Marketing vs. Politics

The Los Angeles Times posted a photo essay on its website highlighting the similarities between the movie marketing business and the business of campaign politics.  They used Barack Obama’s campaign as their case study.  They write:

Getting elected to the White House is a lot like opening a Hollywood blockbuster these days. And nowhere is that more in evidence than Barack Obama’s campaign after his speech on race in America.

With the current election cycle consuming the thoughts and dreams of a great majority of Americans, commentators have begun bemoaning the inevitable blurring of the lines between politics and entertainment. Young people get their news from “The Daily Show,” a comedy program, and politically minded voters are putting their energies into creating Internet videos that rely more on cheesecake than issues-oriented slogans.

Some pundits are calling Obama’s race relations oration the most defining speech of his campaign. However, it’s the Obama media blitz that has followed that is most reminiscent of Tom Cruise’s or Denzel Washington’s pre-movie release talk show rounds.

They go on to highlight Obama’s surprise visit to Saturday Night Live, making time for the talk shows (like the Tyra Banks Show) and his ability to “Move the Merch” (translation: sell t-shirts and stuff) and seven other overlapping strategies.

What the LA Times doesn’t note, however, is that the Obama campaign has actually been more successful than Hollywood at engaging people and mobilizing them to action.  All the candidates have been really.  A movie ticket only (only!) costs you $10 and requires a commitment of 90 minutes, but Hollywood still can’t get a major blockbuster to stay on top of the charts for more than a couple of weeks.  The Obama campaign has millions of people donating $25, $50 and $100 at a time (several times over) and spending hours making phone calls, knocking on doors, and similar.  And he is doing it in a more challenging environment — talking about serious issues like healthcare and war and race.

The reason for the success: It is not because he is a ‘rock star’ (though that doesn’t hurt) or because he goes on the Daily Show.  His success is the result of his substance — its because he’s talking about the issues that people care about, the things that impact our daily lives.  All the candidates are… maybe not enough, or in enough detail, but Senator Obama and the others are all talking about issues.  And that’s what we want, that is the key to success - understanding what the audience wants to hear about and delivering on their expectations.  It’s a tough time in America, the economy is slowing, the war is dragging on, people are concerned and looking for answers.  In hollywood terms, he has a better script, a more interesting plot.

Hollywood should pay attention to the Obama campaign, and politics in general.  If they can start to relate their work more closely to the serious issues that impact people’s lives — and if they can do it well (and seriously and authentically the way political candidates are doing it) they might just see the kind of interest that Seantor Obama and other political candidates are enjoying transferring over to blockbuster movies again as well.

Shut Up & Run the Ads

I wrote a post yesterday discussing the marketing efforts behind Shut Up & Sing, the new documentary about the Dixie Chicks and their criticism of President Bush.  You didn’t see it?  Nobody did.  My computer froze up and I lost the text before I was able to put it up online.  Too bad — when I wrote it yesterday morning, this was a small story and my analysis looked really solid.  Now its a big story and I am late to the conversation.  Alas.

So what are people talking about?

The documentary tracks the fallout that resulted after lead singer, Natalie Maines, said she was “ashamed” that President Bush was from Texas, the Chicks’ home state.  The comment prompted a boycott of the Chicks’ music by conservatives and opened up a discussion about freedom of speech among scholars and those in the music industry.  Time passed, things died down.  But now, the documentary has brought the controversy back to the fore — and with a new twist.

A handful of media venues have refused to run advertising promoting the movie.  The LA Times covered it yesterday.  There was a story on NPR’s Weekend Edition this morning.  And the Washington Post summed it up this way:

It all started earlier this week when Weinstein submitted ads for its new Barbara Kopple documentary “Shut Up & Sing” to the broadcast networks for review by their standards and practices departments.

NBC said it “cannot accept these spots as they are disparaging to President Bush.”

CW said it “does not have appropriate programming in which to schedule this spot.”

Weinstein said: “Eureka!”

And on Thursday evening, it sent out a news release headlined:

“In an Ironic Twist of Events, NBC and the CW Television Networks Refuse to Air Ads for Documentary Focusing on Freedom of Speech.”

“It’s a sad commentary about the level of fear in our society that a movie about a group of courageous entertainers who were blacklisted for exercising their right of free speech is now itself being blacklisted by corporate America,” bemoaned Weinstein Co. co-chairman Harvey Weinstein.

“The idea that anyone should be penalized for criticizing the president is sad and profoundly un-American,” he added.

As I see it, this hubub was not only anticipated by Harvey Weinstein and his team, it was a key part of their promotional strategy.  How else would you get coverage for a small-budget documentary film in today’s big-budget Hollywood movie promotion craziness?  We have a very tense election cycle coming to an end just two weeks from now, and a national media that is feasting on any criticism of the war, or the President, they can find.  All you had to do was light the fire. 

Of course, now the networks are in a no-win situation now — if they don’t run the ads, the press continues to cover the story (helping the movie gain traction, and the stations look selectively moral), and if they do run the ads, they look like they caved.  I think they should run the ads - networks would benefit greatly by becoming a part of the political dialogue and letting the population decide on its own.  Be fair, show ads promoting and criticizing the movie if that opportunity exists, but don’t limit one perspective from being heard because you are afraid of your audience.

Give credit to Weinstein and Co. for recognizing the opportunity to use the news cycle to promote their movie.  It is not a new strategy — MoveOn got into a similar fight with CBS around the Super Bowl a couple of years ago, and I have had clients whose online ads that venues have refused to run because of an arbitrary content standard.  In both cases press coverage resulted and the message ultimately got to the target audience. I don’t think it will work for any movie or event, but its a strategy that more organizations should understand and pursue.

iMedia Panel: Gaming Creating & Execution

The afternoon focus at the iMedia Breakhrough Summit Panel was gaming.  The title of this panel: “Gaming Creating & Execution.”

Moderater

- Julie Schumaker, National Director of Sales, Video Advertising - EA

Participants 

- Gerard LaFond, Partner - Persuasive Games (also President of Red Tangent)

- Claire Lipnicki Ekizian, Account Director - MarketSource IMS

- Gordon Paddison, Executive Vice President, Integrated Marketing - New Line Cinema

Our topic is dynamics and challenges in the process of advertising in video games.  We all want to know methodologies and what is the ROI.  What isn’t as often covered is the actual execution - which can be quite challenging.  This panel should help people understand what is the A to Z of being part of game.  Focus on Video Game Integration (aka branded entertainment/product placement) and Advergaming (where the brand is actually the entertainment).

Q: What challenges have you faced in putting Castrol Syntec to a game?

Claire: It was a very long process - over 18 months.  Long decision making process, very long on integration. 

Q: Timing.  How does advergaming create a better solution from timing?

Gerard: The timeline to create an advergame is only 2-3 months.  You can typically get something up in about the time it would take to film a tv spot.  You can also re-skin a popular arcade game, which can happen very fast.  That is the entry level.  But the challenge is creating a custom advergaming.

Q: How does a non-entertaining brand make entertainment out of games?

Gerard: I don’t think every brand is right for advergaming.  There is an opportunity in advergaming that is similar to the opportunity in the game space as a whole.  But, that creates challenges for advertisers.  They have to tell good stories. 

Q: Is it building a game experience, or just building media?

Gordon: Advergaming is content.  We created a game in 18 days for a film, Running Scared, which was a good example of both advergaming and in-game advertising.  Every element of the game was preceded by a video clip.  We had an age gate (to make sure people were 17+). It got picked up by the blogs, and then the mainstream media - it got a lot of attention then.  The game followed the character development and that worked really well.  There were in-game placements, such as a movie theater actually in the game (with a reference to the movie) and buildings/billboards that featured information about the film.  They were funny, irreverent enough (didn’t take themselves too seriously) - the goal was to make the audience laugh, and drive them to the movie.  The question is — what level of gaming engagement do you require for your brand?  In some cases, all we need are people to sample.  If they are going to the site they already have awareness, so just a little bit of conversion is good.

Claire: We want to associate our brand with the game.   We want more than just a quick hit.  We had bonus packs, a cheat code (available on the Castrol Syntac website) that tied back involvement to the brand.  We really wanted people to immerse themsleves in it.

Q: Viral marketing has to be a big part of video games.  How do you create that?

Gerard: The games can’t live in a silo by themselves.  It has to be a part of an overall communications and marketing effort - with online and offline partners.  But if the game isn’t any good, isn’t controversial (doesn’t have sex, isn’t funny or irreverent) - then it will languish.  There are ways to get around that.  You can go to a game portal and find a built in audience.  You can partner with larger game portals (Yahoo! Games, etc.).  And 99% of the time we are giving away an advergame, so we don’t care who has it, just that its out there.

Gordon: There are a lot of grassroots and offline initiatives you could try.  But you have to remember the game is trying to sell the brand, the product - so you need the game to do its job and promote the product, and not rely on the existing packaging for the product to promote the game.

Q: How do you become a part of the story?

Gordon: You give a creative brief to a bunch of crazy game developers, they come back with someone insane, and you say go for it. If its safe enough, you put it out in the light of day  If its not safe, you put it out in the middle of the night and then promote the heck out of it.  Remember, we aren’t trying to reach consumers, they are malcontents. There are certain brands that are natural for this space (Red Bull) and make sense in the environment.  They are also consumed while people are playing games.  So its about finding the audience and going after them appropriately.

Q: Isn’t it an oxymoron that endemic brands need to be in games?

Gordon: How many energy drinks are out thre?  How do you differentiate Red Bull from another drink?  That’s when the lead time can benefit - someone can say they have a movie coming out in March ‘07 or a new drink in Summer of ‘08 and they can fit. 

Claire: That’s why it made sense for Castrol to be in a game.  Selling motor oil in the context of a racing game s something we will also want to do.  So we had the time to get it right.  Now we can do even more of it.

Gerard: If you are dealing with game product you have to be dealing with gamers.  Often we are selling to an agency or a brand manager who may not be a gamer.  What we often end up doing is buying a console and some games and tell them to play.  Then we will talk to them about why it makese sense.  Its really important to be deadling with gamers.

Q: Can you name a really Bad Game?

Gerard: Go to the WD40 website - there is a game where things start squeaking and you spray them.  That’s just silly.  There is the potential for a backlash if you make a bad game.

Q: Can you give an example of bad In Game Integration?

Gerard: I don’t like in-game advertising, because I am a gamer and I am really concerned about my favorite games becoming filled with advertising.  There is an opportunity for something like an oil brand in a racing game.  Or a handheld device that is integral to the story.  But there is constantly a tension in sports game - there are some things that are ok (you expect billboards in a stadium) but don’t overdo it.

Gordon: I agree 100%, except sports games, anything that mirrors the real world - if you could stream live ads to extend the broadcast opportunity into the game, that is the reality of the situation.  That’s the normal experience.  They expect that.

Q: What is over the top? 

Gerard: A lot of the automoative brands we work with are worried about doing something bad, going too far.

Claire: Castrol Syntec wouldn’t do anything that crazy.

Final Comment: If game are going to become an ad medium, they have to be more scalable than they are currently.

Post-Oscars

Big surprise this year as Crash wins Best Picture over Brokeback Mountain.  I saw both movies - both were great, but Crash deserves the award (I admit, I picked Brokeback Mountain because the pundits said it would win.  I should know better than to listen to pundits).

I thought Jon Stewart was funny last night.  Mathew Gilbert at the Boston Globe agrees. Tom Shales at the Washington Post does not. 

But Giuliana DePandi, on E!, was the one to watch last night.  She doesn’t ask canned questions, she seems genuinely excited to be talking to the stars (and their agents, publicists, and others) — her Red Carpet and post-show coverage was the best.

Watching the Oscars

I will be watching the Oscars tonight.  They say there will be about a billion people watching along with me. Daniel Radosh claims that the number is “preposterous.”

My picks:

Best Picture: Brokeback Mountain

Best Director: George Clooney

Best Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman

Best Supporting Actor: Paul Giamatti

Best Actress: Felicity Huffman

Best Supporting Actress: Rachel Weisz

I have picks for all the others, but I figure those are the most interesting.  I’ll post later with my thoughts on the show.