Warner Brothers The Departed Meets Smith
Brand: The Departed (Warner Brothers/Time Warner)
Execution: TV, Print
Link: Click here
Target: Drama fans
Rating: ****
Reviewer: David
Description:
Television spots for the Martin Scorsese film “The Departed” starring Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg and Leonardo DiCaprio. This review deals with the sponsorship of the premier episode of “Smith” with Ray Liotta on CBS.
What Works:
These spots are trailers for the release of the much-anticipated movie “The Departed” from director Martin Scorcese. They are well executed but there is nothing unusual about them. What is more interesting is Warner Brother’s decision to buy out the entire premier episode of the new CBS drama Smith.
Instead of presenting the premier of Smith as being sponsored with “limited commercial interruption” a by ‘The Departed,’ the Smith episode was billed in this manner: ‘the following is brought to you by Warner Brothers pictures ‘The Departed’ in Theaters October 6th.’ Moreover this announcement was made not before the beginning of Smith but after the opening sequence which lasted several minutes.
It does appear that Warner Brother sponsored limited commercial interruption for Smith. The Departed was the only product advertised on Smith and the commercial breaks were shorter and less frequent.
This advertising blog supports this type of unusual media placement. The Departed needs all of the focused attention it can get with its premier just weeks away. Sponsoring the entire premier of Smith and limiting the frequency and length of commercial breaks made the repeat showing of ‘Departed’ trailers less annoying than it might have been otherwise. And the likelihood of creating urgency with the core audience for the film is good. There is an excellent subject match between ‘Smith’ (where a high-end thief played by Ray Liotta is the protagonist) and ‘The Departed’ (with Jack Nicholson playing a mob boss). There is also similarity between a television premier and the release of a new movie in that they’ll both attract the most motivated viewers first. Spending a concentrated block of money against this target on Smith was a good bet.
What Doesn’t:
There is a real risk to running a movie trailer six times in a single hour. Warner Brothers compounded this risk by opting not to make a bigger deal of the fact that ‘Smith’ was being sponsored with limited interruption by ‘The Departed.’ The risk paid off, but we’d hate to place odds on another movie pulling this off successfully.
Branding Bottom Line:
Television sponsored by the movies. Could this be a new ad model?
September 21st, 2006 at 6:05 am
They showed the same trailer six times?
I agree with your basic idea that the movie audience/TV show premiere audience is going to be the same type of person but it’s disappointing that Warner Bros. couldn’t come up with something more original to do than show the same trailer over and over again.
September 21st, 2006 at 8:34 am
Chris,
There were at least two different executions, possibly more. However I agree with your overall comment that they could have done more given the time they had. Perhaps something behind the scenes …
October 4th, 2006 at 10:15 am
[…] The one thing I’m aware of regarding other promotions Warner Bros. Engaged in is their sponsoring of the season premiere of the show “Smith” on CBS about two weeks before the movie opened. The studio bought all the advertising time within the show in order to present it with limited commercial breaks and with The Departed as the only brand being shilled during those breaks. It was disconcerting to me to learn after the fact that all they did was show the movie’s trailer six times with that sole-presenter opportunity. The studio would have done better, I think, if they had showed the trailer a few times but mixed behind-the-scenes footage or exclusive clips from the film in with it. […]