Tuesday night the IMACS (Interactive Movie Advertising Creative Showcase) debuted in Los Angeles, sponsored by Klipmart, marking the first presentation "dedicated to the best of interactive movie marketing."
Independent Producer and Creative Consultant Susan Lambert introduced the event, noting the need to discuss online movie advertising in its own time and place, not as part of a larger presentation or conference. She explained, "It would be great to have an event to celebrate [interactive movie marketing]…to start a dialogue about more innovation [in the field]." This event highlights the strides that interactive marketing -- and movie marketing specifically -- has made over the past few years; the outlook is only better.
Before opening up the stage to the presenting agencies, Lambert reminded the audience that, "Sometimes it's important for ads to be simple-- for the title treatment and your release date to be present in your ad from the start. At the end of the day, no matter how cool your ad is, it needs to sell the movie… Those two forces are often at odds-- the desire to include so much information, and the need for simplicity."
Evoke, Avatar Labs and Media Banners present
Evan DeHaven and Christine DeHaven of agency Evoke were first on the stage to present the work they've done for "CARS." Ms. DeHaven outlined the campaign's online strategy: essentially, to introduce characters and actors to the audience. The agency conveyed a depth to each of the characters, a depth which may not be possible to convey in any other medium. In one expandable banner, audiences can play with the Lightning McQueen character. Evoke produced six banners, each featuring a different character, that included downloads, video and 360 spins of the cars.
Rex Cook and Aaron Buchanan from Avatar Labs next took the stage to present the work their agency has done for the movie "ATL." Similar to Evoke's approach to the "CARS" banners, Avatar designed ads that functioned almost as minisites, replete with music tracks, AIM icons and send-to-a-friend features. The work paid off; interaction rates were around 80 percent.
Dimitry Ioffe, principal of Media Banners, took over, introducing the agency's mission by saying, "We like a lot of impact… We don't look at what the ads do online as the be-all, end-all. A lot of what we like to do is really just push the brand as big as we can, push users into the ads…"
Media Banners created ads for "X-Men: The Last Stand." The movie has many characters and a variety of looks for various media outlets-- about 10. Ioffe explained, "Fox really had the desire to give a certain amount of treatment to each of the characters… when it came to doing a lot of rich media stuff… power ads. [We did] a lot of really cool green screen video of each of the characters. Each unit randomized between two to three video units; we were daycoding everything. [We worked with] very clear, very direct branding-type units… [We also ran an] X-space unit on MySpace; there were two million friends at last count. With the power units…, we went ahead and took the green screens… took some fun expanding power units and created Flash ads. The idea was to bring the video into Flash, and then re-output the part inside the unit into video, leaving the rest in Flash, so that the outside expand was under 100k."
The audience asks questions
Q&A followed the presentation. Lambert kicked it off, asking the presenters what they predicted for the next six months. Laura Primack of Avatar Labs noted the importance of using video to invite interactivity. She predicts new ways of using video to present information will develop in the upcoming months. Ioffe suggested that there will be more use of 3D, roadblocks and compressed file sizes.
An audience member asked, "Are you in the online space looking at moving into the mobile space…?" Ioffe responded, "Now people are sending out statics and JPEGs, much as when the internet started out. It's growing fast." Mr. DeHaven elaborated, "A couple companies are coming out -- such as Qualcomm -- with live, streaming video on your phone-- a separate channel; [also, keep your eyes on] Disney-- they have amazing stuff coming out. This is a multimedia situation." Primack mentioned movie games for mobile phones.
Another audience member brought up the issue of hotspotting. (Hotspotting is the ability to interact with video while it's playing-- to, for example, click on a character in a clip and find out more about him/her.) Lambert identified Klipmart for its work in the field, mostly with games. Hotspotting is great for a really rich character-based movie. DreamWorks has used it to market "Over the Hedge." Disney did some for its "National Treasure," "King Arthur" and "The Alamo" campaigns. There's much more of this ahead.
With content-rich banners, the rise of mobile and hotspotting, interactive entertainment marketing will only get more exciting and more effective. The evening closed with a sense of camaraderie and optimism, which will bolster the interactive community's work in the coming years.
Emma Brownell is iMedia Connection's creative editor. Read full bio here.
