It’s Friday, so if you happen to be in New York City you may want to take advantage of the entertainment offerings at the 5th Annual Tribeca Film Festival. This year’s festival has 174 feature films and 100 shorts, so you ought to be able to find something to engage you.The festival is sponsored by “Founding Sponsor,” American Express, and a slew of other brands that includes AMC movie theatres, The Tribeca Grand Hotel, and the I Love NY Film Board, all desperate to be associated with the event. For these sponsors you ought to be able to see the natural “fit” between their brands and the Festival as a marketing venue without much difficulty.
But that’s what effective branded entertainment ought to be, of course, an entertainment offering that reinforces the sponsoring brand’s strengths. That way consumers will “see” the brand, “experience” the brand in a different, better light, and will, ultimately, behave more positively toward the brand. That’s the theory, anyway, but done correctly it can work wonderfully.
But what happens when a brand hasn’t voluntarily entered in to the branded entertainment exercise? What happens when it is pretty clear that the unwitting brand’s strengths are likely to be eroded?
That question was posed to us by Mark Skertic, a reporter from the Chicago Tribune. Mark noted that the Festival was going to be opened by "United 93," the film that tells the harrowing story of one of the four airlines hijacked on September 11, 2001. United Airlines wasn’t – obviously – a willing participant in either event, and Mark wondered what the film was going to do to the United Airline brand.
Every American and every viewer is likely to carry an opinion with them into the theater. But politics notwithstanding, the situation is worthy of discussion. As marketers are looking for every engagement opportunity for their brands, we are of the mind that they ought to have gauged the effects every branding circumstance will engender before they sign on the bottom line.
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