That collective sigh of relief you heard recently came from Academy Award television advertisers. They were glad to see that their commitment of some $1.8 million on average for a :30 time slot during ABC’s Oscar telecast on Sunday (2/24) could prove to be a worthwhile investment after all thanks to the end of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike earlier this month.
Sans picket lines, the Academy Awards event will be back to its star-studded norm, drawing a mega-sized primetime audience and again justifying its claim to being the Super Bowl of advertising for the female demographic.
Among the most relieved is Unilever which will air user-generated spots for its Dove Cream Body Wash. Dove conducted an online contest asking women to upload their own body-wash product commercials at dovecreamoil.com. The competition drew some 3,500 entries, which public online voting culled down to the two spots which will air on the Oscars this Sunday.
Other advertisers slated for Oscar include: General Motors which is the sole auto sponsor of ABC-TV’s broadcast; Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, American Express, JCPenney, Bertolli frozen dinners (another Unilever product), L’Oreal, Mars, McDonald’s and MasterCard.
Though the writers’ strike dashed the television ad hopes of the Golden Globes telecast on NBC (which was reduced to a press conference) and the People’s Choice Awards on CBS, interest in these events has heightened as of late in the marketing community, primarily because they tend to get audiences watching live television as opposed to spot-skipping DVR recordings. The Super Bowl and the Oscars are at the pinnacle of must-see live TV, carrying the guarantee of mass viewership in an age of otherwise often fragmented audiences.
And with primetime TV in a reruns morass due to the WGA strike, the appeal of original content like the Academy Awards ceremony has grown that much stronger.
The aforementioned $1.8 million average per :30 slot represents about a seven percent increase over last year’s price tag.
Ron Cicero and Bo Clancey Launch Production House 34North
Executive producers Ron Cicero and Bo Clancey have teamed to launch 34North. The shop opens with a roster which includes accomplished directors Jan Wentz, Ben Nakamura Whitehouse, David Edwards and Mario Feil, as well as such up-and-coming filmmakers as Glenn Stewart and Chris Fowles. Nakamura Whitehouse, Edwards, Feil and Fowles come over from CoMPANY Films, the production company for which Cicero served as an EP for the past nearly five years. Director Wentz had most recently been with production house Skunk while Stewart now gains his first U.S. representation. EP Clancey was freelance producing prior to the formation of 34North. He and Cicero have known each other for some 25 years, recently reconnecting on a job directed by Fowles. Cicero said that he and Clancey “want to keep a highly focused roster where talent management can be one on one--where we all share in the directors’ success together.” Clancey also brings an agency pedigree to the new venture. “I started at Campbell Ewald in accounts, no less,” said Clancey. “I saw firsthand how much work agencies put in before we even see a script. You have to respect that investment. These agency experiences really shaped my approach to production--it’s about empathy, listening between the lines, and ultimately making the process seamless.” 34North represents a meeting point--both literally and creatively. Named after the latitude of Malibu, Calif., where the idea for the company was born, it also embraces the power of storytelling. “34North118West was the first GPS-enabled narrative,” Cicero explained. “That blend of art and technology, to captivate an audience, mirrors what we do here--create compelling work, with talented people, harnessing state-of-the-art... Read More