Targeted TV: Warner Uses Novel Marketing Plan For 'Painted Veil'

The new Warner Independent Pictures movie "The Painted Veil" offers TV commercials targeted to specific theaters in specific markets--a new twist in its usual marketing strategy.

Warner's campaign differs from virtually all TV advertising for theatrical movies, which typically end their messaging with a "Now playing everywhere" or "Now playing in selected theaters" message.

The movie debuted on Dec. 20 in New York and Los Angeles and 18 other markets.

At the end of spots for Warner's "Veil," which stars Naomi Watts and Ed Norton, TV commercials in the 18 markets--running on local cable--identify specific "art house" movie theaters. TV viewers will be directed in Dallas to the Angelika Film Center & Café. In Atlanta, they will be told to go to the Landmark's Midtown Art Cinema.

Laurie Kim, executive vice president of marketing for Warner Independent Pictures, believes this is a better way for consumers to receive movie commercials. Targeting one theater helps adds immediacy to the message, she says.

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SpotRunner, a Los Angeles-based ad agency specializing in smaller businesses, worked on the creative and the media execution. It got the job because of the labor-intensive nature of the work, producing and handling so many different creative pieces--something few mainstream media agencies' local TV media-buying departments are prepared to offer.

"It's painstaking process to create a specific tag at the end of a commercial for each theater," says Kim, adding that this marketing approach works best for independent movies with initial limited rollout.

"This is what we specialize in--making advertising very tailored," says David Waxman, a co-founder of SpotRunner Inc., whose client list includes local real-estate companies, Century 21, Coldwell Banker; local diamond retailers; and I Sold It, a Ebay drop-off store.

Among other services, SpotRunner offers local businesses thousands of stock creative TV commercials with the ability to tag their business names at the end of the messages. It can then offer specific targeted messaging for those clients. "It's a bit of bother for most other agencies," admits Waxman.

Warner Bros. helped provide SpotRunner with logos and other "end cards" displays of the 18 local theaters, as well as some 330 other local art-house theaters in the U.S. that specialize in independent movies.

Kim says the added cost of delivering 18 different commercials wasn't much.

"It was very minimal," she says. "We figure out of a way to cover the creative production costs. We helped [SpotRunner] create a library with logos and art of some 350 theaters. Down the road, they can amortize the cost."

In New York and Los Angeles, the company did not offer specific theater messages. Instead, it used generic advertising that ran on national cable networks.

The 18 markets where the individual theater ads ran were in Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Dallas, Atlanta, Houston, Denver, Detroit, San Diego, Seattle, St. Louis, Portland, Miami, Phoenix, Minneapolis, Austin, Cambridge/Boston and Washington, D.C. Cable networks that ran spots included A&E, VH1, Bravo and Lifetime.

When "Veil" rolls out to 73 markets next week, the movie's marketing campaign will shift gears. Mediacom--a Warner Bros. agency, and also an investor in SpotRunner--will then offer a broader national TV campaign.

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