• by June 24, 2005

AT THE MOVIES -- Of all the ad-threatening new media gizmos we've heard about lately, Cliff Marks' MIGA is perhaps the most ingenious, as well as insidious. It's also one that has the potential to harm some media - TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, and even the Internet - more than others. The problem for Madison Avenue is the MIGA immune media are the ones they tend to use a lot less of - things like place-based media, outdoor media, and Marks' favorite medium these days, cinema - though they appear to be making up for lost time.

"What's a MIGA?" you ask. Ironically, that's the same thing we asked Marks after he first brought it up to us. After an awkward pause, that is, that revealed our ignorance of the media device.

"It's a Make-It-Go-Away device," explained Marks, who claims to have a patent pending on the method, though it seems dubious the government would actually award him one. Why? Because the MIGA isn't a single technology, or even a distinct method for making advertising go away, but encompasses the array of advertising avoidance techniques ranging from the highest to the lowest of techs.

"Most media have a MIGA device," he conceded. "TV has the remote control, and now the digital video recorder. Radio has the button to push or the dial to turn. With magazines, you just turn the pages. Even on the Internet, you can click out."

But in movie theaters, Marks says, "You cannot make the commercials go away."

Of course that's a good thing or a bad thing depending on your perspective. Marks happens to have both of them. As president of sales and chief marketing officer of National CineMedia, the unit that handles cinema ad sales for movie theater chains Regal Entertainment Group and AMC Entertainment, Marks recognizes the lack of a cinema MIGA is a potentially good thing for advertisers, though it can also be a bad thing for moviegoers, which ultimately could be a bad thing for any advertisers who reap their ire.

The same thing is true of other out-of-home and place-based media outlets whether they're on billboards, in stores, or in elevator shafts. But the difference with cinema is that moviegoers pay hard-earned cash specifically to see cinema content and often are not - not in the U.S. anyway - all that thrilled to see a litany of ads flickering before their flicks start.

It's a dicey proposition that already has raised the consciousness of some local municipalities where lawmakers have threatened to outlaw cinema ads. Not to mention the ultimate brand antagonism: consumer outrage.

But Marks thinks he has a solution to cinema's MIGA gap. He calls it "The 2wenty." No, he hasn't devised a scheme to pay consumers $20 to watch the ads appearing before a movie costing half that price. The economics of that approach just wouldn't work. "The 2wenty" Marks refers to is actually a duration of time - 20 minutes of content mixing a variety of entertainment, promotions, and good old fashioned advertising in a pre-show reel that precedes the main feature in more than 5,700 Regal, United Artists, and Edwards theaters in the United States.

The concept, says Marks, is more like the old-time movie matinees when theater-goers would be entertained by cartoons, newsreels, a short, and maybe even a serial drama like "Flash Gordon" before their feature film started. It was all part of the experience.

Interestingly, Marks' concept is not unlike some of the thinking coming from some of Madison Avenue's brightest TV thinkers as a solution to advertising in long formats on non-linear platforms like TiVo or video-on-demand, or what Marks might call a MIGA.

To make "The 2wenty" 2ruly worth watching, Marks enlisted the talents of some of Hollywood's biggest studios - Sony Pictures, Universal, NBC, and Turner Broadcasting - to produce a mix of content. Much of it promotes these entertainment marketers' own fare, such as Universal's short film showing the making of its long film "Cinderella Man."

All in all, only two to four of the 2wenty minutes are actually cinema ads, but the fact that they're wrapped around so much pre-show entertainment content creates the illusion that it's an added value for moviegoers, not simply more clutter.

"Because there is no MIGA device in cinema it put pressure on us to make the ads a part of an entertaining and compelling show," explains Marks. "People don't want to see bad commercials. Or see the same commercial for the tenth time in the row. But they will sit through some compelling entertainment content."

In fact, the Riff was so inspired by Marks concept that we're going to embrace it for all of next week. We're going to make it go away, while we go on vacation and catch up with some of those Hollywood summer blockbuster releases.

Have a happy 4th!