SPECIAL REPORTS

ENTERTAINMENT MARKETING
2009

CONTAGIOUS entertainment marketing / index /

p.02

INDeX /

eNtertaINMeNt MarKetING
09 / pages 56 - 57

chapters 01 / INtrO 02 / cONsUMers 03 / NUMBers 04 / BUsINess 05 / aDVertIsers 06 / MarKetING 07 / case stUDIes 08 / eXpert VIeW 09 / BUZZ 10 / cOMMUNItIes 11 / steps 12 / FUtUre 13 / reFereNces

01 / pages 03 - 04

INtrODUctION /
02 / pages 05 - 16

LaNDscape / cONsUMer BehaVIOUr /

03 / pages 17 - 18

MaKING stOrIes BUZZ / Q&a with steve Wax & c. c. chapman, campfire
10 / pages 58 - 59

NUMBer crUNchING /
04 / pages 19 - 27

creatING cOMMUNItIes arOUND eNtertaINMeNt LaUNches / by harriet Owen, hyperlaunchDMG

11 / pages 60

LaNDscape / BUsINess IMpLIcatIONs /

05 / pages 28 - 31

rOLe OF aDVertIsers /
06 / pages 32 - 35

NINe steps tO a sUccessFUL cONVersatION / by Universal Mccann

12 / pages 61

MarKetING OVerVIeW /
07 / pages 36 - 52

LOOKING aheaD /
13 / pages 63 - 64

case stUDIes /
08 / pages 53 - 55

reFereNces /

eNtertaINMeNt MarKetING: aN eXpert VIeW / Q&a with Jonathan Block-Verk, promax/BDa

CONTAGIOUS entertainment marketing / introduction /

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01 / pages 03 - 04

INtrODUctION /
Before the mass adoption of digital technology, the world was a simpler place. People watched TV on TV, and saw movies at the cinema. To watch them at home, they bought grainy VHS, or even, god forbid, Betamax. Pixellated games were played at arcades and sparingly at home. Books were just books, and music in the form of shiny hard plastic was something we happily paid for. Similarly, the marketing of these properties was also a fairly straightforward proposition. For a film, take out an ad in some magazines, hammer a trailer on TV and in movie theatres. For a TV show, do an interview with a TV listing magazine (remember them?) and repeat your promo ad infinitum. If in doubt, throw in an enormous poster. For games, rely on word-of-mouth and pesterpower, with an occasional dollop of pre-Xmas TV. Music, take the radio producers out to lunch. And for books, go the poster route and keep your fingers crossed for a good review. It would be willful understatement to point out that this is no longer the case. The sudden explosion of digital channels afforded by the internet has left movie studios, TV networks and producers, publishing houses and games developers alike gasping to keep up with the pace of change. Now we have more platforms, more consoles, more hobbies, more means of communication, and much, much more content. The biggest entertainment releases of all times are no longer movies like ET and Star Wars. They are games like Halo 2, the Grand Theft Auto franchise and most recently Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which sold 4.7m copies in the US and UK in one day of release, amounting to an estimated $310m. TV shows are broadcast, not only on a plethora of cable networks but via dedicated web platforms like Hulu. This ad-funded service which streams popular TV shows and numbers Fox, NBC and Sony Pictures amongst its partners has seen impressive growth in the last year. comScores most recent figures indicate that some 38m people

chapters 01 / INtrO 02 / cONsUMers 03 / NUMBers 04 / BUsINess 05 / aDVertIsers 06 / MarKetING 07 / case stUDIes 08 / eXpert VIeW 09 / BUZZ 10 / cOMMUNItIes 11 / steps 12 / FUtUre 13 / reFereNces

Image / chellie carroll / www.chelliecarroll.co.uk

CONTAGIOUS entertainment marketing / introduction /

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chapters 01 / INtrO 02 / cONsUMers 03 / NUMBers 04 / BUsINess 05 / aDVertIsers 06 / MarKetING 07 / case stUDIes 08 / eXpert VIeW 09 / BUZZ 10 / cOMMUNItIes 11 / steps 12 / FUtUre 13 / reFereNces

watched a video on Hulu in July 2009 - more than on Time Warner Cable, Americas second biggest cable company. TV is also finally making the leap to mobile, with UK-based media owner BSkyB now making livestreaming of Premiership football matches a reality on the iPhone, for 6 per month. Meanwhile, Stephen Kings most recent book was broken up into 5,196 pieces and hidden around the internet for fans to find and piece together (see p. 43), and newspapers like the New York Times are adapted daily for the iPhone or Kindle. The music industry has been decimated by the rise of illegal downloading, with technological players like Apple and more recently games developers like Harmonix taking the lead in the monetization of audio content. Anyone for a round of Beatles Rock Band? Crucially, the lessons learned by the entertainment industry are relevant to anyone with even the slightest interest in marketing. As with all advertising, competition for eyeballs is fierce, the media landscape has changed beyond recognition, and co-opting consumers into the dissemination of messages is held up as the only valid way in which to court success. In addition to this, synergies are emerging between properties in order to guarantee the strength of a launch. The final months of 2010 saw the launch of yet another game-to-movie film trailer for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Not only was the film based on the hugely successful video game franchise, the trailer featured fusion of live action with a faithful representation of the movement of video game characters, thus neatly leaping over the Uncanny Valley - the point at which computer generated graphics start to look too real and freak us out. And Penguin, poster child for the role of both design and digital communication in modern publishing, have teamed with games producer Ubisoft to release a novel, Assassins Creed

Renaissance, alongside the much-hyped second installment of videogame Assassins Creed. What do these examples show us? That the most successful entertainment marketing is that which embraces fluidity, in the content itself, in the way it is distributed, and in the way it is promoted. Armed with a product that people want and a thousand ways to get it to them, entertainment marketers have started considering, not television and the internet and mobile and consoles, but how to make all of these things work together. Not TV, but ways to deliver content to that screen in the corner of your living room. Not a passive cinematic experience, but an immersive user-controlled narrative with an army of enthusiastic participants. Not a relationship that stops once the purchase of a gaming title is over, but ways to create a community of fans eager to share, modify and create within the parameters of the game itself. And finally, not a dumb and docile audience, but a partner in the creation and distribution of engaging content. For this Contagious Special Report on Entertainment Marketing, weve drawn together the various landscapes in which these marketers operate. Weve identified a series of successful case studies in films, music, TV shows, games and publishing because we believe that the principles of successful entertainment marketing are vital knowledge for any brand owner. As producers of all persuasions increasingly look to brands to fund and curate their content, the boundaries between Hollywood and Madison Avenue, between Silicon Valley and Akihabara will seem like mere geography.
penguin / assassins creed renaissance

activision / call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

CONTAGIOUS entertainment marketing / advertisers /

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EXAMPLES OF ENTERTAINMENT & BRAND PARTNERSHIPS /

chapters 01 / INtrO 02 / cONsUMers 03 / NUMBers 04 / BUsINess 05 / aDVertIsers 06 / MarKetING 07 / case stUDIes 08 / eXpert VIeW 09 / BUZZ 10 / cOMMUNItIes 11 / steps 12 / FUtUre 13 / reFereNces

HBOs True Blood & Gillette, BMW/MINI, Harley-Davidson, Monster.com and Geico /

ABCs FlashForward & Sprint / To create buzz around the US network ABC drama, telecoms company Sprint sponsored keywords hidden in the end credits of the first 13 episodes of the series. Viewers - and Sprint mobile users - could text the keyword to receive access to exclusive content as well as string the words together to create a sentence that would solve the mystery at the heart of the plot.
http://abc.go.com/shows/flash-forward -----------------------------------------

ITVs The X Factor & TalkTalk /

To promote the second season of the vampiredrama, HBO created a campaign featuring fictional products aimed at vampires. The ads for MINI, for example, carry the tagline Feel the wind in your fangs. As well as traditional outlets, the ads ran on microsites created at the shows launch such as www.bloodcopy.com, www.fellowshipofthesun.org and www.americanvampireleague.com. (See also the case study on page 36.)
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AMCs Mad Men & Banana Republic /

In the UK, broadband provider TalkTalk brought its sponsorship of hit ITV talent show The X Factor to life with a campaign based around bright dancing, using light to create graffiti patterns. The company gave viewers the chance to get involved by creating their own light graffiti bright-dance which could appear on primetime TV during The X Factor idents. The X Factor / TalkTalk microsite gave viewers tutorials on how to bright dance and submit their clip.
http://xfactor.talktalk.co.uk -----------------------------------------

MTVs The Hills & ASOS.com / This tie-up offered fans of the show the chance to win a Hills-style night out for a winner and four friends. ASOS furnished the winners with free outfits for their night out. This kind of tieup allows people to build a community, creating content around nights out. For us, this is a really good brand fit which profiles really well with The Hills, says Kerry Taylor, VP marketing, creative and consumer press, MTV.
www.mtv.co.uk/shows/the-hills ------------------------------------------

Summit Entertainments Twilight & Volvo /

The partnership saw the launch of a competition where participants could win a walk-on role in an episode of the drama. The clothing store also created a window campaign in the run up to the launch of the shows third season with mannequins dressed in 1960s style to reflect the style of the show.
www.amctv.com/originals/madmen -----------------------------------------

Volvo extended its partnership with cult movie series Twilight, in which the central character

CONTAGIOUS entertainment marketing / case studies /

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Sony Computer Entertainment Japan / SIREN: New Translation / For the launch of horror PlayStation game SIREN: New Translation in summer 2008, Hakuhodo created an experience blurring the lines of fiction and reality. The creative was based around the Japanese legend that the deceased rise in August. The story played out online, with the official website announcing that a TV crew would be visiting the actual village where the game takes place. Over the following 13 days, a video was released each day showing the demise of the crew. Phase two of the campaign saw the launch of an official website for the TV production company which featured two 24-hour live video streams from the village. At midnight on the night before the release of the game a siren rang and the village turned red with light. From then on a new incident happened every couple of hours. 30,000 users accessed the site at midnight and over 1000 comments were received throughout the day as gamers tried to get to the bottom of the story. Tatsuro Sato, executive creative director and executive producer for Hakuhodo DY Media Partners who worked on the campaign, comments: the future of advertising lies in the challenge of adapting to new forms such as branded utility, branded content, and so on. Linking the online and offline worlds is one of the most important areas of those challenges. He added: Japan has a unique and strong culture, but it was also a closed society for a long time. Now, things are changing. As far as online creativity is concerned, Japanese people love new technology.
www.jp.playstation.com/scej/title/siren_nt

Hodder & Stoughton / Stephen King / Under The Dome / For the release of Stephen Kings latest epic in November 2009, UK publisher Hodder & Stoughton working with Unity London created what it described as the biggest ever game of literary hide-and-seek. The 335,114 word novel was broken down into 5,196 pieces and scattered across hundreds of websites and locations throughout the UK, including fan, horror, thriller and lifestyle websites. Using clues given on www.stephenking.co.uk, participants were encouraged to hunt them down and deliver them back to the site. As pieces were found they appeared on the site, enabling fans to link them together, gradually forming bigger sections of the book. Everyone playing the game was entered into a competition to win a weekend at a London hotel, where they could read a limited edition copy of the book on the weekend before its general release. Unity co-founder Gerry Hopkinson commented: Stephen King is known to be innovative and creative in the way he publishes and markets his work as well as through his storytelling, so weve developed a unique concept that will work across multiple platforms to really bring the launch to life.
www.stephenking.co.uk sony / sIreN: New translation /

chapters 01 / INtrO 02 / cONsUMers 03 / NUMBers 04 / BUsINess 05 / aDVertIsers 06 / MarKetING 07 / case stUDIes 08 / eXpert VIeW 09 / BUZZ 10 / cOMMUNItIes 11 / steps 12 / FUtUre 13 / reFereNces

stephen King / Under the Dome /

Sony BMG / Raygun / Freeway Fallguy / For UK band Rayguns new single Just Because, Sony BMG gave UK digital and advergaming specialists Kempt free reign to make a game around the new video in order to break the single to a massive audience. The brief was to engage users, increase awareness and encourage views of the official video in order ultimately to drive sales.
sony BMG / raygun /

CONTAGIOUS entertainment marketing / buzz /

p.56

09 / pages 56 - 57

MaKING stOrIes BUZZ /

Q&a with campfires steve Wax & c.c. chapman Campfire is a New York agency that specialises in using storytelling and community engagement to build buzz around brands and entertainment properties. Two of its co-founders, Mike Monello and Gregg Hale, were part of the team who created The Blair Witch Project, and together with third cofounder Steve Wax they have built Campfire into an award winning agency, behind such ground-breaking campaigns as the one for HBO True Blood (see case study, page 36). Contagious asked Steve Wax and creative director C.C. Chapman what makes stories buzz. What would you consider the most important dos and donts of a successful buzz driven campaign? The first thing to remember is that youre dealing with a story and getting people to play along and become part of it. This is not about being on brand, so step away from your brand strategy for a few moments and enjoy your new freedom. Having said that, youre creating a marketing program, so dont play frustrated screenwriter and simply work on their story; most likely the show or film has plenty of writers. And, most critical, marketing, even movie marketing, is a different animal. Entertainment marketing has to stand on its own; it has to be much more grabby, even if a campaign plays out over three months. Your audience is not sitting in a movie theatre or in front of their TV after a long days work. They are probably at work grabbing a couple minutes to surf the net, or hurrying by your live stunt on their way to lunch. The key for us is coming up with an instigating event, one that will draw attention even from the most casual observers of the campaign. A good campaign makes people wonder whats going on here? and start the quest to find out more. As with any good story, its important to know the audience you
hBO / true Blood /

chapters 01 / INtrO 02 / cONsUMers 03 / NUMBers 04 / BUsINess 05 / aDVertIsers 06 / MarKetING 07 / case stUDIes 08 / eXpert VIeW 09 / BUZZ 10 / cOMMUNItIes 11 / steps 12 / FUtUre 13 / reFereNces

CONTAGIOUS entertainment marketing / credits /

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14 / pages 65

creDIts

CONTAGIOUS SPECIAL REPORTS /

Contagious Communications 45 Fouberts Place London, W1F 7QH T: +44 (0) 20 7575 1981 www.contagiousmagazine.com Published in partnership with Xtreme Information T: +44 (0) 20 7575 1800 www.xtremeinformation.com Xtreme Information is the market leader in the provision of media Intelligence and competitive advertising monitoring from around the world. Xtreme works with the majority of FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 multinational companies, and with every major advertising and media agency. The company is backed by leading US media investors, Veronis Suhler Stevenson. www.vss.com This report is part of a series of Special Reports produced by Contagious. The series also includes reports on Mobile Apps, Branded Entertainment, Goodvertising and Branded Utility. For more information, call +44 (0) 20 7575 1886/1882 or vist www.contagiousmagazine/shop

chapters 01 / INtrO 02 / cONsUMers 03 / NUMBers 04 / BUsINess 05 / aDVertIsers 06 / MarKetING 07 / case stUDIes 08 / eXpert VIeW 09 / BUZZ 10 / cOMMUNItIes 11 / steps 12 / FUtUre 13 / reFereNces

Produced by Contagious Communications Contagious Editorial Director Paul Kemp-Robertson Series Editor Georgia Malden Written by Suzy Bashford Edited by Jess Greenwood, Georgia Malden Additional research by Lucy Aitken, Greg Copeland, Katrina Dodd, Emily Hare, Stacey Jacobs, Robin Leeburn, Will Sansom Contributors Jonathan Block-Verk, Promax/BDA / www.promaxbda.org C.C. Chapman & Steve Wax, Campfire / www.campfirenyc.com Harriet Owen, HyperlaunchDMG / www.hyperlaunchdmg.com Cover image Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Activision / www.callofduty.com Illustrations by Chellie Carroll / www.chelliecarroll.co.uk Loulou & Tummie / www.loulouandtummie.com Design FLOK Berlin / www.flokline.com Production Smita Mistry, Ellie Kilburn, Dean Dorat

Mobile apps /

No parts of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted in any form or by any means stored in any information storage or retrieval system without the publishers written permission. Where source material has been reproduced the copy-right remains the property of the copyright owner and material may not be reproduced in any form whatsoever without the owners prior consent. Published December 2009

Goodvertising /

Branded Utility /

CONTAGIOUS entertainment marketing /

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sUBscrIptION / specIaL OFFer FOr eNtertaINMeNt MarKetING reaDers

chapters 01 / INtrO 02 / cONsUMers 03 / NUMBers 04 / BUsINess 05 / aDVertIsers 06 / MarKetING 07 / case stUDIes 08 / eXpert VIeW 09 / BUZZ 10 / cOMMUNItIes 11 / steps 12 / FUtUre 13 / reFereNces

Offer ends 31 January 2010 Contagious / Full of Tomorrow / Contagious explores the shifting relationship between brands and consumers, to predict the impact of new technologies and to make sense of the fragmenting media landscape. Contagious exists to simplify and to advise. It is the global marketing industrys early warning system; an intelligence resource for those attempting to stay ahead of all this change. Contagious is a quarterly intelligence briefing in magazine, DVD and online format, identifying the ideas, trends and innovations behind theworlds most revolutionary marketing strategies. All readers of the Entertainment Marketing report will be able to subscribe to this phenomenal resource at a 20% discounted rate. Normally 985 GBP. NOW only 788 GBP, for a limited period. Offer ends 31 January 2010 Click here to subscribe now. Or call us on +44 (0) 207 575 1911

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