• by Aaron Baar , June 6, 2017

It’s the season of summer blockbusters, and for marketers, that means movie tie-ins. But not all tie-ins are created equal or are as successful as others. 

After evaluating viewer response to tie-in ads for for recent, heavily hyped movies (“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” “Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2,” “The Fate of the Furious,” and “Cars 3”), Ace Metrix found that while the tie-ins generated attention for brands, they didn’t always create likability. 

“The net of all this is [that] people like entertaining ads. They do well on breakthrough messages,” Ace Metrix CEO Peter Daboll tells Marketing Daily. “Where we found ones that separated [from the pack] was in cases where they had a relevant link.”

For instance, Ford’s tie-in with “Guardians of the Galaxy” had high breakthrough scores, but some audience members felt the use of the Baby Groot movie character and little connection to the vehicle’s connection to the film. On the other hand, Nissan’s use of “Rogue One” to promote its similarly named SUV, was a better fit. 

“While the Ford ad was cute, it didn’t deliver on the brand,” Daboll says. “[Nissan’s Rogue] was the connection that made it unique. It’s hard to have a brand that’s perfectly relevant to the movie.”

Autotrader's tie-in with "Cars 3" — titled “Every Car Has A Personality” — not only tied in with the movie’s idea of cars with human personas and the client’s ability to sort through different features on used cars but also managed to capture the relationship many Americans have with their vehicles, Daboll says. 

Additionally, a marketer contemplating a movie tie-in should consider not just the strategic link to the film, but also the audience, Daboll says. The audience for “Fate of the Furious” and potential Dodge Charger customers are likely to have significant cross-appeal. While many of the brand’s ads weren’t high on the breakthrough list, they demonstrated resonance with the likely target male audiences. “Make sure the audiences overlap; that’s something many people might forget,” he says.