Bicoastal commercial production company Flying Tiger Films has entered into a strategic alliance with global marketer Cendant Corporation, which owns such brands as Century 21, Ramada Inn, Avis Rent-A-Car, Howard Johnson’s, Days Inn, Super 8 Motel, ERA Real Estate and Coldwell Banker.
The alliance is one of the first initiatives borne out of Cendant’s new Entertainment Group, which is headed by executive VP Kirk Posmantur, who had previously served as the company’s senior VP/corporate relations. Officially launched in early April, the Entertainment Group is charged with developing alliances with entertainment-related companies; overseeing Cendant brand placement in a variety of entertainment venues including motion pictures, network and cable television; and providing new creative resources to Cendant brands.
"Cendant has about 40 companies and does about $70 billion in revenue each year," said Posmantur. "We have unique channels in which we touch about 200 million consumers a year through our various brands, whether it be hotels, car rental companies, tax returns or real estate."
Posmantur added that Cendant can also help in the marketing of other companies and is involved in many cross-promotion endeavors and varied relationships. For example, Posmantur related, Cendant is parent to hotel chains that collectively account for some 650,000 hotel rooms; Cendant struck a deal with HBO whereby the cable channel is piped into all those rooms. "We realized we can be a great marketing partner to certain people in the entertainment world to help them market their product," said Posmantur.
Flying Tiger is the first commercial production shop with which Cendant has struck up a partnership. Posmantur related he is now in discussions with a number of other entertainment-related companies which he declined to identify.
According to Posmantur, Flying Tiger will consult and collaborate with Cendant in two prime areas: new advertising media such as the convergence of information and entertainment services (i.e.-the coming together of television and the Internet); and commercial production. He said Cendant spends $250 million annually on advertising media and creative and $11 million on commercial production. There is no dictum requiring Cendant agencies-which include Lowe & Partners/ SMS, New York (Century 21) and Christy MacDougall Mitchell, New York (Howard Johnson’s and ERA)-to use Flying Tiger for production.
However, Posmantur related, the Entertainment Group will work in conjunction with Cendant’s senior brand managers to recommend that Flying Tiger be used for spot production "when possible and where appropriate."
Added Posmantur, "We’ve introduced Jeff [Devlin, partner/executive producer at Flying Tiger] to all of our key marketing heads, and have shown their product, and they’re all excited. They’re all eager to try to find ways to work with him. Every opportunity we can to work with them in creating commercials for our brands is going to be good for us because we know it’s going to be quality."
Posmantur told SHOOT he talked with a variety of production companies about a possible alliance and found a good fit in Flying Tiger. "It’s a young company," said Posmantur, "and we’re just incredibly impressed with their talent and background. Jeff has an incredible background: he’s from the agency side and he understands our needs. And their directors are incredible; they do great top-end work."
The alliance is not confined to Flying Tiger’s production capabilities, said Posmantur, who said he may tap into the company’s creative resources as they apply to the entertainment industry.
Devlin commented that Flying Tiger’s goal is not to procure all of Cendant’s advertising. He related that, in fact, Flying Tiger turned down Cendant’s initial offer of a $5 million bulk production contract to produce Cendant’s spots. "We’re not interested in doing all of their commercials," said Devlin, who said he’d never want to dictate to agencies that they must use Flying Tiger.
"We’re looking into many areas, especially the convergence game," continued Devlin. "I read that Internet ad sales have reached over $2 billion dollars; that’s $500,000 dollars more than all outdoor advertising. The fracturing of the advertising dollar provides a lot of opportunities for production companies like Flying Tiger. We intend to consult with Cendant and their brands and agencies with the new mediums that are developing. What we want to do is provide top production, not only for [Cendant’s] commercials but for Internet content. Any smart production company in the millennium is going to be looking for new ways to expand their business and this is exactly what we’re doing."
Because both convergent media and the Cendant/Flying Tiger alliance are in their infancy, Posmantur said he was unable to supply specifics about how they would be exploring new media. "I just don’t want to get into too much," said Posmantur. "We’re all of three weeks old; if we were three years old, I’d give you a lot of answers."
Mal MacDougall Jr., creative director at Christy MacDougall Mitchell, commented that Flying Tiger offers a very high level of production which will be appropriate for some of Cendant’s brands. "I think Flying Tiger knows, and Cendant relies on its agencies to know, who is the right company for any given job. In my experience with two of its brands-Howard Johnson and ERA-they give autonomy to the brands. I think Flying Tiger’s relationship with Cendant is more of a consulting one, where they’re here to help Cendant out."
MacDougall related that Flying Tiger helped his agency out on a Howard Johnson spot project last November, when Cendant and Flying Tiger were beginning to strike up a relationship. Although the client had a modest production budget, Flying Tiger agreed to produce the two spots, "Trumpet" and "Businessmen," which MacDougall directed. "They enabled us to do a job with top-flight production support that I wouldn’t have been able to do any other way," said MacDougall, who added that they awarded a subsequent ERA commercial to director Tricia Caruso of TAG Pictures, New York.
