For cellular phone marketer Ericsson, it was a month.
For Visa, it was three months.
And for General Motors? Try 11 years.
These companies all are part of a burgeoning trend in advertising called “event marketing,” the process of linking products to a specific movie, concert or sporting event, for example.
And their mantra is simple: “Get in big, get in early.”
Ericsson, along with a handful of other companies, was out a month before the launch of the new James Bond movie “Tomorrow Never Dies,” promoting the movie in its own ads.
Visa, a partner with the Olympics for seven straight Games, was out with its first Winter Olympics ad in late November–a full three months before the Games begin in Nagano, Japan.
And in one of the most stunning long-term tie-ins ever, General Motors earlier this year committed up to $1 billion, mostly in TV advertising time, to sponsor the Olympics for the next 11 years, including the 2008 Games.
Welcome to the new world of pop culture marketing, coming soon to a venue near you.
In today’s cluttered advertising marketplace of cable, satellite television and niche publications, it’s no longer enough to buy a single television ad on the big networks.
To separate yourself from the competition, it is who or what you are identified with that more and more advertisers are counting on to grab consumers’ attention.
Susan Haxager, senior vice president for New York ad agency BBDO, which does Visa’s advertising, said events “give you instant affiliation and affinity with consumers.”
“In a culture-obsessed society, music and entertainment really capture people’s attention,” Haxager said.
And virtually every form of real-life entertainment experience is cashing in on it.
Event sponsorships are now the fastest-growing form of marketing in the U.S., growing more than five times in the last decade, from roughly $1 billion in 1986 to $5.4 billion in 1996, according to Chicago-based IEG Inc., publisher of the IEG Sponsorship Report.
The fracturing of the media, especially in television, has pushed marketers to try to get their message in front of their consumers in more direct ways, such as sponsorships or tie-ins with movies or other forms of entertainment that will have a sustained audience.
And as more consumers identify themselves through either the movies they see or concerts they attend or international sporting events they watch, marketers are seeing those as opportunities to reach customers in ways a single television ad can’t.
“What a marketer gets out of it is the ability to link his brand more closely to pop culture,” said Tom Sharbaugh, president of the local ad agency Leap Partnership.
And while sponsorships and tie-ins continue to grow, advertisers are taking advantage of them much further in advance of the event. To put it bluntly, it’s a way to cash in on hype.
Before “Tomorrow Never Dies” even opens on Dec. 19, MGM will have garnered more than $100 million worth of publicity in a unique arrangement with its tie-in partners.
In exchange for product placements, eight advertisers promised to either use real footage from the movie or promote the movie in their ads.
And it’s not just movies that are receiving the star treatment. No longer are TV rights the biggest provider of revenue for the Olympic Games. In the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City, 43 percent of Salt Lake City’s $798 million budget will come from sponsorships, compared with 39 percent from TV rights, the U.S. Olympic Committee says.
And events and sponsors no longer have to be linked by similar markets–like beer companies and the Super Bowl.
Long-distance phone giant Sprint feels right at home sponsoring a local 10-kilometer road race as well as the worldwide Rolling Stones tour, where it hopes it can entice people to sign up for service by giving them access to the best tickets in the house.
Elton John has tied in with Visa in the past. And Phil Collins and Gloria Estefan tours have partnered with Sears, Roebuck and Co.
But with “Tomorrow Never Dies,” event tie-in has been taken to a different level, and may set the stage for giant event sponsorships in the future.
In its deals with its eight “marketing partners,” virtually no dollars were exchanged. Instead, product placements in the movie were doled out in exchange for the company promoting the movie in its ads.
“The ads tend to sell more Bond than the phone,” said Daryl Toor, director of public relations for Ericsson, which has the most cameos in the movie. “The phones are riding the coattails of James Bond.”
For Ericsson, a Swedish company that is well-known by consumers in Europe but by few in the U.S., the goal was to build up its name with consumers here. And it has a lot riding on the film. Its more than $15 million advertising expenditure behind the film is its single largest investment behind any event in the U.S.
“Bond is the biggest thing we’ve ever done,” Toor said.
Marketing executives see the big event expenditures growing even more. They said that in many cases, companies can get instant credibility with consumers by the event or entertainment they are aligned with.
“You’re getting an endorsement by a character you couldn’t normally buy,” said Jonathan Harries, executive creative director for ad agency Foote, Cone & Belding, Chicago. “You are getting the reality and fantasy endorsement.
“It’s similar to people smoking in movies,” he said. “When you ban tobacco advertising forever, the power of seeing John Travolta smoking a cigarette would be huge.”
In the case of Visa, event marketing has become a huge part of its marketing and advertising program, mainly because of the “halo” effect of aligning itself with what it considers other premier brands.
In the ad for the “Tomorrow Never Dies” movie, Visa wanted to use the James Bond character for its Checkcard product–a debit card that acts like a check. In previous ad campaigns, the company had been using famous people, such as Dallas Cowboys cornerback Deion Sanders, and former Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, in situations where although they are famous, they still have to produce identification when writing a check.
That campaign alone has boosted consumer awareness of the product from 54 percent to 80 percent over the past few years. But with Bond, the company would be aligned with the ultimate security agent. The hoopla that develops well in advance of a film’s launch peaked Visa’s interest.
“What you want to show is that even James Bond isn’t exempt (from having to show identification with a check),” said Becky Saeger, executive vice president, advertising and marketing services, for Visa U.S.A. “We may have chosen to use that character even if that film wasn’t coming out. But with the movie coming out, it was a natural. This is clearly an example of how we want to use event marketing. You want to ask what kind of leverage can I get from this?”
Marketing partnerships between companies are getting more complex and intertwined as well.
McDonald’s Corp., which inked a 10-year marketing alliance with Walt Disney last year, gets to tie itself with Disney’s big budget holiday films every Christmas–like this year’s “Flubber.” And Disney gets a major retail outlet to promote its smaller products throughout the year as well.
“We have a global strategy we’re trying to accomplish,” said Dean Barrett, vice president, promotion, sports and presence marketing for McDonald’s. “On the movie end, the awareness you get when a movie is coming is tremendous.”
But there is at least one major risk of this so-called event marketing phenomenon. What if the event bombs?
“There would be some risks,” said FCB’s Harries.
