How a Team of Hollywood Executives Leveraged The 80/20 Principle to Spawn Twilight’s Block Buster Franchise and Reposition World War Z
In Lynda Obst’s book Sleepless in Hollywood, Peter Chernin, the former Chair of Fox Broadcasting Company and Twentieth Century Fox Film, said “People will look back and say that probably, from a financial point of view, 1995 to 2005 was the golden age of this generation of the movie business.” Referring to evaporating DVD revenue, he further laments, “…that golden age appears to be over”.
Chernin may be correct; for sure Hollywood’s pro forma windowing process for new releases is dead. Ironically, it’s Music – Hollywood’s oft overlooked sibling – with insight gained over the last decade fighting digital technology, which is demonstrating how applying The 80/20 Principle to films can create a Blockbuster Opening Weekend and influence a fan base through a musician’s steady flow of fan engagement, social and media attention.
Over the last decade, a few Music executives learned how to strategically engage with the two friends, who then told two friends, who influenced all the others. Those lessons were applied to Twilight and World War Z to quickly connect with the consumer, drive sales and increase the film’s profit and ROI.
The Perfect Storm
Music has always been the fiber that binds the emotional fabric behind all great films. Memorable soundtracks can create and preserve a movie’s emotional essence. But can music create Hollywood’s ‘perfect storm’, enhancing the film’s creative experience, positioning the film to the right audience, creating maximum awareness, and ultimately, increasing its profit?
There are high profile partnerships every day that involve music and film – but does the music behind some of today’s hottest Blockbuster films simply connect the dots, or do they transform the experience? Could aligning a film with the right music stars actually create a Blockbuster; spawning pre-release hype, attracting customers to theaters on Opening Day, and drive sales?
Working together, a team of Hollywood film and music executives discovered, that in a time when the use of social, content and experiential marketing is so critical to a film’s success, music, – like no other medium – checks all the boxes. Because popular musicians garner a steady flow of media attention, pre-released music can ignite passionate allegiance to a movie well in advance of its actual opening.
‘M’ Factor Blockbuster Openings: Twilight and World War Z
With the erosion of the DVD market, studios are beginning to recognize the shifting of the industry’s long tail . In the traditional model, the long tail came after the theatre release while in the digital age the long tail, perhaps the long nose, now comes before the release. While the old long tail eked out more revenue after a lukewarm release… the new tail builds interest to ensure a blockbuster release.
The ‘M’ Factor suggests and proves that “sticky” soundtracks pre-released and promoted via social media compelled highly segmented and tightly targeted consumers to a film’s Opening Weekend.
Twilight – studio and record label united in purpose
By design, Twilight’s blockbuster success was driven by matching the story with the correct artists and leveraging the ‘long tail’ of each successive music single released.
Music Supervisor Alex Patsavas correctly channeled the book and created a character for the music in the franchise. Her insightful approach was heightened by teamwork at both Atlantic and Summit Films, who made it possible to create a soundtrack that authentically reflected the movie, the author’s taste and its core fans.
Summit/Lionsgate’s Nancy Kirkpatrick and Eric Feig cared about the music and how it was marketed – it was important that it was right, and they welded it as a way to sell and creatively position the film. Record label and Studio were united in this purpose.
Social media optimization and strategic building of demand for Twilight started several months ahead of the film’s release. In promoting Twilight Hayley Williams proved just how promotionally powerful a social media platform can be in developing a film’s pre-release mania. Both Twitter and Facebook were ablaze the instant Hayley Williams Tweeted the fact that Paramore would release the Twilight soundtrack’s first single. Hayley represented the sweet spot of the target demographic, and intensified the buzz by drawing her fans into the Twilight experience by sharing her updates on social media.
While over the summer, Hayley’s single helped build tremendous anticipation for Twilight’s November release, the author of the book series, Stefanie Meyers, is also a music fan and some of her favorite bands were featured in key scenes in the movie. The film’s star, Rob Pattinson, also a musician, had music featured in the movie and on the soundtrack, at the encouragement of director Catherine Hardwicke.
The artists were not only involved but actively engaged, in the promotion of the film and busy making videos and promoting the film at all the hottest industry events. This integrated effort also served a practical purpose.
As footage of the movie was under wraps by the studio, music provided early content marketing that otherwise would not have existed. It’s this collective effort – and the enormous social media exposure – that generated frenzied interest in Twilight ahead of any actual promotion for the opening weekend.
Twilight grossed over $7 million in ticket sales from midnight showings alone on November 21, 2008. It grossed $35.7 million on its opening day, and to date, a total of $384.9 million worldwide. The film was released on DVD in North America on March 21, 2009 through midnight release parties, and sold over 3 million units in its first day. The soundtrack debuted at number 1, just under four weeks prior to its film opening, a testament to the strength of the music and the anticipation for it.
Compared to the film’s first official trailer at 2.8 million You Tube views, Paramore’s music video for “Decode”, the first single off the soundtrack, clocked in at over 93 million views – a great result for a non-Top 40 radio artist.
The follow up, “New Moon”, also made the unprecedented move of debuting at number one, without any superstar artists – and had the distinction of being the first where every song in the movie was both ‘original’ and ‘exclusive’ to the movie. That made the Twilight soundtrack brand very sticky.
Summit was able to profit substantially from the sales of the soundtrack (minus a distribution fee to the label), earned a publishing cut from the artist tracks, and revenue from a successful score added value as an asset to the studio.
MUSIC FUSES THE POWER OF A CHARACTER TO THEIR AUDIENCE
Wrong music choices aren’t obvious – they don’t get talked about like casting missteps – but they are just as detrimental. In the world of movie buzz via social media, a lack of emotional connection is death by a million cuts by the time your film opens.
THR quoted Leonardo DiCaprio sharing what Martin Scorcese taught him and said about filmmaking. “The thing that I’ve learned about doing movies is, if you make these people as authentic as possible, the audience will forgive anything.” It’s no accident that Scorcese uses music so powerfully in delivering his truth. The choice of Hayley Williams as a Twilight spokesperson helped connect the right book audience to the movie – and drove highly engaged discussion with a young demographic.
The 80/20 Principle and the Re-engineering of World War Z
Both bad film buzz and reticence of males to be drawn out to see a perceived ‘chick-magnet’ Brad Pitt in World War Z was circumvented by using Muse’s “Isolated Systems” for the movie’s theme throughout the score. It gave the film ‘high testosterone credibility’ and something to talk about that was ‘male’ and ‘cool’. It ended up being an extremely powerful tool during the reshoot and editing of the movie. Paramount’s Randy Spendlove and Muse understood how to work the connection to the film’s advantage by staging an event in London, where Muse played parts of the score live for fans leaving the movie premiere.
Muse quietly and tastefully teased their involvement in the movie by posting “Isolated Systems” on You Tube against a visual backdrop of the World War Z movie art. This was at the same time that the film was getting another bout of bad buzz with the Vanity Fair cover story about the troubled production.
By deliberately aligning with Muse, a known and credible global brand, Paramount was able to turn the press buzz back to the movie by focusing on the London premiere. World War Z ended up being Brad Pitt’s Top Grossing Film to date, coming in at $540 million worldwide – 62.5% of receipts came outside of North America. The predisposed male and global perception of Muse helped World War Z appeal to a wider International male audience.
The ‘M’ Factor revealed
The ‘M’ Factor marries music to film and sparks intense fan interest and pre-release fever through the artist’s dynamic content sharing on their social media networks. With a proven track record of success,
The ‘M’ Factor will result in higher profit and ROI for films. This is a systematic approach that serves the movie brand, from a music perspective. A hit musical score will not guarantee you a hit film, but, when properly fused with – and reflective of – the movie, music will exponentially enhance marketing touch points and optimize the reach of your marketing budget.
Music is the perfect content marketing solution, as it can address all these needs early, without asking the studio to reveal too much of the movie upfront of the film’s release. You Tube is a huge tool – music videos can be the new movie trailer, and additional pieces of content, like lyric videos and behind the scenes content can double and triple the impact. If publishing cuts are negotiated on behalf of the studios, this can build additional revenue opportunities for the films as well.
The success of Twilight and World War Z are case studies in the rethinking of the relationship between music and film. It required the entire team around the soundtrack – music supervisor, director, studio, and most importantly, the record label, to align itself around the needs of the film instead of following its own artist agenda. In the end, for the film studio, record label and consumer, it was a win-win-win.
Conclusion
In a world where the shelf-life of a new release is approaching that of a banana, the path to success has changed. In the Old West, they used to say that there were just two kinds of people – the quick and the dead. In the era of the digital economy the phrase might well be that there are just two types of film studios, the quick and the dying. The quick are embracing new ways of thinking while the dying are hanging on for dear life to the ways that brought them success in the past.