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Presidential elections have served as important catalysts and benchmarks in the slow but steady adoption of digital marketing tactics by political campaigns. The 2004 election represented a breakthrough, as the Dean campaign used emerging social networking tools and communities to generate a potent new stream of donations and to organize and engage supporters. In the 2008 cycle, the Obama campaign took this process to the next level, with a well-tuned digital marketing machine, blending search and display, social and email — and blew the roof off with record-breaking levels of donations and digital engagement, not to mention a residual digital community the President’s political organization continues to mine.

So where will the 2012 presidential race fit within this trajectory? The 2010 midterm elections provided us some good clues. Overall, digital spending on political ads continued to grow at a steady pace. Political campaigns adapted quickly to the rapidly growing supply of pre-roll video inventory, into which they could deploy existing video assets. We also saw the immediate impact of the Citizens United ruling, as 527s and others ramped up their digital investments.

As independent expenditures continue to fuel significant increases in online political advertising, we see the major new theme for the 2012 cycle as data. Using data platforms (such as Crowd Control, the data-management platform marketed by my company, Lotame Solutions), political campaigns and their digital agencies are able for the first time to seamlessly marry relevant and privacy-safe data sources to target their online advertising buys. These data sources include both offline registration data (brought online in ways that de-identify personal information while associating political affiliation and other relevant voting data with a browser cookie), and more traditional online data types, such as age, gender, geography and the interests and actions expressed by a web user’s browsing behaviors. By building audiences using these rich sources of data, campaigns can be concentrated and efficient in their advertising — to raise visibility, persuade prospects, earn donations and mobilize supporters.

In 2010, Blaise Hazelwood, the founder of Grassroots Targeting, helped Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal get re-elected. Hazelwood emphasizes that “the power of data is no longer exclusive to offline voter contact. For a candidate to reach all of his or her potential supporters and win an election, he or she must also target online, using individual data points to persuade and to motivate turnout.” Though we’re still early in the 2012 cycle, we’re already seeing strong interest in these data-driven advertising tactics.

How will prospective voters experience these developments? For starters, voters in swing states should prepare to be inundated — not only by the expected phone bank calls, robocalls, mailers and TV ads, but also by an onslaught of online ads from every digital corner (search, display, email, pre-roll). On the plus side, with the greater use of smart data, consumers should see fewer irrelevant ads and more ads that relate to candidates and issues of interest to them.

That said, given the unprecedented amount of money that will be invested in political advertising overall, and the increasing percentage of this spending that will be earmarked for digital, the average swing-state resident may simply feel inundated — especially once campaigns race to deploy their remaining gunpowder at the end of the campaign.

Will 2012 mark a turning point when political campaigns realize that digital advertising offers them even more efficient and impactful marketing channels, and at much lower cost per impact, than their more traditional channels? Not in the sense that campaigns will invest less in their traditional go-to channels, as confirmed by the heavy TV spending we’ve already seen in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. But we do believe 2012 will reflect another significant step forward in shifting the share of ad spending towards digital — and that savvy campaigns, party groups, 527s and other political spenders who make use of all of the available digital tools, data, channels and tactics will reap the benefit of their foresight through superior advertising outcomes and more victories Nov. 6, 2012.

Source: Ad Age

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It seems that the independent film world has finally gotten used to the new normal of the challenged marketplace, and are responding.

“There’s a sense of seriousness about the movies this year and in the meetings that we’re having with agents and filmmakers,” said Michael Barker, the co-chairman of Sony Pictures Classics, in an interview with TheWrap.

He added: “There’s a loss of the huckster veneer that we’ve come to expect from this place. The feeling among us and the filmmakers and sellers this year is that we’re all in this together. I see a lot less of the vestiges of the cutthroat business that used to be.”

Sellers seemed to agree. Buyers were aggressively circling the hot movie of the moment, “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” a trippy, original take on environmental apocalypse set in something akin to the levees of New Orleans.

But those involved in the film said the focus was on finding the right distributor for an unusual project.

“This has elements of an auction, but we’re trying to create careful listening,” said one person involved in the sale who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Buyers are saying: ‘Let’s take a chance.’”

That film, to be sure, will be a tricky sell at the theater — it features a pint-sized New Orleans girl and prehistoric beasts.

Among the other movies that were on the block or sold:

• “The Words,” a drama starring Brad Cooper, Zoe Saldana and Jeremy Irons, sold to CBS Films for $2 million with a $1.5 million commitment in prints and advertising, according to a knowledgeable individual.

• “Arbitrage,” the New York drama set amid high society and Wall Street finance and starring Richard Gere, was poised to sell within the next day or so.

• “Celeste and Jesse Forever” had four offers by late Sunday, according to a knowledgeable insider. The film stars Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg as two friends who met in high school, married young – and divorce.

• “Black Rock,” a thriller about three friends who reunite for a girls’ weekend getaway on a remote island that goes horribly awry, stars Katie Aselton alongside Lake Bell and Kate Bosworth. It sold to Mickey Liddell’s LD Entertainment.

There was strong, positive response to “Liberal Arts,” a charming story set in the world of higher education by writer-director-star Josh Radnor. The movie, which won loud cheers and applause at the Eccles Theater on Sunday afternoon, also stars last year’s Sundance “It Girl” Elizabeth Olsen and Richard Jenkins.

Several documentaries were sold, including the audience favorite “Searching for Sugar Man” and the real estate doc “Queen of Versailles.”

“There have been some commercial films, and some that are more challenging,” said Eric d’Arbeloff, co-chief of Roadside Attractions, in an interview with TheWrap. “But you can’t forget that the ones that are the least commercial are sometimes the ones that have the most potential for us.”

A hangover remains from distributors who overpaid last year. Prices ratcheted as high as $6 million then, in many cases for films that brought little return.

“The marketplace is smart,” said Jay Cohen, who runs Gersh’s independent film department. “People are not going to do what they did last year — spend a lot of money for movies that are not commercial.”

Most important to sellers, he said, is the capital commitment to marketing. “That is the key to everything,” he said.

Meanwhile, a shadow remained over the festival at the news that Bingham Ray, an independent film veteran and close friend of many at the festival, had suffered a stroke and was in the hospital.

People were shaken at the news, and concern over his condition rippled through many conversations.

Source: Reuters

The Quebec movie – Canada’s official entry as best foreign-language film – was named Wednesday as one of the nine films on the long list for Oscar consideration. They were chosen from 63 movies that were submitted from around the world.

Directed by Philippe Falardeau, Monsieur Lazhar tells the story of an Algerian immigrant who is hired as a replacement teacher at a Montreal school after the original teacher commits suicide.

The film is also nominated for seven Genie awards, including best Canadian film of the year. Last fall, it was named best Canadian feature at the Toronto International Film Festival.

This is the second year in a row that a Canadian movie has moved into Oscar contention. Last year, Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies made the short list of five finalists, although it lost the Oscar to the Danish movie, In a Better World.

The other nominees on this year’s long list are Bullhead (Belgium), SuperClasico (Denmark), Pina (Germany), A Separation (Iran), Footnote (Israel), Omar Killed Me (Morocco), In Darkness (Holland) and Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale (Taiwan).

This year’s short list will be announced – along with the rest of the Academy Award nominations – on Jan. 24. The Oscars are presented Feb. 26.

Source: Vancouver Sun

Early-adopter brands on Instagram — which currently only runs on Apple devices — include Starbucks, which joined in 2010 and now has 202,000 followers, Red Bull (95,000 followers) and Burberry (151,000 followers); media properties such as NPR and The New Yorker; and major events like the Oscars. Nike and President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign just joined within the last month.

A common use of the platform is to show consumers what’s happening behind the curtain at a company. A recent image posted to General Electric’s account shows a technician working on an engine in an aviation facility in Peebles, Ohio, for example, and Tiffany & Co.’s account photos shows the inside of a jewelry workshop in the store’s flagship Fifth Avenue location. But brands are also using Instagram to run contests and source images. Levi’s is currently running an open casting call for models by asking Instagram users to tag their photos with #IAmLevis for consideration, while Marc Jacobs recently asked Instagram users to tag their holiday photos with #marcfam and then curated a selection on its site.

Instagram has nine employees in San Francisco, and like many early-stage social startups, hasn’t publicly articulated its plans for revenue. It launched with $500,000 in seed funding and closed a $7 million funding round last February. While it doesn’t officially partner with brands, its head of business operations, Amy Cole, says she offers suggestions when asked. She’s aware of roughly 200 brands and organizations (including celebrities such as Justin Bieber and nonprofits like Charity: Water) on the site.

She said brands that use Instagram are generally looking to forge a more personal connection with their customers. “Photos can be so emotional,” she said. “It’s a great way for users to really connect with a brand in a way that’s different from text posts.”

Some brands like General Electric use their Instagram content for their accounts on Tumblr, the blogging platform with a heavy emphasis on images that’s experiencing similar growth and also putting growth and utility before revenue. In some cases, the platforms are being used together. The sportswear company Puma sent 10 bloggers with major followings to Abu Dhabi last week to document activity around the Volvo Ocean Race and the Mar Mostro racing yacht the company is sponsoring. Most of the bloggers used both platforms and were instructed to post with hashtags like #sailing and #marmostro.

“Platforms like Instagram and Tumblr offer this neat connection between the more creative/cultural set and like-minded brands such as Puma,” said Antonio Bertone, Puma’s chief marketing officer, in an emailed statement. “The people who are active on these portals are the Puma consumer.”

In the case of General Electric, which has roughly 34,000 followers on Instagram, the intent is to showcase the company’s impact in areas like energy and transportation by appealing to enthusiasts with photos of engines, turbines and locomotives, according to Linda Boff, executive director of global digital marketing. In addition to its regular account, the company just wrapped a campaign on the platform to find an “Instagrapher” who will be flown to Wales to photograph an aviation facility. Nearly 4,000 Instagram photos were submitted with the hashtag #GEInspiredMe and then posted on Facebook, where fans voted for the finalists.

“We love the idea that Instagram lets us share this intersection of science and technology, but doing it from a very visual, artistic point of view,” said Ms. Boff. “When you’re as complicated as GE, how you tell the story and how you bring the company to life is incredibly important.”

Source: Ad Age

Developed by M&C Saatchi Worldwide, the “Good to Know” campaign is already slated to run in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The Economist. The campaign is minimalist, featuring simple drawings and small text on a white background. The take-away of one ad is that Google’s search engine can predict whether someone is searching for a Volkswagen Beetle or the actual insect, based on whether they’ve recently been searching for cars. It then directs people to a site “to find out more about how Google uses information to make the web more useful.”

The “Good to Know” campaign is an important branding effort for Google as internet users’ concerns about how their personal data is used continue to mount. In the ads, Google seeks to tell consumers that there’s a value exchange and that they reap benefits, such as more-personalized search results, in return for the company’s knowledge of their search history.

Google has become a high-profile marketer, launching three TV ads featuring the Muppets and NBA announcer Bill Walton in late December to promote Google+ and its group-chat functionality, “Hangouts.” It’s a far cry from the company’s attitude nearly two years ago, when former CEO Eric Schmidt tweeted, “Hell has indeed frozen over” after Google bought its first-ever TV ad during the Super Bowl.

The company invested significantly more in advertising in 2011 than it ever had before. It had spent $103 million on TV, print and online display ads as of August, compared to $53 million for all of 2010, according to Kantar Media.

The “Good to Know” campaign has already run in the U.K. and Germany.

Source: Ad Age

That doesn’t bode well for the John Lasseter-directed sequel to the 2006 film about race car Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) and the friends he makes in the little burg of Radiator Springs, given that the Golden Globe winner for animated feature has been repeated at the Academy Awards for the past four years (with all Pixar films).

If the trend holds, that means “Tintin” will take home Oscar gold.

“Sequels, I think, have a harder time [winning awards],” Lasseter told 24 Frames on the red carpet at the Golden Globes on Sunday. “But every sequel at Pixar is something totally different, and it’s as good or better than the original.”

That certainly was true with “Toy Story 3,” which last year earned an Oscar and a Golden Globe for animated feature, in addition to a best picture Oscar nomination. But “Cars 2″ – which has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of just 39% fresh – hasn’t won over audiences and critics as easily as the 2010 threequel.

This time around, Pixar’s best Oscar hopes might lie in the animated shorts category, where its seven-minute film “La Luna” has made the shortlist. (Nominations will be announced Jan. 24.) Lasseter said when the short’s director, Enrico Casarosa, pitched him the idea for the mystical coming-of-age story, “It had this magic to it. I knew it would be so special.”

“We love making short films at Pixar,” he added. “They’re these labors of love, these artists’ little visions, and they’re these beautiful little things. It’s not corporate filmmaking. It’s an artist really bringing something to life at Pixar.”

Casarosa felt similarly about Pixar shorts, as he told 24 Frames last month that the “La Luna” production “felt like a small studio inside a bigger one.”

“La Luna” qualified for Oscar consideration during its festival run and will screen in front of Pixar’s 2012 feature film “Brave,” which hits theaters June 22.

The animation studio chose “La Luna” over its two 2011 shorts featuring “Toy Story” characters to submit for academy consideration. But that doesn’t mean Pixar has outgrown Buzz and Woody – Lasseter told 24 Frames that more shorts with the beloved characters are on the horizon.

“We got some more in the works. We love those characters. We just want to keep bringing them to life,” he said.

Source: The LA Times

Formed in the wake of 2009’s ultra-low-budget surprise hit “Paranormal Activity,” Insurge is an experimental label within movie giant Paramount Pictures that aims to make youth-oriented films developed outside the traditional Hollywood system on a fast schedule and at low cost.

Paramount is hardly the first studio to try to turn a surprise moneymaker into a regular business, but Insurge has had a particularly impressive run out of the gate. Its first movie, “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never,” a concert-documentary that went from concept to big screen in just six months, grossed almost $100 million worldwide. And “The Devil Inside,” a documentary-style horror film the studio paid $1 million to acquire, earned $34 million in its first weekend.

Among its projects in development is a big-screen adaptation of “Ultimate Dog Tease,” a YouTube hit – featuring a talking dog named Clark – with more than 86 million views. Demonstrating just how far outside the mainstream Insurge looks for material, the label made a deal with the producer of “Dog Tease” and over the weekend conducted a short test to see whether the minute-long viral video can be turned into a feature film.

“The plan for Insurge is never to have a business plan because it’s an incubator and is always evolving,” said Paramount Film Group President Adam Goodman, who oversees the unit run by Insurge President Amy Powell. “Hopefully we’ll be so nimble that we can stay ahead of whatever trends are out there as opposed to being reactive.”

Powell, who also serves as Paramount’s president of interactive marketing, says her goal is to pick movies that take advantage of social networks to become must-see phenomena – especially for moviegoers who rush out on opening weekend.

“You want movies that are going to be able to find an audience who are so excited they’ll be sharing it with each other online and then lining up to see it at 1 a.m.,” she explained.

Although Insurge has yet to experience failure, many cheaply made films come and go from theaters without drawing much of an audience, even if they’re backed by a big studio. Sony Pictures in 2010 put out the micro-budgeted comedy “The Virginity Hit,” produced by Will Ferrell, and took in just $637,000 at the box office.

Powell has only two employees officially working for Insurge: a “creative executive” who searches for material and develops projects, and an assistant. But Goodman says he and Powell are trying to create a “little think tank” rather than a self-contained unit. “We open Insurge meetings up to assistants or whoever has the free time to come,” he said.

The idea to make a Bieber movie came from such a meeting, but “Devil Inside” took a more traditional path. Shot by a group of independent filmmakers for about $800,000, it came to the attention of Lorenzo di Bonaventura, a veteran producer and former production executive who worked on the “Transformers” films.

As part of Di Bonaventura’s deal to show all his projects first to Paramount, “Devil Inside” was screened for executives and a group of invited horror fans at the Arclight Cinemas in Hollywood last February. A week later, 45 minutes before a screening open to other studios, Paramount decided to buy the movie for $1 million plus a cut of the profits.

“Our last movie was at Disney and we only saw the top executives there once in passing,” writer-director William Brent Bell said, contrasting his experiences on “Devil Inside” and 2006’s “Stay Alive.” “We must have had a hundred meetings with the team at Paramount, and Adam (Goodman) spent hours with us in the editing room.”

Goodman also authorized the filmmakers to go back to Romania, where the movie was filmed, to shoot additional footage for a few hundred thousand dollars. Many of the new images were used in advertisements, which kicked off with a trailer accompanying the release of “Paranormal Activity 3″ and accelerated on Christmas Eve with an explicit “red band” trailer released online.

Paramount’s marketing department even held a December screening at a church in Pasadena.

“It really heightened the experience, so we filmed the audience’s reactions and used them in ads on air and online,” said the studio’s chief marketing officer, Josh Greenstein.

The film was promoted with television ads on cable programs such as “The Walking Dead” at a cost of tens of millions of dollars, but it generated most of its heat online. Although traditional pre-release surveys indicated the movie would open to about $15 million, it was regularly one of the most talked-about topics on Twitter from Christmas until it opened Jan. 6.

With the surprise success of “Devil Inside,” Insurge executives will soon decide whether to use sequel rights that came with the acquisition to try to build a horror franchise, as Paramount did with “Paranormal Activity.”

They’ll also be busy figuring out a release strategy for “The Loved Ones,” an Australian horror movie that played at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009 and was scooped up by Paramount Insurge late last year for less than $1 million.

“We were at a screening in Burbank and three girls left to vomit,” Powell said. “I knew we had to buy it.”

Source: LA Times

The movie industry is worth an estimated 4.2 billion pounds ($6.5 billion) to the British economy each year, but much of that comes from blockbusters like the Harry Potter franchise that are bankrolled by Hollywood studios.

The government wants to see that change, after recent British hits like “The King’s Speech” and “Slumdog Millionaire” proved that small budgets can be turned into box office gold.

“The UK film industry, the skills and crafts that support it, and our creative industries more widely, make…an incalculable contribution to our culture,” Cameron said.

“Our role, and that of the BFI (British Film Institute), should be to support the sector in becoming even more dynamic and entrepreneurial, helping UK producers to make commercially successful pictures that rival the quality and impact of the best international productions,” he added.

“Just as the British Film Commission has played a crucial role in attracting the biggest and best international studios to produce their films here, so we must incentivize UK producers to chase new markets both here and overseas.”

Cameron’s remarks came ahead of a visit to Pinewood studios, the spiritual home of British cinema, where he was due to meet small and medium-sized businesses involved in film.

A review of the government’s policy on the movie industry was also due to be published next week.

“GOLDEN ERA?”

Experts debate whether British cinema ever had the kind of “golden era” Hollywood enjoyed from the 1920s to 1960s, although it has regularly punched above its weight in terms of awards and ticket sales.

Most recently, “The King’s Speech” won four Oscars including best picture in 2011, and earned $414 million in global ticket sales from a production budget of just $15 million, according to Boxofficemojo.com.

Two years earlier, “Slumdog Millionaire” was the big winner picking up eight Oscars including best picture and hitting $378 million at global box offices from a $15 million budget.

Official figures show that UK films accounted for 14 percent of the global 2010 box office tally of $31.8 billion. However, 12.6 percent was accounted for by UK movies wholly or partly financed and controlled by U.S. studios.

Some directors, including Ken Loach a long-time critic of Cameron’s Conservative party, have argued that focusing on mainstream movie making could stifle the creativity for which British cinema is renowned.

“Nobody knows who’s going to see it (a film) until it’s made,” Loach told BBC Radio in response to Cameron’s remarks.

“If everyone knew the film that was going to make money before it was made we’d have no problem. I mean that’s silly isn’t it?”

Loach also said that next week’s review by former Labour culture minister Chris Smith was likely to miss an opportunity to loosen the grip of multiplex cinemas over what films audiences see.

“If you want to fulfill the possibility that cinema has then you have to allow the films to be seen,” he said. “At the moment they are not seen.”

But Loach conceded that one positive aspect of the recommendations expected in the review was that revenues from publicly funded films would go back to producers rather than the body that issued the funds in the first place.

Source: Reuters