News
Disney Search: Hire Insider Or Outsider?
By Robert Marich
Feb 2, 2010 – Walt Disney Studios has been without a domestic theatrical marketing czar for 2 ½ months, and apparently is searching for someone outside the film sector.
Newly-appointed film chief Rich Ross, who is shaking up the studio’s executive ranks, “has scoured some big ad agencies -- including TBWA\Chiat\Day -- seeking candidates who have overseen innovative campaigns for major brands,” notes a Los Angeles Times article. “He’s also weighed bringing in someone from the video game or tech industries -- or the very least, someone savvy about harnessing social networking and emerging technologies to sell movies, according to several people knowledgeable about the search.”
This has a familiar ring to it. Until the 1980s, film marketing chiefs invariably were promoted from within the department or hired from rivals, but media landscape fragmented due to TV, putting films in intense competition with other media. “For the first time (in the 1980s), the top studio jobs went to executives with backgrounds in television, movie distribution (those who licensed films to theaters), and general-purpose marketing,” notes the chapter on major studios in Marketing to Moviegoers: Second Edition. “Television executives brought a sense of discipline from their spreadsheet mentality of weighing the cost of television programming versus the ad-revenue potential of the program’s intended time period.”
According to the Los Angeles Times article, now the Disney imperative is new media and perhaps games expertise. However, few films can open on the strength of a new media-centric campaign and it is still conventional TV ads that are most effective in selling films.
Getting an outsider is a double-edged sword. The good news is such executives have broad experience in motivating consumers.
The Los Angeles Times article cautions, however, “Traditional Hollywood marketers question the wisdom of Ross hiring an outsider with little or no experience selling movies and limited relationships with powerful producers who have a strong voice in how their films are promoted.”
For full text, click link below:
www.marketingmovies.net/chapters/chapter-9-major-studios/