Commentary

Go Big, Go Cross-Screen Or Go Home

On any given Monday, there are two types of executives in Hollywood; Type B has just seen the take from an opening weekend, and it’s way below expectations. Type B would like to hide under the desk. Type A can’t wait to walk the halls, get a coffee and maybe exchange some fist bumps, because Type A’s movie has absolutely nailed its opening weekend. 

And so goes the entertainment business. If you don’t break out of the gate with a great start, you’re screwed. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the fall season premiere for a network TV slate, a new Taylor Swift iTunes song, or the high adrenaline Marvel Blockbuster. The big entertainment opening is critical for success and that one opening day will set a pace for determining the entire sales of that product. It is very hard, if not impossible, to break out after a poor opening. Additionally, you risk the fickle entertainment audience perceiving a project as unsuccessful if it doesn’t have a substantial debut. 

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In order for entertainment execs to make Monday mornings something to look forward to, today’s leading marketers are leveraging the power of digital and mobile marketing to drive both awareness and engagement of their products prior to launch.  Nothing guarantees a big opening for an entertainment project, but current market conditions demand a new look and wider consideration of digital marketing and making sure you are effective across multiple screens.

The first issue that is intensifying the need for cross-screen marketing is cross-media ownership. Because most media companies these days own a movie studio, TV network, cable network, Internet content and print media, there is a mindset that they can use these vehicles to promote key projects. Fox’s new shows for the fall are advertised on Fox properties. A Paramount movie goes to Viacom TV channels.

The problem here is that companies are preaching to the choir. A great opening weekend for “Paranormal Activity 4” isn’t going to be guaranteed by owning MTV and MTV.com. Anybody watching MTV already knows about and has made an intend-to-see decision about the movie. In order to get into new audiences with disruptive force, studios need to think about cross-screen marketing.

Take that 30-second spot, aim at the target audiences online and back it up with a mobile campaign. Being insular won’t guarantee a spectacular opening weekend or new season, but being media inclusive gives entertainment companies a better shot. Where TV reach is sufficient, cross-screen media adds exponentially greater reach. 

The second issue is capitalizing on the age-old concept of reach and frequency. Let’s take “The Hobbit,” for example. While I’d be truly shocked if it doesn’t break opening weekend records on Dec. 14, the issue is not whether it will be big, but how big.  Will it be record-setting big? The success of opening weekend is critical when you’ve amassed this much budget and P&A costs are involved. So Warner Brothers will market the trailer online (good move), and will make sure the trailer looks great on mobile devices; it will also spend millions on TV. 

My issue is this: The mix of TV to digital platforms is still unbalanced. More specifically, more time is spent on mobile devices than ever before but it’s still not being leveraged to its fullest potential by marketers to drive demand. For any entertainment property, maximizing your reach is the goal. Engagement to drive word of mouth is also key. A high frequency of one-way messages to consumers is waste. So for a property like “The Hobbit,” where you are not measured by hitting #1 in the box office, but rather how well you did relative to the biggest openings of all time, you need to drive more than awareness.   You need to drive consumer demand. 

Cross-screen marketing is a key strategy for success in demand creation. And in today’s market, where consumers are on mobile devices more than ever before, there is no better way to drive both awareness and demand than with mobile video, engaging consumers when convenient to them - any time, any where.

It’s time for entertainment marketers to make cross-screen marketing a standard for entertainment demand creation, or risk those bad Mondays.

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