News
10 movies get Super Bowl blasts
Updated Feb. 2--
By Robert Marich
Feb. 1, 2009 – Movie ads were even a bigger force than anticipated in today's Super Bowl telecast. Making surprise appearances were Sony Pictures’ youth comedy Year One starring Jack Black and Disney’s teen adventure Race to Witch Mountain. Just prior to the start of pro football’s championship game, a Universal ad ran for Julia Roberts spy thriller Duplicity.
Year One and Race to Witch Mountain raised the in-game tally to 10 movies gobbling up 12 commercial units (each unit is 30 seconds). That compares to eight films taking eight commercial units in the same game a year ago—as movies offset losses of recession battered advertisers in other categories. Top prices this year for 30-second commercials was $3 million, though regular NBC advertisers got volume discounts.
Those two in-game ads for Year One and Race to Witch Mountain piled on top of the eight movies with 10 units known before the game (see story below). Leading this pack, the 3-D ad for Paramount-distributed Monsters vs. Aliens was 90-seconds, which accounts for three units. In one change from earlier reports, 20th Century Fox reversed plans to buy an ad for Wolverine so no ad ran for this film.
Besides Monsters, the other anticipated film ads that did run were: Paramount’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Star Trek and G.I. Joe; Sony Pictures’ Angels and Demons; Universal’s Land of the Lost and the fourth The Fast and the Furious; and Disney for its Pixar animated family film Up. Of the six major studios, Fox and Warner Bros. did not buy ads in the event.
The game draws a U.S. audience in the 90s of millions, which is nearly one third of the U.S. population and by far TV’s largest viewing event. Over the years, movies that received Super Bowl splashes have uneven track records in box office.
On the positive side, Paramount’s ad for Iron Man a year ago is credited with starting a buzz that launched the then-unheralded movie to a blockbuster $318 million in domestic box office. It’s too soon if one or more films this year will point to their Super Bowl ads as the start of success.
On the other hand, commercials for Pride, Running Scared and World’s Fastest Indian ran in Super Bowls since 2006 with dismal result. None of these films even reached a meager $10 million in box office.
An Associated Press story quotes NBC as saying that 67 in-game commercials grossed $206 million (and $261 million when including adjacent NBC gameday ads). That's touted as a record high, though previous marks are not cited. As of press time, post-game analysis of ads is not yet out. But movies typically rank at the bottom of such evaluations where creativity is the yardstick.
However, that doesn't mean the movie ads are ineffective. Indeed, millions of consumers will record the game on digital video recorders and will watch some of the ads closely on replay. Movie ads--which are essentially mini-trailes -- are eye-catching with quick cuts and famous faces.
For full text of earlier story, click link below:
www.marketingmovies.net/news/hollywood-rescues-super-bowl/