The Catch-22 of Modern Marketing Campaigns

For a sense of challenge of today’s incomprehensible diffuse system, consider the scope of activity in digital advertisements alone in Magic Kingdom.

“In a certain week there are 4 billion to 5 billion advertisements about Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN,” said Josh Mattison, Executive VP of Digital Operations for Disney Advertising, during a session at Variety‘S Entertainment Marketing Summit. “In a certain month we see 50,000 pieces coming in creative.”

Mattison shared those figures during a conversation about the use of AI tools to help with the amazing volume of advertisements and marketing material that flows through the digital pipes of Disney. Those statistics underline the problem that vibrated under just about every panel at the 24 April event: the methods to attract the attention of the public are spreading at an exponential pace, while many consumers – especially zoomers and millennials – have become increasingly allergic to the perception that they have sold something.

To reconcile these difficulties, managers from Legacy Studios to streamers, Tiktok and Google to Sephora and Nascar sounded a crucial theme: authenticity.

“We all have to leave this myopic view of demography and start thinking more about who these people are really and how they can have an authentic bond with them,” said Darren Abbott, Chief Brand Officer of Hallmark, in the opening tour table. “If you are authentic for them, consumers will come.”

For many, this means that you use as much data as possible to focus the public in always personal ways. Mattison noted the content of the content that Metadata tagging has become so refined that advertisements can be adapted to individual scenes within a show: if a scene is in a kitchen, the subsequent advertising break can, for example, have one of the devices in the room. But much more common are campaigns that focus on specific details about how the audience is already connected to a brand.

For the first blockbuster of the year, Warner Bros. ” A Minecraft film ‘, that meant that the established Minecraft makers will be brought into the process from the start, including the casting in the film. “If you have been a cinema lately, you probably heard ‘chicken jockey’ shouting as loudly as possible from some Auditoria,” said Cameron Curtis, Warner Bros. Global Digital Marketing Chief. “That was all intentional, part of working with makers from the start, not thinking about them after we had already made the film.”

Endorsed how crazy marketing can be today, but other panel members emphasized the dangers of getting at Granularly focused on the maintenance of specific fandoms.

“We focus on our way to oblivion,” said Gayle Troberman, executive marketing consultant for Iheartmedia, in a panel about how so many consumers feel chased. “We have to talk more People to sell more things, not only people who love Taylor Swift and this kind of shoe and have cats and really belong to pop music. If Taylor Swift just had on Swifties, the era tour would not have done a billion dollars. She focused on everyone. “

It is the mystery of modern entertainment marketing: how to be expanded and tailor -made at the same time, to balance two seemingly incompatible impulses within the same campaign. A perfect case study of this catch-22 was the discussion about ‘wicked’. In one panel, Universal Pictures Domestic Marketing Chief Dwight Caines said that the “rabid fanbase” of the Broadway Musical was not enough to justify the $ 300 million budget of the two films, let alone set up the upcoming “Wicked: For Good” for success. “We had to expand further,” he said. “We had to reach the audience who said,” You know what, I’m not going to musicals, but I see myself in that movie. “

But earlier in the day, NBCUIversal Franchise and brand strategy Chief David O’Connor said that marketing for ‘bad’ in non-English-speaking areas required a much more specialized approach. “We have found ways to build a brand ecosystem in Japan that was very different from what we did in our own country,” he said. “As much as we would like to develop worldwide strategies, you still have to think locally.”

At the same time, it can be annoying to think locally a global impact. In the last panel of the day, Netflix Marketing VP Shelly Gillyard was asked how the streamer navigates his biggest worldwide campaigns. “We have the advantage of more than 1.2 billion social followers and they speak to us all the time,” she said. “But if something doesn’t get in Brazil, we don’t think it’s around the world.”

Sony Pictures Global Marketing Chief Joe Whitmore – who will release ‘Karate Kid: Legends’ at the end of May – who will release ‘Karate Kid: Legends’ at the end of May – broke into a broad smile. “Well, luckily ‘Karate Kid’ has a huge fandom in Brazil,” he said. “So I feel very good!”

(Shown Top: Cameron Curtis, Warner Bros. ‘Executive VP from Global Digital Marketing, Digital Creator Lenda Dong and Brandon Lentino, VP VP Creative and Experiential, AT Variety Entertainment Marketing Summit presented by Deloitte)