Adland’s expectations are out of step with the reality of cinema
Between the expectations of cinema advertising and the viewing experience of the movie theatre, Mumbrella's Darren Wells argues that reality sets a slightly different scene.
Cinemas across the country are reopening following the extended run of COVID 2: Electric Boogaloo (interesting premise, but it dragged in the middle). Naturally, adland is also keen to see those curtains rise, bringing with it the opportunity to get on those seven-metre-tall screens for theatres of captive eyeballs.
But there’s an audience that has the potential to reveal some stark findings about the true value of cinema advertising, one the industry is neglecting to consider: itself.
Like movies themselves, an advertisement in a packed house is seen as the ultimate viewing experience. Ad spend is up year-on-year, seemingly speaking to its reputation as the best advertising seat in the house. And why wouldn’t it? The massive screen, the booming sound, the audience of hundreds planted front and centre before <youradhere.mp4>. Professor Karen Nelson-Field, CEO and founder of Amplified Intelligence, says it amounts to a unique advertising experience: “…an unskippable environment free from distractions where its audiences even put away their phones to devote 120 minutes of their precious attention to watch.” Short of A Clockwork Orange’s Ludovico technique, it’s as pure a viewing experience as it comes.
Except, when taken outside of advertising’s vacuum and applied to the real world, it’s not.
Put it this way: ever rushed to a movie? Of course you have, anyone who’s anyone has looked at their watch and realised there’s no way they’re going to make it by 11:10am, silently cursing whatever delay has turned that well-planned timetable into a house of lies. Anyone who’s anyone has, at some point, run the numbers of that listed start time to figure out how much time they really have before the movie begins. Stop me if you’ve heard this one: “Ten minutes of ads, maybe ten minutes of trailers, if we’re lucky the studio logos and opening credits will give us another couple of minutes… unless Kevin has to have another wee, I think we’ll be okay.”
At a consumer level, cinema advertising is considered expendable. It’s the bubble wrap around the true item of value. Unless we’re talking embedded marketing, or product placement, those eyeballs in cinemas are probably looking elsewhere – count the number of lit smartphone screens you see next time you’re waiting for the movie to start.
The conversation then turns to the cinema experience itself, from the upholstered chairs to the smell of the popcorn. It was an aspect examined by Involved Media’s head of strategy and planning, Dan Hojnik – “Hell, I really did miss it,” he says of his first post-COVID trek. But to yearn for the experience of eating quasi-overpriced snacks while watching a movie is to fawn over shopping centres for their parking fees – entirely the wrong thing.
“But it’s the massive screen, stupid” is the go-to argument; the rebuttal that watching a movie in your own home cannot possibly replace the cinema experience. Yet it’s becoming increasingly obsolete – go to a hi-fi store and just try finding a modest screen amid the rows of 72” 4K OLED panels. The way modern TVs are built, a big-screen experience is approaching the default in Australia’s lounge rooms. And the sound? Anyone who struggled through the muffled dialogue of Tenet knows not even a 12.1 surround setup is a beneficial part of this supposed ‘cinematic experience’.
“Ringing the death knell is dangerous rhetoric,” Hojnik advised in his original piece. To that much, I agree. Cinemas won’t die. They will evolve. For a certain audience they will endure, but that audience may not be the audience as it exists today. Just as the rivers of gold of print newspapers have run dry, cinemas won’t always be regarded as the primary movie viewing experience.
Torrents of digital ink has been spent analysing the home streaming responses of various studios, and COVID’s role in accelerating media’s move to digital streaming. Punters have now had the taste of convenience, and that genie is out of the bottle. The sound at your preferred volume. Subtitles to cater to everyone in the room. The luxury to pause a movie. (Go on Kevin, have another wee.) Rushing to make it for a movie’s start time is a panic of the past.
Adland: we’re all human. People have lives outside of the focus groups and flow charts and eye tracking experiments. Ads are the first thing cinema goers skip and the last thing they think about. You know this. You live this. And if you’ve ever offloaded your CD collection in favour of Spotify music streaming, you know that convenience will win the day, every day.
Darren Wells is the senior content journalist at Mumbrella.
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Respectfully I think you’ll find the phrase I don’t want to miss the previews is more widely used than let’s skip the ads and trailers.
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All sorts of logic flaws in this argument. Most cinemas I’ve ver been to are pretty full by the time ads come on, certainly the ‘proper’ ads which run closer to the movies. So you’re throwing out cinema because a tiny percentage of people aren’t there yet? There is viewer attrition in every medium. Yes, smart phones and people talking, distracted, but this is true of any other visual medium. You can’t just list off a few shortcomings of a medium and then throw the whole thing out. Cinema does have more unique ‘locked in’ audience that’s actually paying attention to a near perfect presentation of what ever you offer up, compared to most other mediums. There’s no skip button. Far fewer distractions than before a movie or Tv show at home, which at any rate is probably streamed these days so no ones waiting for it to start, even watching ads. We all know cinema gets noticed because we’ve had to sit through lots of dumb commercials at the cinema while everyone sniggers at them. The opportunity is to do something great with that space.
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Darren not sure when you went to the cinema last – but when I was at a Warriewood Cinema 2 weeks ago , it was a full house , we listened as the owner Roy Mustaca sang a song live (to great applause ), we then watched the ads and trailers and then the film – and Darren that was the real world .
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Hi Bob,
Christmas presents have a unique ‘locked in’ audience too, but I’m not sure the kids care what design is on the wrapping paper they’re tearing to shreds – they’re there for the toy.
“We all know cinema gets noticed because we’ve had to sit through lots of dumb commercials at the cinema while everyone sniggers at them.”
I don’t feel this speaks as highly of cinema advertising as you feel it does. But I agree, the opportunity is there to do something great. I look forward to seeing what that may be.
-D
Sure I agree kids don’t want the wrapping paper, but the present – but by that analogy you should throw out ALL advertising not just cinema. But we all know, despite ads not being what people ‘want’ it’s possible to make ads people actually talk about and share, or at the very least, just notice and remember. So if you’re trying to make something emotional or entertaining (to get them to notice) you’re still better off having a medium where people aren’t as distracted. Unless you’re comparing cinema to ‘native’ media, product placement, long form content ads, or some other version of ‘hiding’ the ad – which is very difficult to pull off and often dubious in its effectiveness except in certain brand categories like cosmetics which suit being sold by influencers and the like… try getting an influencer to sell toilet paper.
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PS. When i mentioned people sniggering at cinema ads I was speaking largely to my Australian experience. In the UK, where clients and agencies (at least used to) treat cinema advertising with reverence there were amazing ads that would have the audience enraptured… think Guiness ‘Horses’. To your last point, they knew the ads were competing with the film and would create content accordingly.
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