Brand Partnerships, Studios and Awards Season: Why Brands Should Care

Why Brands Should Care About Films Winning In Awards Season

We came across a great blog by Stephen Follows about how much it costs a studio for a Hollywood Oscar campaign. The blog includes in-depth discussion on all the steps a studio takes to shoot for a win, and who the parties are who make the key decisions.    

Our agency specializes in creating brand partnerships with these award-winnning studios and production companies, so we're no stranger to creating meaningful campaigns surrounding some of Hollywood's biggest nights! In this blog, Hollywood Branded shares why a brand should care about the studio’s campaign to gear up for Oscar night, and all the rest of award season. 

Brands And Content

The People’s Choice Awards, The Golden Globes, The Spirit Awards, and the Oscars themselves offer A-list star-studded partnerships of the highest echelon that can be supported by brand sponsorship and advertising – bringing brands a bit of that golden dust themselves and honoring the partnerships built along the way.

By the time you are sitting on your couch watching the Academy Awards – aka The Oscars – Hollywood will have invested over $100 million to try to win one or more of the coveted awards.

Brands have historically been a part of the award show experience – from dressing the celebs in frocks and jewelry to bringing the champagne poured at the parties, to sponsoring big-named events around that gala.  All more so at the last minute – after the nominations have already been won, and just prior to the names being announced on stage.

Brands who are active in product placement in the films and TV shows themselves have had a long partnership with the casts, crew, and productions, often stemming back 12 to 18 months.

In either regard, the studios forage into garnering PR and attention for their productions starting in October for the January and February award shows. This means big money spending and big opportunities for brands to leverage a bit of the golden dust for themselves through innovative marketing strategies…

Awards Season Facts And How Brands Can Leverage Involvement

• 56% of 'Best Picture' nominees were released in either November or December.
  • This is one way our agency can pre-determine potential award nominees for brands who are interested in aligning in the films themselves.  Based on the shooting schedule and information from the studio, the release date can often be estimated prior to production starting to shoot.

• It is possible to predict the Oscar winners with a success rate of 77% for Picture, 93% for Director, 77% for Actor, and 77% for Actress
  • Again, based on the script itself and the talent attached, and after having read thousands of scripts over the years, our agency has the experience to be able to substantiate suggestions as to what content will make it to the final rounds.

• The cost of a 'Best Picture' winning Oscar campaign is around $10 million, with half of all money spent on Oscar campaigns going towards advertising.
  • Studios are likely to be open to brand partnerships that can help defray costs through co-branded advertising, or which can add to the overall eyeballs of the studios' marketing campaign for the Oscar.   

• They mail out screeners!  Or sometimes do instead of downloads...Crash (2005) spent $250,000 on a DVD screener.
  • A brand could co-sponsor DVD screeners and provide product sampling with the shipment, in order to get into the very highly selective hands of the Hollywood community.

• It costs around $3,500 to prepare a Hollywood actress for the red carpet.
  • Brands could sponsor individual actresses to prep them and offset related costs, and be included in social media campaigns by the studio and talent alike.  This fee quoted obviously does not include costs for dresses or jewelry or shoes!

• The studio spends and spends on travel-related costs.
  • From restaurants to hotels, and airlines to car rentals or manufacturers, brands can be at the ready to create studio-specific or film/TV-specific partnerships to help offset hard cash costs the studio must incur as part of awards show activations.

• Oscar-nominated films to earn an average of $12.7 million more than films not nominated, and A Golden Globe win is worth $14.2 million
  • This means more eyeballs on the film which means more eyeballs on the brand’s product placement – this means an additional 1.6 million ++ people seeing the brand!

•  A 'Best Picture' Oscar win is worth $3 million in increased box office gross
  • This is another bump that provides potential additional eyeballs for brand integration in the content.

• A page 1 print ad in The Hollywood Reporter during Oscar season costs $72,000
  • Something done rarely in the past, if ever, but possible, would be to have a brand that helps support the Oscar win through their own print and social media. This could be a highly beneficial idea to embrace for the studio, and property and limit brand partners to an 8 to 10-week time frame to utilize content from the film in co-branded advertising, around the film’s theatrical or home entertainment release, without a licensing fee.

So Why A Brand Sponsorship...That Glittering Star Dust!

We are obviously major advocates of brands partnering with Hollywood to increase consumer engagement, and the reason why is… celebrity sells.  Brands across so many categories have an opportunity during Awards Season to capture a bit of the attention consumers are giving to their favored content, while leveraging their exposure to a fantastic sampling of high household income participants and fans.

Want to learn more about how brands can work with studios to use entertainment marketing and product placement integration to increase sales and brand awareness? Check out the blogs below! 

• Product Placement Survey Brands Use Entertainment Marketing Strategies
• The Oscars 2022: The Highs, The Lows, And The Blows
• Marketing Your Brand At Awards Shows
• TikTok's Hollywood Takeover 
• Awards Season Is Coming — Is Your Brand Ready? 

Interested in better understanding how consumers engage with brands who partner with entertainment properties and celebrities? Take a look at our 2015 Entertainment Marketing survey.