IS A MOVIE TIE-IN EXPERIENTIAL?

I just read of this new deal between Burger King and Paramount Pictures:

Burger King has for the first time committed to one movie studio for its summer movie marketing. And in turn, Paramount Pictures is for the first time engaging in three consecutive move tie-ins with the same brand.

And I'm torn. Should I be professionally happy this happened? After all, I've often spoke about the experiential potential of these types of partnerships, most notably what 7-Eleven did when they partnered with The Simpson's film release. I think film integrations are inherently experiential, as the brand can leverage a story, the characters and all the emotional connections that are familiar and empathetic to the audience.

The same, parenthetically, applies for branded partnerships with games and gaming platforms, as Burger King did with X-Box 360 and Mountain Dew did with the Halo 3 launch.

So this newly-announced partnership should be good news for experiential thinkers and practitioners. And the movie tie-ins are definitely on-target and on-demo:

Burger King is underway with a flurry of activities around “Star Trek,” which opened May 8, and will continue the activations around “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen,” opening June 24 and “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra,” set to be in theaters Aug. 7.

But this flurry so far has been based around a TV spots where Klingons take a guy's Whopper (and girl) friend away with them, and the in-store premium is a commemorative cup. Not a lot of Big Thinking going on here. The campaign so far, quite frankly, is anti-experiential.

So, should we be worried? Will more branded deals like this take marketing and advertising forward, or will we go back to the same tired methods like this: a TV spot and gift-with-purchase? Will movie studios help or hinder the marketing industry? And will we as consumers buy the hype?

Comments

[tomasito]

I agree with you. The way BK is activating this tie-in with Paramount is not an experiential experience for the consumer. In my eyes, is a quick 2-minute engagement. The kids are not experiencing anything related to the film. Merchandising is not an experiential engagement. A proper engagement would have been a virtual reality activation of the Star Trek ship controls with real life bad guys chasing them. This would have been possible thru video game type virtual reality seats that would have travel via the BK chains. Now that's an experience the kids would be stoke about and bragging to their friends about the chase.