Three months ago, Lindsley Lowell found herself faced with a challenge. As president of the Place L.A. agency, she had been working with manufacturer Health Asure for more than
a year on various promotions. Now the client needed help on a bigger scale, as it moved to launch a new product: Bear Essentials Children's Gummi Bear Vitamins.
The product was fresh on the market, with good but not great distribution, and Health Asure had not budgeted for any advertising. That left everything up to the PR effort, and
Lowell determined early on that her best strategy was to not go it alone. "I wanted to partner with a company that had a similar target market, but could help us penetrate that
market in a different way," she says.
With this in mind, Lowell went to the movies.
"Entertainment is a huge aspect of our lives. Movies and television are great tools for reaching the public," she says. This is well known. What's less clear is how a small-
time agency with a little-known client can get its piece of that action. "PR is all about relationships. It is the difference between cold calling and calling your friends. If you
have the connections, you are basically skipping like 10 steps."
A two-year-old boutique firm, Place L.A. has handled campaigns in a range of industries. Clients have included Beauty Collection Apothecary, Talk/Miramax Books, Lafco New York,
Santa Maria Novella U.S.A., and Preferred Hotels Worldwide.
Relying on her existing Hollywood connections, Lowell worked the phones, eventually making contact with a friend at Dreamworks studios who suggested that the vitamins should
piggyback on the studio's summer 2003 animated feature film, "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas." A big-money production, the movie is set to feature the voices of Brad Pitt,
Catherine Zeta-Jones, Michelle Pfeiffer and others. It is doubtful that such a deal could have come into place without Lowell's personal contacts in the entertainment industry. It
all started, after all, with a round of exploratory phone calls to friends and the Hollywood studios. Without those existing relationships, she says, it is "just about impossible"
to put together such a deal.
During the months of May and June, as the studio's promotion effort for the movie shifts into high gear, Health Asure is putting a Sinbad image and the movie name on each pack
of its Gummi Bear vitamins. Retailers who order the vitamins during this period will automatically receive product with the promotion on it. Consumers who buy the Sinbad-promo
boxes will be able to mail in a proof-of-purchase to Health Asure, and will in turn receive a Beanie toy of Sinbad's sidekick, Spike the bulldog, offered exclusively through this
promotion.
The packaging also directs consumers to both the Sinbad and Health Asure Web sites, where they can enter to win Sinbad promotional products and free vitamins.
Curtain Up
Lowell's client was nervous at first. "With a big Hollywood movie, there is the immediate perception that there are going to be major dollars involved, but we were very
strategic in how we did this, so that was not the case," Lowell says.
In fact, Dreamworks asked for no licensing fees, and the whole promotion came in at less than $10,000, according to Sherry Chen Hsu, brand manager at Health Asure. Nearly all
the money went toward the changes in packaging that were needed to reflect the Sinbad tie-in.
There also was some concern that the legal complexities of teaming up with a major Hollywood vehicle could be overwhelming. But there was little problem, thanks to the
efficiency of Dreamworks' legal team. "With a huge studio like Dreamworks, they know what they are doing. They are a huge machine," Lowell says. Lowell was involved in this phase,
in so far as she did spell out to Dreamworks just what her client needed to see in the contract - that is, the particulars of how the campaign would play out - but the Dreamworks
legal team handled all the paperwork.
Once the papers were signed, Lowell went to work in late April sending out press releases about the deal to trade journals such as Drugstore News, Vitamin Retailer and
Entertainment Marketing Letter. That promotional effort on the studio's part made the deal especially tempting for Health Asure, a relatively small manufacturer that might not
have set its sights so high without the guidance of a creative PR executive. "Our company is small. We don't have any huge budgets," says Chen Hsu, from Health Asure. "This gives
us great visibility, and being tied to Dreamworks does lend credibility to our brand in the consumers' eyes."
Lights, Camera, Action: How to Score a Movie Promo Deal
Lindsley Lowell put together a promotional deal between a small vitamin manufacturer and a major Hollywood studio. How does that happen?
#1 Get to know studio people. Use industry functions, friends-of-friends, all the usual means in order to forge Hollywood relationships. Without them Lowell says, it is all but
impossible to get in the door.
#2 Find the right fit. Every film has a target demographic, as do most consumer products. The closer the fit, the better the chance of striking a deal.
#3 Have something they want. By helping the movie's promoters to take the film beyond the cereal aisle and into the vitamin category, Lowell gave them the chance to broaden
their exposure.
#4 Think big. A lot of smaller products assume they could never strike promotional arrangements in a world dominated by deals on the scale of Happy Meal toys. In fact, Lowell
says, studios often will be open to reaching other markets through smaller deals. "Most people think it is impossible," she says. "My motto is that it never hurts to ask."
FAST FACTS: PLACE LA.
Founded: 2001
HQ: Los Angeles
Number of Employees: 3
Staff on this campaign: Lindsley Lowell, President
Campaign time frame: Five months; promotion runs in May and June
Budget: Less than $10,000
Contact: Lindsley Lowell, 310. 837.2080, [email protected]