Film companies really grasp how to use partnership marketing to increase their budget, create positive word of mouth and target customers through money can’t buy customer communication channels. They also really understand that using film content linked to their brand values and product is a simple, highly effective and much more powerful way of marketing their brand than just creating TV adverts or running social media campaigns. This summer, every major advertising category — from fast food chains and soda brands to mobiles and cars – will create brand partnerships with the second editions of “Cars” and “Kung Fu Panda,” the third “Transformers,” fourth “Pirates of the Caribbean,” an “X-Men” prequel and adaptations of “Mr. Popper’s Penguins,” “The Smurfs,” “The Zookeeper,” “Cowboys & Aliens,” “Green Lantern,” “Thor” and “Captain America: The First Avenger.” Variety Magazine, film’s marketing bible, reports that global brands interest in movies which cooled during the recession is heating up again, especially as studios are green lighting sequels, remakes, adaptations of comic books, young-adult novels, toy lines and video games that enable brands to go after the same moviegoers studios are looking to attract at the local cinemas. A summary of forthcoming film related brand partnerships can be found here http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118032031?refCatId=1019&query=marketing+partnerships but they range from Burger King supporting Transformers (as does the intrinsically linked General Motors along with M&M’s), Thor, Captain America. McDonalds gets into the act by promoting Kung Fu Panda as will HP and bizarrely Intel. Dr Pepper and 7-11 are supporting Thor and Captain America, while Pizza Hut are supporting Just Go With It. Other brands getting in on the act include Panasonic, LG, Motorola and Samsung. Interestingly there are limits. Disney won’t broker deals with fast-food partners for its films, not wanting to be seen as selling “junk food” to children. Warner Bros. has kept brands away from “Harry Potter,” whose final installment is unleashed in July. My favourite two film related brand partnerships though are the Vidalia Onion Committee using Shrek to create a spokes-creature to pitch its sweet onions to vegetable-hating tykes, timed around the release of “Shrek Forever After.” The partnership actually made sense they claimed somewhat incredulously since “Onions have layers and ogres have layers. Ogres are like onions”! The result of the deal was around $300,000 worth of PR and marketing for the film and a 50% boost in sales of the onions. Following that success, DreamWorks signed up House Foods’ tofu to support “Kung Fu Panda 2,” given that a character in the film runs a noodle shop that serves up the product there is more of a logic to that brand partnership!
This article first appearred on http://community.brandrepublic.com/blogs/chrisreed/archive/2011/02/21/hollywood-lead-s-the-way-on-how-to-create-brand-partnerships.aspx
