Last month, Paramount Pictures promoted Amy Powell to SVP of Interactive Marketing, so I reached out to her to see if she'd chat with us about interactive and how she got here for this, our first issue of Entertainment Spot. We're also gearing up for our April 14, 2006 entertainment marketing Summit: Integrate '06 L.A.: Marketing to the New Entertainment Consumer, which we're co-producing with Variety, so Hollywood is on our minds.
Brad Berens: Most people arrive in the interactive marketing world from somewhere else. What's your trajectory? How did you find yourself here?
Amy Powell: I grew up with a dad who is an engineer and a mother who is an interior designer, so I always had an inclination towards both technology and design. I went to school at Emory in Atlanta, and my first "job" was an internship at CNN, which I found instantly captivating, and I knew right away that I wanted to work at a major media corporation. On a whim I moved to L.A. the day I graduated with no job and was fortunate to find a position at Sony Pictures Entertainment in creative advertising. I moved up within the marketing department at SPE and found myself lucky enough to work in the interactive marketing department at a time when the internet was truly at its peak. I left SPE to run the interactive dept at Paramount Pictures in 2004.
Berens: What are your responsibilities at Paramount, and how do your interactive marketing efforts integrate -- or not integrate -- with the rest of marketing?
Powell: In my new role as SVP, interactive marketing, I report to the president of marketing (Gerry Rich) and oversee the interactive marketing strategy for the studio's film releases, working closely with the studio marketing executives and filmmakers to set the campaigns for Paramount films within the digital environment.
I focus on creating engaging and immersive campaigns for moviegoers around the world and across various mediums, including the internet, mobile devices, gaming platforms and wireless devices. I oversee the interactive strategy, creative, media planning and integration of third-party promotions and editorial. Lastly, I work with senior Paramount execs to create a new strategy and creative vision behind www.paramount.com and reinvent our website to reflect our new slate of films.
Berens: As people spend more and more time online -- and as they get more and more of their information about movies from online sources -- what is Paramount doing to get its marketing messages in front of people?
Powell: I think the most important shift in perception about online is that filmmakers and moviegoers alike now look at online as truly meaning much more than just the computer on their desk. To me, interactive marketing is a broad landscape, and in order to reach today's younger generation of moviegoers, we must first and foremost thoroughly understand them, both psychologically and behaviorally.
Our core target audience of males and females 21 to 29 represents an entirely new generation of moviegoers who have vastly different interests, actions and attitudes than those before them. This generation is tech-savvy and media-saturated and, as a result, often rejects traditional advertising methods. I think that motion picture marketing must go where they are, and more and more this requires using non-traditional and digital media-- not as support for traditional media, but as the mainstay of strategic marketing plans.
For youth aged 13 to 24, time spent on the internet now exceeds the time spent watching television. This generation is spending more time multi-tasking and taking advantage of active media that allows them to interact with others in their peer group, a level of interaction that is impossible to attain with traditional marketing media. Youth today view the internet as a zone without borders, a limitless expanse of information, entertainment and community in which they are eager to immerse themselves. With the internet, it's their schedule, their music and their friends, essentially when they want it.
Berens: A minute ago, you mentioned gaming platforms. Many entertainment marketers see games as a threat to more traditional entertainment like movies and TV. Do you? And when you talk about platforms, can you give me any specifics? I know that Paramount has done some interesting work with advergames, but are you also working on media buys for your products within games? What works with the gaming consumer and what doesn't?
Powell: As media continues to grow increasingly fragmented, I think it is imperative to look to gaming as a means of reaching the ever-elusive male movie-going audience. Just like product placement in movies, in-game advertising will likely prove an effective and innovative way of reaching hard-to-reach moviegoers.
I do think, however, that it is important to consider the genre of the movie and the context of the game so that the brand is not alienating or frustrating players. I hope that gaming companies and studios can find a meaningful way of working together to create integrated in-game advertising opportunities that are intrinsic to the game and exciting to the gamer.
If we can create advertisements that the gamers actually want to see and interact with, then we've done our job… hopefully motivating those gamers to actively discuss, promote and grow our message in a viral method to their friends.
Berens: How does Paramount integrate interactive marketing into the rest of the media mix? Are there any particular challenges or successes that you can point to?
Powell: Paramount is looking to interactive methods of advertising with increasing enthusiasm and dedication, which, of course, thrills me. As we look at our exit polls, we are finding that an increasing number of moviegoers are citing the internet and various interactive devices as being the most important reason for going to see a particular movie on opening weekend. We're supporting such behavior by increasing our interactive marketing efforts in all aspects of our campaigns, including online media, publicity, content syndication, creative, promotions and partnerships.
Berens: What about social networking, blogs and other forms of social media? Is Paramount, for example, doing anything with MySpace or its counterparts? Do you try to spread word of mouth by engaging with particular bloggers?
Powell: Yes! I truly believe that is important to be humble enough to hear what consumers are saying and proactively look to integrate a marketing message into their behaviors.
Social networking is an excellent example of a consumer behavior that we, as marketers, are paying attention to and working within to integrate our marketing message. A good example is our "Failure To Launch" campaign with MySpace.
Failure to Launch stars Matthew McConaughey as a thirty-something bachelor who suspects his parents of setting him up with his dream girl (Sarah Jessica Parker) so he'll finally leave their home. We decided to create a community with MySpace for other 30-something-year-olds who still live at home to help them launch out of their parents' houses... The concept was that friends/family, et cetera would nominate people who needed to move out, and the top three finalists would be flown to the film's premiere where the talent would select the person who had "failed to launch" out of his house, and the winner would receive six months of free rent.
Who knew there would be so many guys who still live at home!
Berens: The last question and my favorite-- what should I have asked you that I didn't? And please answer that question.
Powell: When will interactive marketing drive all film marketing… A girl's gotta dream big!
Brad Berens is executive editor for iMedia Communications.
