Big movie studios go shorter on marketing
Hollywood’s top three marketers think long, drawn-out ad campaigns for blockbusters is no longer the right strategy. Instead of teasing movies a year or more ahead of release, they are whittling it down to a few months – and seeing results (New York Times).
Take out:
- Top marketers at Disney, Universal and Warner Bros control $4bn in global ad spend
- They agree that long campaigns make less sense for most films
- Now creating more intensive campaigns a few months out
- Not necessarily spending less, but making better use of data
- “We're living in an on-demand society where people don't like to wait” - Michael Moses, Universal president of worldwide marketing
- “We're more interested in starting late, having a very high peak right at the start” - Blair Rich, Warner Bros worldwide marketing chief
- Better analytics mean “you're not doing as much shouting into a hurricane and hoping someone hears you” – Asad Ayad, Walt Disney Studios president of marketing
The new breed of top marketers at the Hollywood's biggest studios are shaking things up - and the strategic shift appears to be delivering. The New York Times article compares the 13-month build campaign for 'Suicide Squad' in 2016, which earned $747m at the box office, with the five-month blast for 'Aquaman' in 2018 which pulled in $1.1bn.
There's no like-for-like comparator, but all three marketers are taking the same approach, particularly for franchises and sequels - and it feels like they are weighting more towards digital, given the decreasing frequency blockbuster ads now appear on TV (until a few weeks before launch, usually on studio-associated channels).
It's an interesting contrast with Netflix and as Universal's Michael Moses suggests, a direct result of binge-enabling releases from the SVOD platforms: The streaming society does not want to wait - and the big studios are now marketing to a different tune.
