HOLLYWOOD The Titanic picks up two passengers for its trip to home video Sept. 1. Sprint and Max Factor will tie into the highest-grossing movie in history when it arrives as a two-cassette home video.
The minimum price of the three-hour, 14-minute epic will be a low $19.95, but users of Sprint can get the video free. Sprint customers, new and old, can acquire the free video two ways. If they buy it and switch to Sprint, the phone company will reimburse them for up to $22 when they return the in-video card. If they are already customers or join before they get the movie, Sprint will give them a retail voucher to cover the cost of the video. The only Sprint customers who can’t take advantage of the offer are the ones currently in the middle of a promotion, like the company’s free movie ticket offer.
“From our understanding, no telcom has done a free video with sign-up,” says Sprint’s marketing manager Rondi Furgason. “It’s a great acquisition tool.”
At first Sprint hesitated to tie into a home video release, but now the company is excited enough to push back promotion of its pricey NFL sponsorship for a month while it advertises the Titanic deal.
Michael Arkin, senior vp marketing of Paramount Home Video, says the home video wasn’t a hard sell, but potential sponsors had to be innovative. “We weren’t interested in a $3 rebate,” he says. “We wanted to match the scope and grandeur of the film itself. We had a lot of incoming phone calls, a lot of inquiries.” Arkin says he rejected some fast-food deals because “they didn’t feel right.”
A key part of the Sprint deal is that it doesn’t bypass retail, Arkin says. Sprint customers have to get the video at a retail outlet, whether they use a voucher to pay or get reimbursed later.
While Arkin admits Sprint has no connection to the film, he thinks the deal will work as long the tie-in doesn’t confuse people.
As part of the deal, Sprint will mention its Titanic offer in its 5,000 Sprint stores located in Radio Shacks. The electronic store will not sell the video, but the commercial for it will air repeatedly on store TVs.
To keep customers longer than the video’s running time, Sprint will give each customer who stays with the phone company for two months a choice of another free video from a list of Paramount and Fox releases. A four-month stay will net a third video. Both Fox and Paramount produced Titanic, although Paramount has the U.S. rights to the film and video.
Furgason admits Sprint was one of 100 companies to pass on a chance to link with the feature film release; she defended the decision by saying the company got little advance notice and the end-of-the-year opening was bad for Sprint’s timing.
Although Paramount is releasing the video nine months after the movie opened instead of the typical six-month wait, it probably could have waited longer. When Paramount announced the home video date at the beginning of June, the film was still in the weekly Top 10 lists. To date, it has grossed more than $580 million domestically.
Arkin says retailers asked for a Sept. 1 release date and he expects the movie to sell so well it will still be formidable in the lucrative holiday season. “We’re getting two bites of the apple,” he adds.
Sprint will support its tie-in with national TV spots; the video cover will include a sticker that alerts customers to the Sprint offer. Paramount will load up its largest home video marketing campaign ever, including an 11-week blitz of TV commercials. Overall, the home video will receive $50 million in support.
Max Factor tapped the film’s makeup artist, Oscar-nominated Tina Earnshaw, to create a new line of makeup for its tie-in. Customers who buy $10 of Max Factor cosmetics and the video can get the popular book, James Cameron’s Titanic, for just $2 in shipping and handling charges. The 178-page coffee-table book includes photos and text about the making of the film.
Max Factor will trumpet its offer in many of the 24,000 retail outlets where it sells cosmetics. “They are sold in so many of the same accounts where the video will be, like mass merchants and supermarkets, it will allow for bigger in-store displays,” says Arkin.
The tie-in will be Max Factor’s biggest campaign ever, including magazine tip-in cards and direct brochures given door-to-door to nine million women. The brochures will include a sample of the new foundation makeup.
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