Online now enjoys a seat at the advertisers’ ‘top table’. Gone are the days when the medium was very much treated as an afterthought, a place for old assets to be reused and tagged on at the very end of a campaign. Integration has never been such a pressing issue for the digital marketer. Executing your campaign effectively across a range of media is a major challenge, yet the results can be hugely rewarding.

Even as early as 2004, a Cross Media Optimization Study (XMOS) conducted by IAB US found that the combination of TV, banner ads and rich media was highly effective for a Universal campaign promoting the release of E.T. on DVD. Whilst TV advertising was the cornerstone of the campaign, 25.4% of respondents who saw the TV and rich-media creative said they would definitely or probably buy the DVD, compared to 19.9% of people who saw the TV ad in isolation. These figures are even more significant given the fact that just 1% of the marketing budget was
dedicated to rich media, with 94% being allocated to the TV campaign.

However, in the movie business, it has been widely acknowledged that there is still room for further improvement and education regarding the integration of marketing campaigns. Christian Perrins, freelance digital strategist, notes that: “One of the dangers is that people get obsessed with integration and all the nuances of a particular medium are lost. On the other hand if TV, print and online are in the room at the same time you can do some amazing things like getting a call to action integrated across all mediums and something that is relevant to the film.“

We live in an extremely dynamic media landscape, characterised by convergence, joint usage and greater consumer control than ever before. Of course, this has not gone unnoticed by consumers, who are fully aware of how the various media touchpoints can work with each other to drive their awareness and fully satisfy their need for information about a product or brand. Joint research amongst consumers from the IAB and RAB in 2005 for example, found that 57% of people had researched a product on the internet after just hearing about them on the radio, with 59% claiming to use search to find more details. This wasn’t just restricted to editorial mentions – 39% claimed that advertising has prompted them to search for something on the internet.

When approaching an integrated movie marketing campaign, a good starting point would be to consider two key questions:

• What does integration look like?
• How do you manage integration?

What does integration look like?

For many marketers their perspective of an online and offline integrated campaign is simply reproducing their poster or cinema ads on the internet, believing for example, that if there is a dancing monkey in the TV spot, by showing it online you suddenly have an integrated campaign.

Campaigns for film releases have certainly been guilty of this, regularly being driven by the actors in the films, or in some instances the assets available at the time – a limited approach that offers very little extra for your audiences. Film historians are fascinated by vintage film trailers, particularly from the silent era such as Chaplin or Laurel and Hardy, because often a different section of a film was processed and edited for a trailer before the final film and cut were finalised. This enthusiasm is a demonstration of people’s hunger for film content, however trivial.

Integration is not about matching luggage, it is about ensuring that every individual consumer’s touchpoint to a brand not only works in isolation, but also builds on a message. For a new James Bond film many consumers might just see a poster, so it needs to stand alone. Replicating that poster on TV, however would be ineffective and unrewarding, so something extra is required. A great trailer supports the poster you’ve seen, but also builds on the story. Again, some may only see that trailer so it is essential that integration is about making each media work on their own, but also ensuring that they build on one another. Each piece of communication should have continuity, but also the same intensity of message.

As we have seen, online works within integrated campaigns to not only raise awareness, but stimulate word of mouth and create stories. It is particularly effective for tactically drip feeding elements to the consumer to build and maintain a buzz ahead of release.

So if integration is about reaching your audience where they are (TV, print, online, out and about) the greater challenge appears to be how to manage it.

How do you manage integration?

The challenge for advertisers is to identify early on exactly what it is they are managing. An important aspect in film communications is knowing how to handle assets in the most effective way. Film companies and their agencies are swiftly recognising that identifying an idea early on in development can help them manage the production and the creation of the assets long before they are available for use. Admittedly this is a major shift of planning for a lot of entertainment
brands, but the rewards are surely worth it.

A clear example of this could be search. You don’t need any assets to know that the new Star Trek film is going to be about the new James Kirk, how the USS Enterprise was built and travelling to bold new worlds... All territories and key words can be bought and arranged months before the film is released. Ensuring this is all in place before the hype starts is essential to meet the anticipated demand. This is especially true of film franchises that are remade. For example, a search for Transformers used to present you with images from the cult 80’s show. Now this term reveals listings based around the more recent blockbuster.

As with our own lives, the key to doing anything properly is to give yourself more time, money and resources to realise your ambition. Rarely are you presented with all three, but striving to achieve each of them means that you are likely to achieve true integration. The best integrated film campaigns we have seen in the last 12 months have begun with the client, creative and media agencies responsible for all media activity feeding into the planning process at the same time. Although logistically this cannot be the case on every campaign, in terms of best practice, it is something that should be aspired to.

Finally, channels should not be determined by what is available, but what is being used the most by your key audience. It makes sense to utilise social networks like Channel 4’s Skins does because that’s where their audience are spending their time. The same strategy is not true of high-brow films such as Atonement and therefore a new suite of tools is needed.

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