More in the series of cleaning out the archives and posting for prosperity. These are articles and essays that may or may not have seen the light of day. I know for absolute certainty that this was one of the last pieces I had submitted to the Comics Buyer's Guide- and definitely know that they didn't print it- otherwise I would have had a check sent out to me. But this was a fun project to do and you can tell, I was drifting towards media and researching where I would eventually wind up in a cushy position with Sony Pictures Television on the road a few years down the road. This article was originally written in 2003 during the time I was employed @ Warner Bros and was partially inspired by my good long time colleague in the comic book industry, Heidi MacDonald, when I was recalling a time when she used to review billboard marketing in the pages of the LA Weekly.
Since this was a major PR bust - maybe in this upcoming article - we can determine, what works or what doesn't in the magical realm of billboard advertising.
COMING TO A BILLBOARD NEAR YOU
By Cary Coatney
2003 is more than half way over and so far this is a year where a plethora of
movies based on comic book properties are flourishing in rapid succession
from both the independent and major studios. The kick start of Daredevil
this past February has now burst out of the starting gate with over $100
million worldwide setting the bar of what will succeed or fail. Major
budgeted studio fare such as X-Men 2,(now surpassing $200 million worldwide)
the Hulk, and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen are equally flanked by
low budget offerings such as Bulletproof Monk and American Splendor- and
just around the celluloid corner are Hellboy, Shazam!, The Punisher,
Catwoman, Plastic Man, Spider-Man 2 and a revival of the Superman and Batman
franchises. At this accelerated pace, the day will come when a comic book
property will be released every other week on a digitally projected screen
near you.
What has been piqued my interest moreso than the anticipated release dates of these movies, is the display of outdoor advertising that many are exposed to on a daily basis especially if you're one living in the Los Angeles and New York metropolitan areas, stretching even further out to London. Tinseltown legend has it that during the wee hours of the morning, little movie marketing gremlins
manage to tack up billboards and transit shelter posters of selected big budgeted movies coming to a theater near you to rev up the campaign engine for all the good girls and boys who will making the commute in the morning. Usually on my way to work- there's always some new unveiling of a script doctored high octane action packed extravaganza lauding a new or returning lycra leatherchapped protagonist based on a defilement of your favorite Marvel comic(in another arena altogether- think 'the Punisher' kiddies. Already gigantic cardboard floor displays are cropping up in theater lobbies all over the place even as we speak. Did anyone happen to see the size of the booth that Artisan erected on the San Diego Comic Con International exhibit hall this summer? Mucho scratcho must have went into pitching the tent for this puppy just to show a thirty second trailer inside.). That chunk of change, although the outdoor medium scrapes by on a small percentage, is one of the driving engines that allures movie goers in metropolitian areas as opposed to network
advertising which goes across the board of reaching the entire country in little rural areas. I mean, when was the last time you saw a billboard advertising Spider-man in the middle of the Mojave desert or somewhere remote such as Superior, Nebraska?
Outdoor spending is probably the most cost effective and efficient way to lure in movie goers compared to what studios such as Warner Bros and Sony splurge for magazine advertising. Did you know that a half page rate in Seventeen magazine sells for more than $40,000.00? Depending on the demographic, (appealing to teenyboppers who exult in the Britney Spears/Hillary Duff bandwagon or those gushing over Justin Timberlake beefcake glossies) it may seem like a bargain in
reaching it's core audience. However, newspapers these days are becoming harder to rely on when advertising rates are going skyhigh even as some circ ulations drop. Sometimes even those rates can eat up enormous amount of the movie's budget even as the listings of showtimes can become financially burdensome as a lot of movie patrons are switching to online methods such as moviefone.com to find out when and where their movie is playing in addition to printing out the tickets themselves.
What I'm looking to analyze in this essay is: Does exposure of a billboard or a bus placard ad backing a comic book inspired movie really recruit the audience that it is looking for or does it just simply apply a thin film negative veneer of eye candy distraction over major city highways (and there are those who currently complain to city hall about the blatant salaciousness of some
billboards that could be distracting to some motorists, although I do predict that a future Halle Berry/Catwoman advertising blitz will be the only one ever to careen an instantaneous 50 car pile up on the 405 Freeway). Or, does it at least drive the uninitated towards seeking out more information through a local comic book shop retailer? I presented this question to Earth-2 retailer Jud Myers whose store just happens to be located beneath a billboard in Sherman Oaks, Ca.
Jud explains: " They absolutely do. There is a billboard above our store that is owned by the studios. During the time when the Spider-Man movie was being hyped they kept it up there for months and people could see it going up and down Ventura Boulevard. Then they replaced with a billboard advertising the ride at Universal Studios and even with the ad depicting a fat guy in a Spider-Man suit, it still managed to bring attention to our store. But, the opposite happened
when the one for the Hulk movie disappeared only after two weeks. Those who see the ads and come in to inquire are those who haven't read a comic book in a very long time little knowing that the Hulk or Spider-man are still being published today- I would simply point them to where they are being kept on the shelves and when they go home that image is embeded in their consciousness ".
The other answers I seek are in the billboards themselves. Does the image of the product successfully project itself as a moneygrabber? Bulletproof Monk, although a enjoyful campy romp, did not convey heavy boffo returns even as images of the film were plastered everywhere across town. There was nowhere in town where you couldn't escape finding this image of Chow Yun-Fat and friends lurking in one's backyard. Even I wasn't immune from its' charms near my humble abode in Sherman Oaks, Ca.
Everywhere I happen to look on a heavily trafficked street, be either on Ventura Blvd that glistens along the San Fernando Valley or West Los Angeles' Wilshire Boulevard paving the way to Santa Monica are an infinite number of billboards accentuating the release of a upcoming movie or television event with the large percentage of agencies such as Viacom, Clear Channel, and Regency
being the ringleaders in all the monopolized arrangements. It is because of them that all skateboarding teens and frenzied SUV driving soccer moms alike take a breath to pause in this town to gaze upon them as if they were taking in a large dose of demerol. Other than a movie star murder mystery or a sports celebrity sex scandal, the bombardment of movie related billboards is clearly one of Los Angeles' natural resources.
Clear Channel can boast of having close to 700,000 outdoor displays worldwide. The company also owns or manages 18 television stations and operates a live entertainment subsidiary aptly named Clear Channel Entertainment. They are popular worldwide for mounting marketing campaigns for not only billboards and bus placards, but have cornered the market on subway entrances, transit
shelters, on top of taxi cabs, and gigantic wallscapes in major metropolitan areas.
Reseaching this led me to another query: what goes into the decision making process of where such billboards or bus placards get distributed? Does the movie studios execs themselves dictate to Clear Channel as of where they get placed in town where they would get the most notice ? Or does Clear Channel themselves take it upon themselves to make all the confident decisions of where they feel would do the most good?
I e-mailed Rita Flusche, the Regional Marketing Manager of Clear Channel Outdoor and this was her response:
"The decision making process involved in purchasing outdoor advertising can involve several parties. We can and do work directly with clients and also with media buyers and advertising agencies. The decision making process for the media buy is made with consideration to the advertising goals, the target audience demographics, research, what market(s) to purchase, what outdoor products best support the campaign, how long the campaign will run, budget, etc. All of these factors (and more) impact our recommendations for the media buy. Actual locations are
chosen to target the audience for that particular media buy and are subject to availability."
Also in Los Angeles, Regency Outdoor Advertising claims to be the most dynamic medium in the visible, real world of Southern California with it's most prestigious areas scattered across Los Angeles and Orange County. Their billboards are prominent fixures at LAX, on all major freeways, along the
infamous Sunset Strip, the UCLA campus, Westwood Village, and within earshot of Edison Field in Anaheim, home of the California Angels. Representives of that company were not available for comment.
What has been piqued my interest moreso than the anticipated release dates of these movies, is the display of outdoor advertising that many are exposed to on a daily basis especially if you're one living in the Los Angeles and New York metropolitan areas, stretching even further out to London. Tinseltown legend has it that during the wee hours of the morning, little movie marketing gremlins
manage to tack up billboards and transit shelter posters of selected big budgeted movies coming to a theater near you to rev up the campaign engine for all the good girls and boys who will making the commute in the morning. Usually on my way to work- there's always some new unveiling of a script doctored high octane action packed extravaganza lauding a new or returning lycra leatherchapped protagonist based on a defilement of your favorite Marvel comic(in another arena altogether- think 'the Punisher' kiddies. Already gigantic cardboard floor displays are cropping up in theater lobbies all over the place even as we speak. Did anyone happen to see the size of the booth that Artisan erected on the San Diego Comic Con International exhibit hall this summer? Mucho scratcho must have went into pitching the tent for this puppy just to show a thirty second trailer inside.). That chunk of change, although the outdoor medium scrapes by on a small percentage, is one of the driving engines that allures movie goers in metropolitian areas as opposed to network
advertising which goes across the board of reaching the entire country in little rural areas. I mean, when was the last time you saw a billboard advertising Spider-man in the middle of the Mojave desert or somewhere remote such as Superior, Nebraska?
Outdoor spending is probably the most cost effective and efficient way to lure in movie goers compared to what studios such as Warner Bros and Sony splurge for magazine advertising. Did you know that a half page rate in Seventeen magazine sells for more than $40,000.00? Depending on the demographic, (appealing to teenyboppers who exult in the Britney Spears/Hillary Duff bandwagon or those gushing over Justin Timberlake beefcake glossies) it may seem like a bargain in
reaching it's core audience. However, newspapers these days are becoming harder to rely on when advertising rates are going skyhigh even as some circ ulations drop. Sometimes even those rates can eat up enormous amount of the movie's budget even as the listings of showtimes can become financially burdensome as a lot of movie patrons are switching to online methods such as moviefone.com to find out when and where their movie is playing in addition to printing out the tickets themselves.
What I'm looking to analyze in this essay is: Does exposure of a billboard or a bus placard ad backing a comic book inspired movie really recruit the audience that it is looking for or does it just simply apply a thin film negative veneer of eye candy distraction over major city highways (and there are those who currently complain to city hall about the blatant salaciousness of some
billboards that could be distracting to some motorists, although I do predict that a future Halle Berry/Catwoman advertising blitz will be the only one ever to careen an instantaneous 50 car pile up on the 405 Freeway). Or, does it at least drive the uninitated towards seeking out more information through a local comic book shop retailer? I presented this question to Earth-2 retailer Jud Myers whose store just happens to be located beneath a billboard in Sherman Oaks, Ca.
Jud explains: " They absolutely do. There is a billboard above our store that is owned by the studios. During the time when the Spider-Man movie was being hyped they kept it up there for months and people could see it going up and down Ventura Boulevard. Then they replaced with a billboard advertising the ride at Universal Studios and even with the ad depicting a fat guy in a Spider-Man suit, it still managed to bring attention to our store. But, the opposite happened
when the one for the Hulk movie disappeared only after two weeks. Those who see the ads and come in to inquire are those who haven't read a comic book in a very long time little knowing that the Hulk or Spider-man are still being published today- I would simply point them to where they are being kept on the shelves and when they go home that image is embeded in their consciousness ".
The other answers I seek are in the billboards themselves. Does the image of the product successfully project itself as a moneygrabber? Bulletproof Monk, although a enjoyful campy romp, did not convey heavy boffo returns even as images of the film were plastered everywhere across town. There was nowhere in town where you couldn't escape finding this image of Chow Yun-Fat and friends lurking in one's backyard. Even I wasn't immune from its' charms near my humble abode in Sherman Oaks, Ca.
Everywhere I happen to look on a heavily trafficked street, be either on Ventura Blvd that glistens along the San Fernando Valley or West Los Angeles' Wilshire Boulevard paving the way to Santa Monica are an infinite number of billboards accentuating the release of a upcoming movie or television event with the large percentage of agencies such as Viacom, Clear Channel, and Regency
being the ringleaders in all the monopolized arrangements. It is because of them that all skateboarding teens and frenzied SUV driving soccer moms alike take a breath to pause in this town to gaze upon them as if they were taking in a large dose of demerol. Other than a movie star murder mystery or a sports celebrity sex scandal, the bombardment of movie related billboards is clearly one of Los Angeles' natural resources.
Clear Channel can boast of having close to 700,000 outdoor displays worldwide. The company also owns or manages 18 television stations and operates a live entertainment subsidiary aptly named Clear Channel Entertainment. They are popular worldwide for mounting marketing campaigns for not only billboards and bus placards, but have cornered the market on subway entrances, transit
shelters, on top of taxi cabs, and gigantic wallscapes in major metropolitan areas.
Reseaching this led me to another query: what goes into the decision making process of where such billboards or bus placards get distributed? Does the movie studios execs themselves dictate to Clear Channel as of where they get placed in town where they would get the most notice ? Or does Clear Channel themselves take it upon themselves to make all the confident decisions of where they feel would do the most good?
I e-mailed Rita Flusche, the Regional Marketing Manager of Clear Channel Outdoor and this was her response:
"The decision making process involved in purchasing outdoor advertising can involve several parties. We can and do work directly with clients and also with media buyers and advertising agencies. The decision making process for the media buy is made with consideration to the advertising goals, the target audience demographics, research, what market(s) to purchase, what outdoor products best support the campaign, how long the campaign will run, budget, etc. All of these factors (and more) impact our recommendations for the media buy. Actual locations are
chosen to target the audience for that particular media buy and are subject to availability."
Also in Los Angeles, Regency Outdoor Advertising claims to be the most dynamic medium in the visible, real world of Southern California with it's most prestigious areas scattered across Los Angeles and Orange County. Their billboards are prominent fixures at LAX, on all major freeways, along the
infamous Sunset Strip, the UCLA campus, Westwood Village, and within earshot of Edison Field in Anaheim, home of the California Angels. Representives of that company were not available for comment.
Viacom Outdoor Media on the other hand, has garnered world wide recognition for having recently come under fire for refusing to put up anti-war advertisments on their billboards by non-profit demonstrators (even when close to $75,000 was raised by a e-mail petition, they still would not succumb to sacrificing their integrity) Viacom, too has billboards all over the world and are primary the ones responsible for coining the phrases 'Mega Sides' and 'Mega Rears' when it comes to getting the word of mouth out on double decker buses in London.
My first photograph that I took in Los Angeles is the Hulk billboard that has been mounted in operation since the holiday season of last year. It's in a very convenient spot: right in front of the Universal Studios lot where a major portion of the production was shot. By this placement, this set the community buzz circulating, anticipating in wonder and much concern of how the CGI
enhanced Hulk would look like until the offical unveiling in between quarters of Super Bowl Sunday (not being a football fan myself even my curiosity was put to the test- I stayed home just to watch the Super Bowl commercials for the first time in some twenty years plus). The image heightened by it's two dimensional haunting effect of a green skin hand reaching out to grab a passing pedestrian
even got my heart pumping. I thought the ploy very effective in getting me to whip my wallet out on opening day. Shame that malicious word of mouth on internet messageboards made Universal a few 7 zeroes shy of breaking even on its' $ 150 million tab.
Another eye-catcher was the X-Men 2 placards on each side of most MTA transit buses with attention made to the movie's eight principal characters- and since studios perdict that a good sized portion of box office receipts were to come from the middle class workers- it makes perfect sense to engage their curiosity into something they use everyday to commute to work (towards the movie's opening weekend, I overheard an entire back area of the bus getting into a heated discussion about the movie and its' characters just over someone mentioning the placard he saw before boarding the bus). Some of these city operated buses are set aside to decal an entire bus with a movie motif- a sort of a billboard 'in motion', so to speak. And while they're not solely used to lure mininum wage
workers, even those in a higher income bracket will see or get up close to one of these buses while gridlocked in bumper to bumper traffic and who knows, perhaps they will be one day detrimental in helping to curb road rage. Metro city buses flashing those soothing images all over town could curtail those short fuse impulsions like Michael Douglas failed to remonstrate in that movie 'Falling Down' a few years back. Ok, so maybe that was a little impetuous of me, but pretty actresses in mutant garb would have a calming effect on me if I were to lose all self control (if I were actually driving a car, which I don't). Anyway with enough being said, X2 went to gross $214 million worldwide despite
not having nearly the panache of the marketing that the Hulk had going (i.e.; product tie- ins such as Hulk hands, Slim Jims, Seven Eleven Big Gulps and Jumbo beef hot dogs- you name it- nearly every minimal junk food product jumped aboard the Hulk-size it bandwagon for the most part of early summer).
Giant revenue is dependent on advertising studio product and studios are frequently plundering away with clever methods to get the word out on new releases in addition to covering up entire buses with Scooby Doo, Spider-Man, The Matrix Reloaded or Lara Croft: Tomb Raider 2 The Cradle of Life themed tapestries; supermarket cashiers even get into the act by utilizing their check
in dividers to hype movie products (such as Eddie Murphy's Daddy Day Care) all the while as you wait for your groceries to go through the bar code scanner.Maybe a trailer for that very same movie will be playing on overhead HDTV monitors. And how can one not escape the scrunity of spam e-mails and pop up ads whenever one logs on the internet? Personally, several downloaded
screensavers or desktop wallpapers adorn my computer monitor featuring box office flavors of the month such as X-Men 2, Hulk, and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in my institgational quest to pipe awareness to all my fellow non comic book deprived co-workers. Maybe one day these personal billboards of mine could possibly sway them with planted subliminal messages to take a trip to
visit a local comic book specialty store to gain some insight into the characters before checking the movie out instead of them thinking I'm a walking comic book fanboy encyclopedia so I would have to be under pressure to explain everything to them. Only time and a dozen other future multi-million advertising compaigns will tell.
Cary Coatney would like to thank the following for their contributions and research to this article: Jud Myers and Carr D'Angelo of Earth 2 Comics located in Sherman Oaks, Ca, Rita Flusche and Russ Mason of Clear Channel Outdoor, Jo Tomlin of Viacom Outdoor Limited UK, all of the companies various wesites, the Hollywood Reporter, and Heidi MacDonald for the inspiration that writing
billboard reviews can be a chic thing.
Cary also peddles a self published comic book of his own called the Deposit Man through Landescape Productions and can be contacted via his e-mail address: depositman@yahoo.com, but it may take some time to get a reply because he's usually out waiting for the new billboards to arrive.
~
Cary Coatney - April 30- July 31, 2003