Co-branded

The Hollywood Reporter's Key Art Awards, Humberto Cruz, Cereal Partners Worldwide Global (pdf)

Tonight is the night, when more than 1,800 media executives and creative professionals congregate in the opulent bosom of Hollywood's Kodak Theatre for an evening of self-congratulatory revelry. The 35th Annual Key Art Awards will mete out well deserved honors to a handful of lucky promotional objects, plucked from the ranks of 1,423 submissions and judged by more than 460 movie-advertising professionals. Having tried unsuccessfully to weasel a press pass out of various representatives at the Reporter, I will have to content myself with the many impressive numbers in the Reporter's own coverage of the event which they themselves conceived in 1972, and have sponsored every year since.

Interestingly, the Key Art Awards Post Awards Party is being sponsored by the Los Angeles Times, and by the Chicago Tribune, which owns the Los Angeles Times. It is tempting to posit that, with the Tribune Company involved, there is very real potential for a Humberto Cruz sighting. Of course, I will not be privileged with such a sighting, as I will not be in attendance, as I failed to sweet talk the Key Art Awards representatives at The Hollywood Reporter.

It will be interesting to see which spot wins in the Co-branded audiovisual category. My money is on Chicken Little/McDonald's, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Chicken Little/Sears take home the honors. Not since Fievel immigrated to America to appear somewhat incongruously on a Christmas stocking has there been so much excitement surrounding McDonald's, Sears and the cultural homogenization of talking animals.

Incidentally, The Chronicles of Narnia has also been double-nominated in the category, for co-branded spots with McDonald's and CPW Global, respectively. The "CPW" stands for Cereal Partners Worldwide, a joint venture between General Mills and Nestlé headquartered in Switzerland and offering cereal products in 130 countries not including the U.S. or Canada. Ostensibly, the "Global" addendum means new markets: New Worldwide Global Markets.

The documentation from CPW's investment seminar makes for a fascinating read if you have time. The General Mills/Nestlé combo is a co-brand in and of itself, meaning, of course, that in terms of sheer co-brandedness, the Narnia/CPW spots are really head and shoulders above their competitors. In any case, Cereal Partners Worldwide Global is the brand responsible for these delightful outcomes of multi-corporate cooperation.

Posted by at 1:31 PM | Permalink

American Speech, Humberto Cruz, The Hollywood Reporter's Key Art Awards, Haas Scholars, Levi Strauss & Co.

In the winter of 1997, the linguistics journal American Speech published in its appropriately titled recurring column "Among the New Words" a citation of the new word, co-branding:

Credited to the Chicago Tribune writer Humberto Cruz, the clever turn of phrase clearly establishes that, as VISA tells us, consumers of today are as "savvy" as they are "inquisite." Published alongside the co-branding entry in "Among the New Words" is a citation for co-branded card, providing further elucidation of the concept and of the article by Cruz from whence it springs:

One might argue that Cruz is simply providing a venue for VISA PR one-liners that themselves create "the hottest trend in the card industry" through publicity hype. Yet, the trend did become/remain popular and expand to other industries. In 2004, The Hollywood Reporter's Key Art Awards, which yearly recognizes excellence in the field of motion picture marketing, added new award categories for co-branded audiovisual and co-branded print advertising. That year, The Matrix Reloaded teamed with Heineken beer in a television spot titled The Waitress to take audiovisual honors. S.W.A.T. met Nextel to win for co-branded print.

That films would pair with products, as VISA pairs with "toys and even pet food," is perhaps unsurprising. After all, films and advertising have, since the inception of cinema, been involved in a mutually shameless relationship. However, actually viewing these co-branded advertisements, considering the ramifications of each pairing, forces an appreciation of them as cultural products inextricably linked to the current historical moment in both entertainment and consumption. In fact, it is entertainment and consumption that are inextricably linked to each other in our present moment, and that is where the importance of understanding co-branded film advertising comes in.

With this blog, I will attempt a deeper analysis of TV spots like "The Waitress," to understand more than to mock, but always to highlight how truly bizarre these pairings can be. Along with consideration of individual TV spots, I will provide crucial historical background info, as I trace the histories of film, advertising, television and corporate branding in coterminous juxtaposition. Eventually, my research, which is funded by Bob and Colleen Haas of the Levi's pant jean company, will form the better part of a larger paper historically situating the film/advertising relationship over the last 100 years.

Posted by kmikeym at 10:23 AM | Permalink