How Much Is Market Dialer?

Movies: How much does it cost to market a movie?

• How much for all advertising ( break down if you know: print, TV etc.). The difference between blockbuster style, mid- level, and indie? Definitions; blockbuster films = $75mil+ to make, mid level = $20-75 mil, and indie = $1-10mil to make. My numbers may be off but you get the picture (pun intended), not looking for and argument on film cost and definition but just marketing costs. How much for TV ads, how much for newspapers, how much for billboards, how much for mag ads, how much for internet ad cost etc. or just a whole marketing cost idea. Seems like it must be very high and is in included in the budget?

• Answer:

  It's a very difficult set of numbers to break down now.  The MPAA used to release, within their annual Theatrical Market Statistics report, average marketing costs for films.  During the recession of 2008, they stopped this practice and no longer offer marketing cost breakdowns.  In fact, there is no real current tracker of such costs due to the fact that studios wisely keep these numbers to themselves.  There is a lot of speculation on marketing costs.  While we won't talk about definitions of such here, as requested by the question details, I will say that while marketing costs are high, those reported numbers are just part of the story.  You can't damn a film by saying, "Well, it may have made X amount, but after marketing costs, they are still losing money."  You have to figure in so many other details such as licensing, product placement, VOD, etc.  But if we're looking for direct breakdowns of marketing costs, below will likely be the best we can find without breaking into the studio books or getting some inside information. Back in 2007, when the MPAA last released marketing costs in their annual reports: The average marketing cost of a studio movie was $36 million. Now, keep in mind that this number, now five years later, has likely risen into the $50 million range for the average studio film.  Most speculators will instantly scoff, stating that the big blockbusters spend easily well over $100 million on marketing.  This number originated with some anonymous sources and has since become to go-to number for the media and for the fans.  The fact is, studios don't release those numbers, so we'll never fully know the truth.  It's likely to be that or well over that for big blockbuster films sure, but the average is much less.  Now, according to the MPAA 2007 report, domestic marketing costs in the indie-film sector jumped 44% in 2007 while the major studios climbed just 4%.  As of 2007, the average domestic marketing cost for a major studio indie affiliate (Specialty companies like Screen Gems, New Line, Fox Searchlight, Miramax, etc.) was at $25.7 million with $17.8 million the year prior. In 2001, the figure was just $9.5 million. These figures don't account for the smaller indie companies however.  The tracking numbers and statistics offered by the MPAA's former marketing breakdown covered the broad strokes of ad cost, market research, film release prints, and other ancillary costs.  Hollywood has been trying to cut marketing spending since 2008 by limiting major premiere expenditures and what not (Although it seems that they've gone back to spending more these days), but the fear is that there isn't enough hard evidence on what makes people go see a certain movie.  So to underspend is to risk a lackluster opening weekend, which will vastly limit the length of time theaters keep playing the film, which in turn affects the gross of the film.  So "overspending" is now the best option.  The biggest market to market a studio film is TV.  Studios spend millions of dollars for 30 second Superbowl spots because that particular event reaches over 100 million viewers in one night, many of whom watch the game now merely to see what trailers will be shown. "Television is still the No. 1 medium to sell our product," says Jeff  Blake, Sony's worldwide marketing and distribution chief, while speaking with L.A. Times in 2009. "And it's the  only medium that gets you a mass audience." "The Internet is a rising medium for selling movies," Sony's Blake said.  "But it doesn't yet have the reach of TV. No single Internet space  reaches consumers as effectively as TV." While that statement has changed in just the last three years since that quote, it still remains to be true as studios and marketing companies continue to explore, fail, and succeed in online marketing strategies.  We're all still trying to figure out how to use this beast we call the internet.  If there were just a handful of browsers and websites, it'd obviously be the place to go, however the problem is that there are hundreds of mainstream websites... thousands even.  Facebook exists for sure, but Social Media is yet another entity that these people are trying to figure out how to exploit for the benefit of their films.  So what is the best marketing cost breakdown? The best information out there goes back to the MPAA's final report on marketing costs back in 2007.  So, off of a 2007 marketing cost average for studio films of $32.17 million: Newspaper - 10.1% Network TV - 21.6% TV Spot - 13.9% Online/Internet - 4.4% Trailers - 4.2% Other Media (cable TV, radio, magazines, and billboards) - 24.0% Non-media (production/creative services, exhibitor services, promotion and publicity, and market research) - 21.8% While these numbers, as mentioned above, have changed in the last five years, it gives you some good insight as to where that money is going.  What does the future hold for marketing costs? The sky is the limit.  The problem currently is that technology is rushing by at a speed we cannot track.  A few years ago, there was no iPad.  We couldn't watch movies and television on smart phones, tablets, etc.  We didn't have the streaming capabilities and access we have now.  We don't know what the next big thing is.  Will it be Cloud services?  Will there be an extended Social Media around that technology?  Will grass roots marketing find itself in a revolutionary comeback of sorts.  It worked for films like Paranormal Activity, where the film was released gradually in college markets before any type of domestic wide debut. Marketing costs for films are difficult to track these days because the sources are often unreliable, speculative, and bloated.  It's hard to crunch the numbers when we have no access to the books.  It's hard to determine what separates a studio's regular marketing write off with the direct marketing cost impact of a certain film because the money was going to be spent somewhere anyway. The more interesting conversation in my mind, regarding marketing films, is how creative studios will get.  Cryptic viral marketing has proven to nab headlines.  Will the studios go back to the tried and true form of creative marketing beyond the above statistics?   Or will they continue to simply roll the dice and put all of their money, and then some, on the best statistical number or color... and gamble?  Time will tell.