Your Flight Is Now Departing. Is It To The Web, Or The Tube?

I am always a little giddy when I get a post from our Red Carpet Correspondent Steve Peace because I always learn a little something. He's one smart Fig Newman.

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The word “flighting” has always sounded ephemeral, light, and insubstantial to me. It brings to mind an image. That of tossing a few million dollars into the wind and letting the fates scatter it across time and the media landscape. Not exactly the sort of methodology you might espouse to a client in a plan presentation about how decisions were made to apportion dollars across time . How then, do movie marketers make decisions on the flighting of dollars?

An examination of historical flighting schedules reveals that 70% to 100% of media dollars in support of theatrical releases are spent in the final three weeks before open (Source: TNS Media data). Media support for a film typically begins anywhere from 10 weeks to 3 weeks before release. The determining variable in whether a movie receives a lengthy flight or a brief one, or one that is more broadly distributed or more concentrated, seems to be an entirely subjective one. The key question is, “How big do you THINK the film will be?”

Ok, a number of you might cry foul at this point. How big a film is, how much interest can be generated in it, is not entirely subjective. One can look at objective measures such as the box office draw of the lead talent or director, whether or not it’s based on a popular book, or use the production budget as a proxy for saleability. True. But, all of those measures are incomplete. The true measure of a film’s box office potential is subjectively determined.

If a film is thought to be a blockbuster, it should receive a lengthy flighting schedule with a broader distribution of dollars over time. The idea is that a better film is able to hold attention within the marketplace for a longer period of time. And that anticipation can be maintained and built until the day of launch. This strategy can backfire pretty severely if the studio overestimates a film’s saleability. People just get sick of hearing about a movie after awhile. No matter how big. Which brings us to ramping dollars.

Almost all movie marketing campaigns are ramped over time. This ramping can be categorized into 3 broad buckets. First, information about the film is seeded into the marketplace, which acts as an introduction that the film exists, to get people comfortable with the notion of its existence and to fan any devotional flames that might exist (e.g. fans of the talent, book, director, etc.). In the build phase, weight is hiked up to increase reach across the broadest definition of the audience and to debut a rich story about the value of the movie. Finally, in the launch phase, frequencies are ratcheted to build a frenzy of anticipation and to compete with other dollars in the marketplace vying for a similar audience. During this phase, there might also be a course correction on the messaging (if tracking numbers are lower than anticipated) or a part two to the marketing story.

With very large releases, this ramp can occur over an extended period of time. With small releases, resources must be concentrated to be effective against competitive dollars. Below is a chart with a typical flighting schedule for a film with a large marketing budget:



Many of you will have noticed that Internet dollars are flighted differently than traditional dollars and might be asking yourselves, “What gives?” This is due to the distinct nature of the Internet in comparison with other traditional forms of communication. Television and Out-of-Home are great for introducing a film to a broad swath of the population. But, no one turns on the T.V. or walks outside when they want to find out what’s playing. Directed research about movies is mostly performed online (yes, there are still people that read the newspaper, but that population is declining and most everyone now augments reading the paper with going online). So, it’s a perfect medium for seeding early messaging about a film to the most rabid fans that are actively trolling for this kind of information.

There is research that was performed by Dynamic Logic that indicates that flighting dollars online 4 weeks before a release provides better results than flighting dollars more closely to the release date. One theory to explain this data is that once opinions are formed about a movie, they are communicated quickly online. Therefore, getting ahead of the rumors online about the quality of a film might be an effective way to influence perceptions.

That’s the latest news from southland. Happy marketing.

Steve

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