One more from the NYT today -- while I'm not a big movie goer, I have a strange interest in the marketing of movies, maybe as a holdover from when I worked at an agency doing promotion and publicity work regionally for a few studios. So I thought this story about the changing ways that studios are marketing films to the folks who actually SHOW them (aka theaters) was interesting. It really explained some of the increasing tension between the theater owners and the studios, and noted the shift from big blowout presentations ($6m in one case) to much more 1:1 marketing of films. Here's what one studio head had to say:
“It’s expensive,” explained Richard Cook, the chairman of Walt Disney Studios. Last year Disney screened Pixar’s “Cars” for the convention, but on Tuesday it showed only a trailer of “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,” and 12 minutes of the next Pixar animated movie, “Ratatouille.” “You still have to sell the movie,” he added. “You just do it in a different way.”
Truer words were never spoken, and not just about movies. The maxim holds true across a huge number of industries currently in flux -- they still have to sell, but in a different way.