(Director of Theatrical Marketing)

"Na, I'll wait for it to come out on Video"
or
How a movie gets from "a theater near you" to your local Blockbuster store.

Well, how did I get here? As a wee-tike, fresh out of college, I started in advertising at DDB Needham Worldwide as an account executive working on such fun accounts as Hershey Chocolate, Amtrak and the New York Lottery. In an agency, you get to do all the good stuff - create cool ads without the details like packaging and long-term brand building. After five years however, I found myself more intrigued by product development (the details) and less on cute ads. So I decided to "Go Client-side" which is what most ad folks do when they burn out.

I then moved to MTV Networks and was part of the team that repositioned VH1 - cool parties, backstage to great concerts but also a lot of work. This gave me a great opportunity to learn promotion and brand re-positioning (remember when all VH1 played was Kenny G and Michael Bolton? Now its hip thanks to marketing and repositioning).

A few years later, to make more money like all good Americans, I came to PolyGram Video as Director of Theatrical Marketing (ooooh!, aaaah!). Now I'm responsible for the development and execution of all of our movies being released to video. This means all the feature films from PolyGram Filmed Entertainment which owns such great production houses as - Propaganda Films, Interscope, Island Pictures, Working Title, and Gramercy Pictures. Releasing great movies like The Usual Suspects, Home for the Holidays, Dead Man Walking, and Fargo just to name a few.

Basically, it's my job to develop the positioning (who should rent this movie), package design (what the video box looks like), marketing (what ads and support materials like informational sell sheets should say), and promotional support (what events or talent press support we use) to convince video stores that they need a whole lot of copies of our movie to make sure their customers (you) will want to rent it. There is nothing more irritating than seeing your favorite movie not available night after night.

Well, how do they (the videos) get there? - First, movies are released "in a theater near you." They run as long as they can make enough money to not get pushed out by some new/bigger release. Then, its time for video!

There are two kinds of video releases; Rental and Sell-Through.

Rental Video - is where we sell video stores copies for around $100 each for you to rent (which is why stores charge you so much if you lose their tape). The bigger the store, the more copies they need. It's my job to convince video stores that of the other 15 titles they are looking to buy for any given week (on average that is how many stores have to choose from), ours is the best and will be in the highest demand and make them the most money. It's all about money, go figure.

Sell-Through - If a studio feels that a movie is so popular and lots of people want to own it, the movie will be released for "Sell Through" priced for you to own at around $20. This is limited to huge blockbuster releases like Twister and ID4 and lots of kids' movies from Disney because they will sell at least a couple of million copies each. Smaller movies that start at $100 are eventually repriced to $19.95 after their rental days are over and people still want own them. So you can get a rental video cheap, you just have to wait.

What about those video's on the shelves you've never heard of? - It's called Direct to Video. It sounds cheesy, but there are a lot of good movies made that for some reason or another don't get played in theaters. Either the films' producers couldn't find a studio to release it or they didn't think it would make enough money in theaters. These titles are worth seeing, but studios feel that you will pay $3 to rent but might not spend $8 to see in a theater. This also allows smaller feature films to still have a life and some not-so-great movies a chance to be seen and make some $$$$, which is after all what it's all about!?!?

How do video stores know what titles to buy? - Lots of factors determine it. Primarily advertising to video stores through industry trade publications, direct mail, screening copies of the film (in case they haven't seen or even heard of the film), and "chachkies" (stuff for their desks that reminds them that they want our movie) help generate awareness. Chachkies, which have the most impact when done right, are the best. They take many forms from a Pamela Anderson Lee life-sized standees for Barb Wire to a Fargo snow-globe complete with a little dead body, blood and overturned car inside.

For the next two months, marketing and sales work to convince retailers from Blockbuster to your local corner mom-and-pop video store that our release is the one to choose and that they need lost of copies - and it ain't easy. With more and more movies coming out, it's very hard to convince retailers that they HAVE TO HAVE YOUR movie. Since it is a business, not what their favorite movie is, deciding what to buy usually comes down to the studios marketing and support of the release, how big the theatrical box office was, who stars in the movie, how cool the video box looks (sex and guns on the cover usually helps).

All these efforts culminate on the "order close date" which is the when all the video stores across the country have to tell us how many copies they want if they want the title by "street date" (when you see it on the shelves). Since there are over 30,000 video store in the US (too many of us to sell and ship to) we use "video distributors" which are basically wholesalers across the country that service the thousands of small accounts (it is cheaper for them to ship because they work with all the studios and can ship hundreds of videos at once to each store).

So, there you have it, from "A theater near you" to the shelf at you local video store. It's a lot of fun to sell this stuff. You get to work with the stars/directors of some of the biggest movies in Hollywood and use the "hindsight is 20/20 rule"- if a movie that did poorly in theaters goes to video and we make it a success - we're heroes. If the movie still fails - it must have been just a bad movie.