Movie Theater ads are the most powerful promotional tool outside of the Internet
June 16th, 2008 by Scott Marks
Sometime in the late 80s/early 90s slide projectors became projection booth staples. As soon as the closing credits ended the houselights would go up half and a commercial slide show would occupy approximately half the screen until the next feature started.
The pre-show entertainment consisted of star bios (two sentences and four credits), concession stand slugs, stills from upcoming presentations and trivia geared for imbeciles. (Who played Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz?) With only one carousel locked and loaded, if projectionists set it on “fast” early arrivals were given numerous chances to answer.
Long before these pre-show filmstrips, enterprising exhibitors would offer up their screens to local businesses to promote their wares. It was still a basic slide show, this time bumped up to 35mm. There would be a shot of the store (occasionally with its proud owners beaming at the front door) and a printed message to show their love for the community: “When a car hits another car, it’s an accident. When a car hits a child, it’s a tragedy. This public service message brought to you through the courtesy of Al & Edna’s Varsity Shoppe, home of the Chillicothe Bengals gridiron gear!”
Any Something Weird DVD worth its salt has dozens of these commercial spots buried in their special features sections. The only hardtop theater that I can recall actually playing one before the trailers was the Wilmette located just north of Chicago. The modest theater (made even more so when it was cut in half) still stands, although I’m not sure if they are still advertising their next door neighbor The Wilmette Chuck Wagon.
Even before digital projectors began nudging out the 35mm warhorses, booths began stocking video projectors in order to present on-screen advertisements. Gone were the stiff slides and corny music, and in their place slick video commercials, mostly for upcoming television shows. Hollywood, demanding higher quality (as well as the largest share of the audience) holds off on trailers which are shown just prior to the feature in either 35mm or digital.
Pre-show entertainment has always been with us in the form of shorts, cartoons and trailers. In the days of block booking, studios would only allow their product to accompany one of their features. M-G-M’s Lowe’s Theatres showed Tom and Jerry while Warner’s houses had Bugs and the gang open their shows. These were still forms of commercial advertisement, albeit much subtler and a whole lot funnier.
I’ll gladly watch reels of trailers, but my initial reaction to commercials before movies was unfavorable to say the least. While still not a fan (those high class beer adverts that open each Landmark Theatres presentation drive me mad), I’ve accepted them as a necessity to keep movie theaters alive. The money taken in by these ads goes directly to the exhibitor with none of it kicked back to the studios.
According to Variety, “New figures just released by the Cinema Advertising Council, a trade org repping 82% of U.S. screens, show a hefty 18.5% gain in revenue to just shy of $540 million in 2007, up from $455.7 million a year earlier.”
“More advertisers are using cinema more frequently, committing ad dollars ‘upfront’ for multiple flights as cinema has proven its value and efficiency as a sustaining medium,” said Stu Ballatt, head of the CAC. “Onscreen advertising combined with off-screen marketing in the theater can, literally, double or triple the impact a brand can make on the moviegoer.”
In the past two decades, what began as a slide projector propped up on a card table in the booth has become the second most powerful brander of advertisements this side of the almighty Internet. Sure wish that I had a piece of either Screenvision or National CineMedia, the two rival companies that control on-screen ads. If you have no interest in going behind the scenes on the latest TBS mini series, I suggest that you arrive at the multiplex just minutes prior to showtime. If not, don’t bother complaining because the alternative is your living room.
Tags: Advertising, Commercials, Movie Theater, Movie Theaters, Movie Theatre, Movie Theatres, National CineMedia, Screenvision, The Wilmette Theatre, TrailersFiled Under News
Britain bans product placement on TV shows
June 11th, 2008 by Scott Marks
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When was the earliest example of product-en-scene? There had to have been something before Billy Wilder placed the box of Ivory Snow Flakes on the store shelf between Phyllis and Walter in Double Indemnity (1944). Perhaps Wilder was vamping on soap companies, then famous for sponsoring radio dramas, by inserting a box in his anything but sudsy film noir.
Or was Wilder attempting to bring an audience impacted by the horrors of World War II a little closer to the realities of everyday living?
The man who turned product placement into an art form was Frank Tashlin. In 1949, the former Termite Terrace animator, current Harpo Marx gag man and future Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis auteur de choix wrote, and presumably had a hand in the direction of, the rooftop climax to Love Happy (1949). With the sardine can diamonds safely secured in his trenchcoat, Harpo frolics through a glorious studio mock up of a Manhattan rooftop complete with enormous glowing signs and animated billboards all screaming brand names. Harpo’s horseplay lands him atop the Mobil Oil’s emblematic “Flying Red Horse” and the neon steed flashes him to safety.
In his live action features, Tashlin’s employment of merchandise and trademarks brought movies up to date and into the modern world he was clearly lampooning. You would no longer see a character pick up a pack of Marlboro’s with a piece of electrical tape strategically positioned over the product logo. When Tuttle’s Department Store turns on Jerry Lewis in Who’s Minding the Store?, it isn’t simply a series of animated appliances waging war, but a consumerist mentality gone haywire.
After Tash it was all about the numbers as shrewd studio marketing teams began descended on corporations to help pay the bills. It’s virtually impossible to find a contemporary American film from the 1980s that doesn’t have a USA Today box lurking somewhere in the corner of one of its frames.
The advent of the VCR caused torrents of flopsweat to flood Madison Avenue boardrooms. Viewers now had the option to scan through their precious pitches leaving only subliminal traces of their wares. TiVo obliterates commercials in record time, so now more than ever product placement is essential to advertisers and networks alike.
There must be a different mindset overseas because according to Variety, in his first big policy speech on broadcasting, the U.K.’s media minister Andy Burnham, secretary of state at the Department of Culture, Media and Sport since January, indicated that he would not accept the European Union directive allowing product placement on U.K. TV.
Burnham fears that crass commercial plug-ins would somehow “contaminate” the exalted status of British TV. He added, “As a viewer, I don’t want to feel the script has been written by the commercial marketing director.” Burnham continued: “British programming has an integrity that is revered around the world and I don’t think we should put that hard-won reputation up for sale.”
Get over yourself. The idiot box was created to sell douche powder and effervescent denture cleaners and high class telly is an oxymoron. That goes double for prim, acting-driven and routinely unfunny British TV. Better a word from out sponsor rather than Benny Hill is what I always say.
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