“The Love Guru” starring Mike Myers didn’t exactly dominate at the box office after its June 20 opening, but that hasn’t prompted any concern among executives of Cinnabon, the movie’s exclusive quick-service sponsor.
Indications that the film probably wouldn’t perform as well as Myers’ “Austin Powers” movies were evident from the reviews. Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert wrote, “This film could have been written on toilet walls by callow adolescents.” The media gossip blog Gawker was even harsher: “All signs point to this being a catastrophe on an epic scale.”
The movie’s opening-weekend gross was only $14 million, a fourth-place finish. But Myers’ apparent film flop doesn’t necessarily mean Cinnabon will suffer.
That’s so even though, by comparison, “Kung Fu Panda” earned $60 million in its first week, marking DreamWorks Animation’s best tally ever for a nonsequel movie. McDonald’s Corp., as official restaurant sponsor of the movie, timed its release to a worldwide Happy Meal promotion in June.
Burger King tied into “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” which earned $126 million during its debut and continues to do well. BK credited its promotions last year for “The Simpsons Movie” and “Transformers” with driving sales during the first quarter of fiscal 2008.
Domino’s Pizza has tied into the much-anticipated release of “The Dark Knight” Batman movie with the launch of a new pizza, a $10,000 giveaway and an interactive-marketing initiative featuring movie content.
Papa John’s Pizza, which previously partnered with film studios for DVD releases, will promote the theatrical release of “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” starring Brendan Fraser. The chain’s related promotions include three one-topping medium pizzas for $21 and discount coupons toward the purchase of the first two “Mummy” DVDs.
Restaurant chains that conduct movie promotions undoubtedly hope that their particular film will be the smash hit of the season, but a movie that tanks doesn’t necessarily mean the promotion will too or that sales will be hurt.
McDonald’s also tied in to “Speed Racer,” which debuted May 9 and immediately flopped. The live-action-animation hybrid earned only $18.6 million during its opening weekend. Yet McDonald’s U.S. same-store sales rose 4.3 percent for the four weeks ended May 31.
The factor that determines whether a movie tie-in will help a chain increase short-term sales or raise brand awareness is not so much the movie’s box office sales but how well a chain executes the promotion, said Farrah Louviere, director of film for Davie Brown Entertainment, a Los Angeles-based entertainment marketing agency.
“I really don’t think that there’s a true correlation between box office [success] and promotional success,” she said.
Some sponsors of movie tie-ins don’t go all out to market their connection to the film, she explained. They might do some halfhearted in-store merchandising and send out a few direct-mail pieces—not enough of a commitment to make the promotion work, Louviere said.
“Of the programs that haven’t been a success, there hasn’t been commitment across the board,” she said. “In many cases, there were other things going on at the time, like multiple [promotional] offers.”
Ultimately, if the movie doesn’t fit the brand, the promotion won’t attract the brand’s consumers, Louviere said, which is why the brand has to “filter whether or not a film is right for them.”
Atlanta-based Cinnabon, a division of franchisor Focus Brands that has some 700 U.S. and foreign units, decided “The Love Guru” was just the right thing because Myers, a big Cinnabon fan, wrote Cinnabon into the movie and Paramount Studios asked the chain to be its marketing partner, said Jason Simons, Cinnabon’s director of marketing.
Cinnabon has been “pretty lucky and pretty successful” with product placements in movies and TV shows, he said, and with the “Love Guru” partnership, “our main objective is brand awareness outside of the four walls of our bakeries.”
“This gives us an opportunity to get our brand and our products in front of a group of consumers that we may not have an opportunity to get to,” he said.
A specially constructed bakery appears in an airport scene, and the brand exposure “works really well for us,” he said.
Will the harsh reviews for “Love Guru” and its poor debut at the box office impede that objective?
“I don’t think so,” Simons said. “We’re pretty optimistic. It opened at fourth, and we’re excited.”
A week after opening, “Love Guru” had dropped to sixth place.
Cinnabon’s promotion began May 26 “to benefit from the promotional wave” of the movie’s pre-release buzz and advertising, Simons said. The chain worked with HL2, a West Coast integrated-marketing agency, to develop in-store material, “Love Guru” beverage cups, movie-theme T-shirts for Cinnabon employees, and an energy drink called “The L.O.V.E. Chillatta,” which stands for “Lemon-Lime Outputting Valuable Energy” and plays off the acronyms Myers’ character uses in the movie.
The drink fits in with Cinnabon’s practice of promoting seasonal items and specialty drinks and has been selling well because more consumers are looking for “energy-packed drinks,” Simons said.
Cinnabon’s website links to “The Love Guru” site will continue until the promotion ends July 27, and the chain is open to working with Paramount Pictures again when it releases the DVD, he added.
Cinnabon feels “pretty honored” by its exposure in a theatrical release, and “when you’re dealing with a 100-percent-franchised system, it helps from a franchisee perspective that the brand is put in a positive light,” Simons said.
