.
"It's about how you creatively spend dollars, it's not about buying more spots," says Jeffrey Godsick, executive VP marketing for 20th Century Fox. "You look at the cultural penetration."
Fox spent plenty on the "boat-in" screening of "Master and Commander" in San Diego two weeks before the film's release, which involved docking one of the frigates from the movie. Still, stunts like that often don't count for much in an editorial meeting. Considered more influential was Fox's decision to screen two reels of the film to a select audience last summer.
Such a move is risky (and makes most directors' skin crawl), since an unfavorable response can generate bad press long before audiences have a chance to judge for themselves. But in today's high-stakes arena, risky moves can make the difference. Two weeks before Fox's "Master and Commander" landed in theaters in November, Russell Crowe captained the cover of Time magazine in 19th-century naval garb. Three months earlier, Entertainment Weekly ran a cover dedicated to the film.
Going out early isn't a strategy for all films, however. Most publicists have a healthy fear of heightened expectation.
In some cases, "You want to be very careful how many people you show it to beforehand," says publicist Bumble Ward. "If the praise becomes hyperbolic, when people they've expected so much they're disappointed."
"Lost in Translation," Ward says, had a campaign that worked because it didn't overreach. "We had to keep saying, 'It's a small movie,' so that people weren't expecting a Mexican standoff and 30,000 extras."
The Internet is a medium that in recent years has become essential to every release campaign, whether through interactive Web sites or online press.
In December, seven months before the release of Sony's "Spider-Man 2," a teaser trailer for the film debuted on Yahoo!'s home page in 13 countries. The popular search engine has been able to sell movie-related ad space on its home page with increasing frequency.
"The Internet is both a blessing and a curse," Ward says. "The good side is there are more outlets and more people are given a voice. The bad is that ill-informed, badly advised opinions are out there and are being paid attention to as legitimate."
The amount of media clutter that exists today versus a decade ago, from Web sites to cable channels, can also make it difficult for publicists to be heard, particularly if their message is unfamiliar to the public.
"It becomes harder to get the media to lead and say, 'This is a really great movie and a terrific actor, take a chance,' instead of doing Jennifer Lopez for the 87th time," says Mark Pogachefsky, co-president of mPRm.
The attention of the public is far more fractionalized -- a conundrum marketers are under increasing pressure to solve.
"Today you have more than 100 different networks and an audience that is so fragmented that it just forces a marketer, a studio, to go after an audience in so many different ways that it just adds to the expense," says Disney chairman Dick Cook. "It's very difficult to deliver an overwhelming audience today."
Cook estimates that movie marketing costs are more than 50% of a film's total budget. Part of that expense is dedicated to supporting such ancillary markets as videos and DVDs, which have grown into substantial revenue streams.
"A DVD release could have as large or a larger impact than a theatrical release, so bigger costs are necessary to carry those markets in order to turn a profit," says Jeanne Berney, whose New York-based agency worked on the "Monster" and "Whale Rider" campaigns and who is a former executive VP of film at Rogers and Cowan.
The real monster, in terms of challenges, is globalization. "You used to open a movie in the U.S. and take a collective sigh and look at the rest of the world," Berney says. "Now the rest of the world already knows about the movie."
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