mediation

Marketing and Movies: why Avatar, for all its three-dimensionality, felt distinctly two-dimensional

so I'm lucky enough to have just seen an opening screening of Avatar.  the movie has been a long time coming and if buzz is anything to go by its set to do rather well.  actually buzz is something to go by...  research by Aegis' ævolve shows a clear correlation between the amount of buzz a movie has in advance of release and the size of its opening weekend.  Google Insights for search, as you'd expect, shows the same thing, very significant increases over the last month or so:

its a big movie for both audiences and those involved but also for Hollywood.  with revenues increasingly moving to DVD and online, maximising revenues in cinema theatres is top priority for executives of studios that are feeling the pinch of a digitised economy more than most.

3D is key to this, and despite criticisms from, well, critics that far from adding to the cinema experience, 3D distracts from the quality of viewing, its a key strategy for maximising revenues in cinemas.  of course it also makes, for the moment, the cinema experience unique.  its normal if not preferable to watch a movie in the comfort of your home with the quality that we've come to expect from a cinema.  plus no one talks behind you and you don't have to cock your head to one side to see 90% of the screen.  3D is currently a unique offering in cinemas, an offering that can be uniquely monetised in cinemas.

in many ways, the technology is the draw of this movie; yet for all its future-facing there's been no sign of the ambitious and 21st century marketing initiatives some of us have come to expect post Cloverfield, Batman Begins and the like.  in fact for all its 21st Century technology Avatar feels distinctly 20th Century in its marketing...  all the opportunities to engage a potential audience up front thru transparency were dismissed, in favour of a publish-and-be-damned approach to make a movie and sell it.

and selling it is what this movie has been all about...  marketing efforts, for all their visibility, demand that you watch this movie rather than genuinely be part of the world from which it derives.  for all its 21st century capabilities there's nothing of the Wachowski in here: no world beyond the world to discover and explore.  and this seems distinctly ironic.  for a movie that cost $500m dollars to create, we surely deserve more than 150 minutes of cinema.  this movie begged for the trans-media but got nothing of the like: in a declined economy, $500m could be easily mistaken as a metaphor for what Cameron calls 'the Unobtanium'.

Things media and communications can't change #147: why advertising can't turn Transformers 2 into a good movie

oh dear.  Michael Bay probably regrets the memo - leaked to and reported in post on TMZ - he sent to Paramount in which he called the film's print campaign an "abject failure".  telling the studio that "you talk so glowingly about Transformers being the movie of the summer, but unfortunately this has not got to the public ... I have been waiting and waiting for the anticipation of an 'event movie' to make it into the 'public zeitgeist' ... Right now, we are not an event, we are just a sequel, which is very different. There is no anticipation. Remember back to Spider-Man 2 - it was everywhere."

all together now...  "advertising can't turn a bad product into a good one Michael".  I guess that in fairness we used to be able to get away with it; there was less choice, hits ruled the tail, and we didn't always know what we were buying until we'd bought it.

information and knowledge transparency: we all have instant access to what the world knows.  we can research, reveal and review products and services in a second.  no one takes a punt on anything anymore - why would you when everything has been reviewed and rated by the crowd...  we don't rely on the promise of a glitzed up poster any more.

Bay's issue - that advertising can't make people watch a bad movie - is something I think we all struggle with from time to time...  we all of us - clients and agencies alike - want the products and services on which we work to be a success.  we look for the best in them, be it a nuanced intrinsic we can pull out or a genius consumer insight that will activate behavioural change.

situations where brands are divorced from products and services are at best a sticking plaster and at worst a disaster waiting to happen.  perception get's out of step with reality.  marketing (and specifically media spend) becomes an expensive cost of being in business.

some of the best marketing stories emerge when communications are a natural extension of product.  no one should know this better than movies...  Blair Witch and The Matrix brought us Transmedia Storytelling, Cloverfield was a powerplay for The Mystery Box, The Dark Knight's Vote Harvey Dent ARG was genius, even SAW understands what it's really about and has a theme park ride.

there's a reason Transformers 2 didn't make it into the 'public zeitgeist' and it's got nothing to do with it's marketing and everything to do with it not being very good.  I've seen it, it's a really, really bad movie which represents 147 minutes of my life that I'm never getting back; and in an age of radical transparency the best marketing campaign in the world can't change that.

The danger of applying old models to new technologies: why brands need to make the most of cinema's platinum future

Monsters vs Aliens; Hollywood's latest digital offering

Pearl & Dean are hosting their first annual Film Festival today... think presentations interrupted by movies (or vice versa depending on your attitude).  Mediation popped along this morning and heard a couple of cracking presentations.

the first - Peter Buckingham from the UK Film Council - outlined the Council's view of cinema's future.  he observed that whilst "cinema has stubbornly maintained its analogue status", digital technologies would herald a new "platinum age" for the industry.  its predicted (by Charlotte Jones of Screen Digest) that there will be 250 x 3D cinemas in the UK by 2010, up from the 172 on which Monsters vs Aliens (above) launched earlier this month.  a good job too, considering Jerry Katzenberg - who knows a thing or two - has apparently predicted that within 5-7 years all movies will be 3D.

but 3D is only one aspect of cinema's revolution in the making: archive films are proving popular, as are "more obscure films" such as Man on Wire, indeed as Buckingham noted, "the big alternative content success [in cinema] is live Opera".  add to this live sport in 3D (as being trialled by Sky) and the concept as cinema-as-studio (broadcasting the Shine a Light premiere to other cinemas for example) and you get an idea of where cinema could be heading.

at the heart of the UK Film Council's digital cinema vision is community; cinema "in the hands of local audiences", with cinema as "facilitator as well as curator".  Buckingham cited locally produced UGC from schools and collages, Nollywood movies making it big in East London, and broadcasting of events such as Royal Society lectures as further evidence of this "democratisation of culture".

unfortunately talk moved on to brands, where the vision is apparently a little more limited in its scope.  producer Phil Streather observed that brands had the opportunity to make ads that made full use of the 3D 'punch'.  why is it that we can't attach some of the "platinum age" thinking to brands?

why settle for ads?  if the vision and hope is that cinemas become locally-centric centres of culture and content, why are we slapping the outdated and outmoded format of an ad on the front of them.  cinema's opportunity is the same for brands...  how can we use these screens as platforms for our points of view on the world?  what could we create and curate for these screens that say more about us than 30" of stuff with an awareness aim.

we're better than this, and if the promise that digital cinema offers is realised, audiences will expect better; platinum brand work for a platinum channel.

Contextualising communications for their media home: why the Orange Gold Spot gets Mediation's vote in DCM's ad-off

to celebrate their new on-screen identity, DCM (formerly Carlton Screen Media) are asking the industry to vote on their favourite ever cult cinema ad.  an panel of illustrious experts has narrowed the list down to ten finalists which you can view and then vote for here.

it's quite a list - everything from Kylie's 2001 jaunt on a red velvet rodeo bull for Agent Provocateur to Tony Kaye's surreal effort for Dunlop in 1994.  the best of the Diet Coke break ads is in there, as is Carling's Dam Busters, some Guinness Surfers and a reworked Bullitt chase with Steve McQueen behind the wheel of a Ford Puma.

but for me there can only be one winner.  in a cinema ad-off, the vote has to go to on-screen communications that have become as integral a part of the modern cinema experience as popcorn and Green and Blacks...  communications that have embraced not just the cinema screen but the Hollywood dream sprawling behind it.  comms that took said Hollywood dream and subverted it to within an inch of it's life - much to our collective amusement.

over the last five years Carrie Fisher, Snoop Dogg, Alan Cumming, Steven Seagal, Sean Aston, Daryl Hannah, Spike Lee, John Cleese, Macaulay Culkin and even Darth Vader have had their projects subjected to the interference of Mr Dresden and co.  the result for Orange is credibility in and associations with cinema that go far beyond the mere placement of an ad.  they own this particular bit of media real-estate in a way few other brands have achieved anywhere, let alone on cinema...

in combination with a BAFTA association and Orange Wednesdays, the Orange spot is the result of a determined focus from a marketing team and associated agencies that demonstrate the power of creating content that is contextualised for the channel in which it's appearing.  the Orange spot could only work in cinema, it's what gives it it's power.  and it's why it's getting Mediation's vote.

Surviving the BFI IMAX's SAW marathon: why too much of something can be just as tough

it was the Spice Girls who observed that "too much of something is bad enough, but something's coming over me to make me wonder of too much of nothing is just as tough"  ...well it's not.  you really can have too much of a good thing.  on Friday Mediation spent an all-night marathon in the company of Saw I thru V.  one night, two beers, three friends, four cans of Relentless and all five Saw movies in one sitting.

it all kicked off at 11pm on Friday night when Mediation and another 300 people gathered at the BFI IMAX near Waterloo.  the next nine hours of our collective lives was spent watching the five movies which collectively are the most successful horror series of all time.

whether I'm just getting too old for this or whether it came off of the back of a busy week, (or maybe it's because the fourth and fifth movies of the franchise are pants in comparison to the first three) it was tough old going.  I confess that my eyelids took over a short way into episode four but managed to rally to make it thru the silliness of the fifth ...and shortly after 9am Mediation emerged blinking into the grey winter light of Saturday morning.

the whole thing is utterly ridiculous of course, but it has to be said there is a genuine buzz when consuming content in the company of others who love said content enough to miss a night's sleep to do so.  a buzz that is heightened - to a degree - by the venue and staff who do their damdest to keep the spirits up and the coffee flowing.

they could do more to make the experience more of, well, an experience - but for that that matter so could brands...  the evening was a great opportunity for an energy drink or vitamin supplement to do some sampling and attach themselves to the experience of the event.

so opportunity missed this time round, but don't worry - the next all-nighter is already planned for May, where the IMAX will be screening all three Lord of the Rings movies in one go.  now where did I leave my detachable Orc-ears?