McDonald's and DreamWorks Animation enter Marketing Pact
According to an announcement today, McDonald's is teaming up with DreamWorks Animation to promote upcoming films starting in 2007:
DreamWorks Animation SKG and McDonald's Corporation today announced a two-year worldwide marketing and promotional relationship. The first film associated with the tie-in will be Shrek 3, slated for release in 2007, and will include such signature promotions as McDonald's Happy MealsŪ.
The partnership, which gives McDonald's worldwide promotional rights to new DreamWorks animated properties, was announced today by Jeffrey Katzenberg, DreamWorks Animation Chief Executive Officer, and Mike Roberts, McDonald's President and Chief Operating Officer.
The agreement comes as McDonald's exclusive, ten-year deal comes to an end. On the other hand, the DreamWorks deal is non-exclusive, and the short duration gives both companies the opportunity to assess the success or failure of the partnership fairly quickly.
Given the uncertainty of the new release business for the foreseeable future, this is a smart marketing move for both parties. While Disney and McDonald's had some wild successes (in particular, with the Pixar releases) the ten-year exclusive deal is a relic of a slower, more stable period in the theatrical business.
[Via Yahoo! Finance]
Dreamwork's 'Madagascar' trailered on a Paramount DVD
According to Video Business, the upcoming Dreamworks film 'Madagascar' has been trailered on Paramount's DVD release of 'Lemony Snicket's a Series of Unfortunate Events'. Although header trailers of new releases have been on DVDs for some time, this is the first instance of a competing studio's trailer on a DVD.
The unusual move is due to pre-existing promotional agreements between Dreamworks and Paramount:
This unusual case of a studio promoting another's fare came about because Lemony Snicket is a Paramount and Dreamworks co-production and thus the two are splitting domestic and international DVD revenue. The CG-animated Madagascar, however, is not a co-production.
DreamWorks and Universal Studios Home Entertainment discs often include cross-promotion of each other's movies, but that's attributable to the fact that Universal is DreamWorks' distribution partner. Paramount entered the mix back in November 2004, when DreamWorks' Shrek 2 DVDs featured a trailer for Lemony Snicket.
There just happens to be another great article in VB today discussing the inevitability of third-party studio commercials on DVDs. Today, a partner trailer, tomorrow, a Pepsi ad? Is this the opening salvo towards greater ad exploitation of the DVD platform?
[Via Video Business Online]
