By T.L. Stanley

If this headline hasn’t appeared yet, it probably will as a way to sum up 2009 so far: Wall Street drops, Hollywood hops. Never mind the failed banks, millions of pink slips and plummeting consumer spending; the big-screen entertainment biz is booming. Recession?
What recession?

According to Peter Sealey, former marketing chief at Columbia Pictures and now CEO of consulting firm Sausalito Group, there’s a simple way that this works: “When reality’s bad, people want that suspension of disbelief. And movies are still a relatively cheap buy.” Not only does history prove him right (moving going spiked during the Great Depression), so do the current figures: The overall box-office gross could top $10 billion this year, an all-time record. Attendance (the litmus test of how popular movies really are) is already up a startling 13 percent.

The boom is driven as much by the environment as it is the products and the marketing around them, Sealey says. How else to explain the fatuous Paul Blart: Mall Cop, a farce that became one of the top-five moneymakers of the first half of the year?

Still, Hollywood execs are not oblivious to the fiscal realities out there. Studios have steadily trimmed their releases. They’re focusing on safe bets like sequels and remakes. They’re also rolloing out the big marketing guns (read: lots of national TV time) to support the launches. Studios like DreamWorks Animation and Disney/Pixar have also committed to more movies in 3D—in particular, the recently released Up—giving them an extra carrot to lure viewers.

Nearly every studio is searching for franchises (films like Fox’s surprise hit Alvin and the Chipmunks) that can spawn a long line of movies and, equally important, toys, video games and other swag. It’s no surprise, then, that so many coming attractions have a number tacked onto the end: Kung Fu Panda 2, Shrek 4 and Harry Potter 7.

Tie-ins with films like these are safe enough to ward off recessionary fears for brands like Burger King, Kellogg and Nokia. But it’s a co-dependent relationship, too: Under pressure to keep costs in line, studios are relying more on mega-brands to advertise and promote their films. The two worlds are, in fact, collaborating earlier and more intimately than ever before. “There’s a closer link between the film’s marketing and the promotional partner’s campaign,” said Stephanie Sperber, evp, Universal Studios Marketing Partnerships. “We’re sharing meaningful assets, syncing up media—and seeing tremendous value in that approach.”
Here’s one branding story with a happy ending.

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