Promotional items become movie memorabilia
Have you ever attended a sneak preview? If you answered yes, you might remember those branded bags, promotional T-shirts and other trinkets the studio gave out before you left the theater.
Big money, big promotional items
When it comes to the marketing machine and promotional arms of film studios, nobody does it like Hollywood. Marketing campaigns for films are sometimes just as or more expensive than the movie's production budget. Promotion is big business, so much so that the average cost to market a large movie from a major Hollywood studio was between $40 million to $50 million in 2014, according to Adweek.
Warner Bros. Pictures and Walt Disney Pictures spent a total of $582 million in 2014 to market their features, Adweek reported. Advertising costs for new cinema offerings likely won't plateau any time soon. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the average expense for marketing a film in 1980 was $12.4 million taking inflation into account.
Ad time on television still makes up the greatest share of the expenses, accounting for more than 86 percent or $2.8 billion in 2012, Adweek noted.
"We have to be more inventive about how we reach consumers," Sue Kroll, the former marketing chief at Warner Bros., now the worldwide distribution chief, told The Hollywood Reporter. "Moviegoers are very savvy. You have to figure out new ways of appealing to them. We are seeing significant changes in the way we spend across all platforms. It's a patchwork quilt. It never gets boring."
Hollywood also calls on promotional items to help steer moviegoers to the theater. When promotional product companies and the studios band together, they come up with ingenious giveaways that last long after the projector shuts off and the audience leaves.
The first blockbuster
Released during the summer of 1975, Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" became the first summer blockbuster movie, ushering in a tradition that's stayed with movie studios and the public ever since. When the movie about a fiendish man-eating shark opened in June 1975, it would be the first of its kind to make $100 million in two months, according to Variety.
While Universal Pictures, which distributed the $8 million film to theaters, still declines to reveal how much it spent to publicize the movie, a former studio head told The Hollywood Reporter that it was the biggest expenditure for the moviemaker at the time.
"Promotional items continue to pique moviegoers' interest."
The promoting didn't just start and end with broadcast media, though. The studio released branded drinkware, promotional T-shirts, towels, posters and bags all featuring the iconic image of the giant shark emerging from the deep with a female swimmer on the surface of the water.
New ideas
Promotional items still continue to pique moviegoers' interest and many times they become collector's items, selling on eBay for hundreds or thousands of dollars. "The Interview," the Seth Rogen and James Franco comedy about North Korea's leader, made headlines last year after it was pulled and then subsequently released to theaters.
Branded drinkware with the movie's name on it was listed for $4,000 a piece on eBay, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Warner Bros. handed out what Counselor, the magazine for the Advertising Specialty Institute, called an instant hit with fans. The studio gave away branded backpacks featuring superhero capes that could unfold and cover the wearer's shoulders and back. Some of the branded bags featured the Batman symbol on the back of the cape. Warner Bros. sent the items to the 2014 Comic Con International held in San Diego.
"Con is a huge showcase for us," Lisa Gregorian, the chief marketing officer for Warner Bros. Television Group, told Counselor. "It's the one time where Warner Bros. is front and center with the fans and with our brands."
Many attendees lucky enough to get a superhero backpack wore them around for the rest of the day while going from booth to booth, Counselor noted. Gregorian said that was the whole promotional idea's intention. Besides a gift to fans, she wanted the item to be reusable and something children could wear around as a costume for Halloween or parties.
Other blockbusters also used branded materials to great effect. Paramount's reboot of Star Trek in 2009 grossed over $75 million during its opening weekend and the studio used an inventive promotional item to get fans and critics excited. According to the Advertising Specialty Institute, the moviemakers sent out promotional USB flash drives in the shape of a trading card. The pen drive featured an image of Star Trek's Spock as a baby, and the studio tucked the USB drive into a packet of real trading cards.
All of the above case studies show just how much appeal promotional items can have and how much power they hold long after the theater lights go up.