Open House
A New Musical Film by Dan Mirvish
Because finding a home should be something to sing about.
Product Placement & Branded Sponsorship
Corporate America has had a long history of getting involved with product placement in motion pictures, most prominently dating back to the James Bond films of the 60s (Aston Martin is still reaping rewards from this deal almost 40 years since they appeared as Bond's car of choice.) And since M&Ms rued the day they snubbed Steven Speilberg and allowed Reece's Pieces to gain huge market share by appearing in E.T., product placement has been a key marketing strategy for most consumer products and companies.
But more recently, product placement has taken on even greater importance in an era when TV commercials are starting to lose their grip on American consumers. In the age of TIVO, people are simply skipping past commercials to get straight to their entertainment. Branded sponsorship of individual TV shows once a fixture in the 50's and 60's is returning to network programming. Top-rated shows like Survivor have returned to an era where sponsorship and product placement go hand in hand. And unlike commercials, these placements are intrinsically woven into the programming so that no amount of commercial-skipping, reruns or syndication will eliminate the brand association. These same lessons apply equally to feature films (which ultimately appear on TV at some point anyway).
Examples of branded sponsorship are showing up with increasing frequency in the film world. Product placement in big-budget feature films is common, with Minority Report probably getting the most attention lately: Estimates are that over $25 million of the total budget came from product placement agreements, with over $5 million coming from Lexus alone. Taking product placement one step further in the film world, we're starting to see more examples of companies getting involved with productions from pre-production straight through to distribution:
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Chrysler has teamed with Hypnotic.com to sponsor "The Chrysler Million Dollar Film Festival" which will ultimately lead to a feature film budgeted at $1 million. Chrysler is actually spending closer to $2 million for the entire project, including advertising, promotion, naming rights and web-exposure.
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Last year, BMW spent well over $5 million producing and promoting their "BMW Films" series, which consisted of four short films (averaging about 6 minutes each). The films were extensively marketed on the BMW website and also incorporated into BMW television commercials. The campaign did so well, that they're actually gearing up to do a second round of films.
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Vans (the shoewear company) put up an estimated $1 million to solely produce and promote the Sundance award-winning feature-length documentary "Dogtown & Z-Boys."
- Finally, AtomFilms recently did a campaign in conjunction with Ford Focus where Ford Motors put up the production and marketing budgets (around $1 million) to make three short films (about 7 min. each). Atom specially designed a micro-site that was part of, and heavily promoted by, Atom and cross-promoted with the Ford website. By all accounts, Ford, Atom and the filmmakers were all very happy with the project.
If you or your company are interested in getting involved with Open House on a product placement or branded sponsorship basis, we have a lot of opportunities available. For example, for real estate companies, we'll have lots of shots of "Open House" signs throughout the movie. We'll also need shots of bus benches and other real estate advertising. Additionally, there will be ample product placement opportunities for all sorts of other products and services including: Automobiles, Food, Beverages, Furnishings, Clothing, Home Design, etc. If you're interested, please contact us and let's chat!
Disclaimer:
Investment in a project of this nature involves substantial risks, and should not be undertaken by those individuals or organizations who can not afford those risks. Anyone seriously interested in contributing should consult their own tax professional for complete tax advice. This website should not be construed as a formal offering or complete business prospectus, but rather is designed to give a general overview of the project.
