Movie studios and brands are trying to figure out how to best work together, which may soon lead to a change in the standard model...
"Hollywood this week gave up even trying to understand the true cost of marketing its films. But consumer brands facing shrinking marketing budgets and the weakest economy in decades are more anxious and determined than ever to leverage the movie studios' marketing efforts to their own advantage.
What brands are demanding from studios, and what studios are prepared to give in return, is changing markedly. But unlike so many marriages ruined by arguments over money, the union of Hollywood and Madison Avenue seems to have grown fiercer and more interdependent in the firelight of the economic meltdown.
'It was counterintuitive to me,' said Marc Shmuger, co-chairman of Universal Pictures, of brands' continued ardor for Hollywood in such a dire economy, because marketing budgets 'are under great scrutiny. They're going down, not up.'
And the studios are practicing a bit of quid pro quo. 'We understand the days of a studio using a large chunk of money from a partner, and giving only the glow from that film in return, are over,' said Universal's marketing chief, Adam Fogelson."