AFM Diary (2): Schwarzenegger, bumped meetings and a man in sparkly blue
It’s day two for Luke Hardiman (Haywire Communications) at the 2010 American Film Market, where the strong Australian dollars is doing him no favours, offices follow floor level hierarchies, and and not learning anything new is actually a good thing.
Sunday is our first full day at the American Film Market. We head down to the Loews hotel. Arnold Schwarzenegger rides past us on a pushbike. Nobody else seems to care, so we pretend not to.
AFM takes over Santa Monica, with posters in all the shops, discounts in the restaurants, over 400 film screenings over the course of the week, that’s 30 films every session. Most of those films will have had a trailer made for them, and that’s why we’re here.
We have a series of meetings set up throughout the day, first up a charming lady from London who sells $30 million dollar films, followed by a US sales agent who sells $1 million movies that you’ll never see. For the US sales agent, the distance factor of doing business between LA and Sydney does not seem to be an issue, but price is. And while the strong AUD makes it easier to come here, it makes it harder to compete once we’re here.
We go to a seminar on Social Marketing, hoping to pick up some cutting edge tips, because social marketing is another aspect of what we do. We’re secretly quite pleased when we don’t learn anything new; we’re already doing everything the panellists talk about and more.
The Loews Hotel, where AFM is held, is turned into a giant shopping centre, with the rooms becoming shop fronts for the sales agents. There seems to be a hierarchy to the offices, the lower the floor level your office is on, the lower the budget of movies on offer. Our first meeting was on level 4, but our last meeting of the day were on levels 7 and 8…big time. Unfortunately, both those meetings get bumped. We’ve been warned about this, so we take it in our stride, reschedule and retire to the bar to watch the sun set over Santa Monica.
A man in a sparkly blue jump suit with an astronaut’s helmet and a toy laser gun tries to sell us a film, but we’re not buying…
Haywire is an entertainment marketing company that provides full service advertising for Australia’s leading distributors, production companies and online publishers. Established in 2004, Haywire’s clients include Hopscotch, Southern Star, Austar, ABC, Fairfax Digital and ninemsn.
