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Massive: The Advertising Summit 2013

Posted on by skulkaew

This week, Variety hosted Massive at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, a one-day summit dedicated to the convergence between advertising, content partners, digital media brands and next-generation technologies.

This was the first year I was able to make it out to the conference. And of the workshops presented, I thought that these three might have been the most timely given the changes we’ve seen across a quickly shifting media landscape.

The first was “Understanding Millennials for Ultimate Brand Success” by Melissa Lavigne-Delville, VP of Strategic Insights & Culture Editor at NBCUniversal and author of The Curve.

In it, she says: Millennials are unlike any other demographics. They consume media differently than those who preceded them. They’re influenced differently. They have different measures for success. They’re prone to moving back home as young adults and take longer to reach adulthood overall, and there are almost as many of them (born between ’76 and ’95) as there are baby boomers.

Because of that, advertisers and marketers have had to switch gears to reach out and engage not only them but also the ever changing modern family. According to the census, only 4% of American families today consists of a married couple where the wife stays home, the husband works, and their biological children are under 18. Another massive shift from the traditional family paradigm is that a whopping 41% babies are born to single moms.

So as family life changes so must entrepreneurs, advertisers and marketers.

The second workshop was “A Conversation with Google” presented by Jennifer Prince, Head of Industry, Media and Entertainment at Google, and moderated by Gordon Paddison of Stradella Road. In it, Prince reported that organic search queries on Google can reveal box office performance about one month before a release date with about 92%-94% accuracy.

According to Andrea Chen, Google’s principal industry analyst, “In the seven-day window prior to a film’s release date, if a film receives 250,000 search queries more than a similar film, the film with more queries is likely to perform up to $4.3 million better during opening weekend. When looking at search ad click volume, if a film has 20,000 more paid clicks than a similar film, it is expected to bring in up to $7.5 million more during opening weekend.”

While Google doesn’t plan on charging studios for tracking information, any actionable data might help movie marketers fine tune campaigns to better engage potential moviegoers and maximize revenue from theatrical runs.

The third and final workshop was “The Changing Rules of Audience Measurement.” Of the speakers, Jack Wakshlag, Chief Research Officer at Turner Broadcasting System, and David F. Poltrack, Chief Research Officer at CBS Corporation and President of CBS Vision, were the most authoritative.

What’s interesting is that despite fears that alternative consumption (e.g., streaming and DVR) might erode ad revenue, major content distributors view it as just another avenue to provide their service and sell advertising though the market is still very small. This year, only 2% of viewers took to streaming the NCAA tournament on CBS, but this makes live events even more valuable as viewers can’t cannot fast-forward through programming.

One intriguing sidebar made was on the importance of sound in commercials because even when viewers get up and walk away from the TV, any information heard keeps them connected even if they’re not in the immediate vicinity.

It should go without saying but collecting and analyzing data is a necessity for marketers to develop actionable insight. That’s pretty intuitive. What isn’t is the fact that how we adapt and respond to changes in the marketplace are paramount to long-term success. I say that because it’s easier to get caught up in one component: what the competition is doing, versus improving our own processes.

If I learned anything from Massive, it’s that businesses that effectively engage their people and have their finger on the pulse of what customers want will always have a competitive advantage.

Photo Credit: Jeffrey R. Staab (CBS), Virginia Sherwood (NBCUniversal), Variety

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Variety’s 2012 Film Marketing Summit

Posted on by Daniel Arriola

The third annual Variety Film Marketing Summit covered a range of topics from movie-going opportunities in BRIC countries to social marketing and the current state of film distribution and marketing. On the list of conferences and seminars, this one would have to be near the top due to the quality of speakers and moderators.
The first discussion of the day was perhaps the most intriguing, “Opportunities in Emerging Markets.” With representatives from Fox International Marketing and RealD the focus was mainly on China, the second biggest film market in the world.
China is the wild west of film. Numerous inconveniences stand in the way of American studios but it is too large of a market to ignore. Studios rely on the China Film Group’s revenue numbers to collect their percentage of the share, and even then it takes a long period of time to receive the money. The China Film Group also restricts foreign films to 40% of the market and has a large influence over release dates, often not giving the studio advance notice of the final release date. At this point it becomes a mad dash to get the marketing in order.
Films are marketed in China largely via TV, outdoor and digital media. The largest social network in China, Renren, is used regularly and social media had a large impact on Titanic recording $145MM in revenue. Director driven publicity goes a long way in China. James Cameron made an appearance at the Beijing Film Festival to coincide with the Titanic rerelease.
3D Films are very popular in China, accounting for about 40% of the box office. 3D is a way of piracy protection because consumers know they can’t replicate the same experience at home with their bootlegged version.
Another interesting topic covered the marketing for the film Ted. While I rated it the worst film of 2012, I would consider it the best-marketed film of 2012. Universal Pictures had a great understanding of the film and its target market. They knew the crude humor would be difficult with the MPAA restrictions so they enlisted the help of the filmmakers who were already hugely popular to push the film.
Seth McFarlane and his writers had 3.5 million Twitter followers and Family Guy had 40 million fans on Facebook allowing Universal to leverage the filmmakers’ current fan base and create one of the most viral campaigns in history. Like in the movie the marketing team gave Ted, a talking teddy bear, a real personality in the digital world. By the time the film came out Ted had sent out 300 tweets and had hundreds of thousands of followers anxious to see the film.
There were also over 10 million downloads of a photobombing app called “My Wild Night With Ted,” a brilliant complement targeted at the under 35 crowd that is most likely to go see the movie. The campaign continued to the home entertainment release and beyond, and now that a sequel has been green lit the studio has an established fanbase already in place.
Ted’s marketing success is another example of how knowing your product and knowing your market are the most important things in marketing.