An article in the Arts section of nytimes.com says that for the first time, online movie marketing spending is closing in on trailers. This, from a report released yesterday by the MPAA for 2006.
Online = 3.7%
Trailers = 4.3%
These are percentages of the average $3.5 million spent per-film on marketing in '06, which is down slightly from the year before. Encouraging. At least it's moving in the right direction!
I had the pleasure of crashing a cool event this morning called "The Internet and Moviegoing: A Benchmark Study on Influences and Opportunities" which included a great panel discussion with Variety's President Charlie Koones, MPAA EVP Dean Garfield, Quinceanera Director Richard Glatzer, Google's Rick Krugh and interactive movie-marketing legend, Gordon Paddison of New Line.
The breakfast started off with the MarketCast Study that should be published soon on Variety.com. Yeah OK, I missed that but heard it was cool. I did however, enjoy the panel Q&A - especially interesting to me was the talk about raising the % of budgets being spent on new media, how it's been stuck at around 3% and how we need to start better quantifying the ROI so we can justify larger budgets. Gordon joked that while 30% might be a bit unrealistic, it certainly should rise above 3% for most campaigns.
The Keynote Speaker was none other than Dan Glickman, Chairman and CEO of the MPAA. Not the first guy you'd imagine evangelizing the importance of Pull vs. Push advertising techniques and change, but man, did this guy "get it"!
In the end, I suppose a lot of this was preaching to the choir, but I for one found it refreshing to see this group of entertainment executives sitting down for a little nosh and a healthy serving of New Marketing.
