The Greatest Movie Ever Sold illustrates how corporate sponsorships are used as marketing tools to introduce and establish the partner’s products and/or services to the audience using these products/services throughout the movie. The catch, however, in the scenario presented in the movie is the actual movie being made is a documentary by Spurlock showing how movies and marketing are related.
One important thing I learned watching this movie is that to successfully market a product or service you first need to create a base of brand collateral. This can be any type of media, such as product placement in a movie as shown here, used to communicate your company’s brand message to create and boost sales of your product or service. To have a clear idea of what type of brand collateral would be most effective for your company you first need to know your brand personality. A brand personality is used to better relate to consumers by giving your brand human characteristics through descriptive adjectives and emotions typically used when describing people.
Another idea I found very interesting in this movie was that smaller or newer companies often have less defined brands, so they are more willing to try riskier advertising methods to get their names and brands out in the world than larger and more established companies who most often must be more protective of their brand’s image. The smaller or newer companies also are usually working with more limited advertising budgets than their larger counterparts so use of these riskier or newer advertising methods gets them more bang for their buck than their minimal funds could get them using more traditional advertising methods. The more established companies cannot risk confusing or alienating customer by using less conventional advertising that may not mesh well with their well-known brand personality. Up and coming companies however can try various types of marketing as they work to find the brand collateral that is more effective in establishing and promoting their brand.
There are some questions I had while watching the movie but did not feel like it was effectively answered. Although we are told companies across the board spend tremendous amounts of money on advertising each year, the film, never really goes into detail as to why companies consistently spend so much on advertising, or how effective these marketing tactics turn out to be. Most of the movie is taken up by Spurlock meetings with marketing directors essentially telling them how great his movie will be and how beneficial it will be for their companies to be a part of it.
Currently brands are branching out into new areas of brand collateral through use of different approaches to advertise their brands. One example is increased advertising in schools, from posters along the fence wall as well as school hallways which will be lined with Fortune 500 companies, as well as mom and pop shops. That is how The Greatest Movie Ever Sold illustrated how marketing tools are used to introduce and establish the partner’s products as well as services to the audience throughout the movie.
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