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Douglas MacMillan is one of the Ninja Hamsters at ADOTAS aka an intern. He previously spent several months working as a dutiful intern under the dictatorship of Jann Wenner at Rolling Stone, only to be set free by our own Kiran. He does not get Jaime skim lattes in the morning.

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Lights, Camera, Collaboration: Moviefone, AmEx Celebrate Tribeca Film Festival

Written on
April 26th 2006
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by Douglas MacMillan  |
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These days, campaign sites which promote the collaboration of two or more companies are a dime a dozen. Too often, and for a variety of reasons, the central purpose of the partnership is lost on the user. In some cases, joint campaigns opt for panache over message, delivering an enticing device like an advergame but incorporating very little brand tie-in. Sometimes, the companies have so little in common that the point of them coming together presents a distracting enigma from the very start.

It’s refreshing, then, to discover Moviefone’s new site, which unites three brands with the 5th Annual Tribeca Film Festival in a single entertaining, useful and meaningful destination. At moviefone.com/tribeca, festival sponsors American Express, Moviefone, and Moviefone’s parent company AOL, each serve a relevant role in creating a community space for filmmakers, attendees and onlookers. The site offers a wealth of original content in its own pages while also cleverly operating as a portal to its sponsors’ own pages.

The site is built into the framework of Moviefone’s existing site, a popular online destination for movie and theater info, tickets, and reviews. Moviefone, it follows, is responsible for a majority of the content. They bring in all the movie-phile goodies you’d expect: festival schedule, ticketing, sneak peeks, red carpet footage, and a “Cinematical” blog with regular updates.

On top of that, they’ve shot their own web-exclusive series, entitled “Unscripted,” in which actor and filmmaker attendees perform candid interviews of one another. “Unscripted” began filming yesterday, on the first day of the festival, and will begin its 10-12 episode run on the site later this week, featuring conversations between David Duchovny and Loan Gruffudd, Rupert Grint and Laura Linney, Jeremy London and Katheryn Winnick, among others.

American Express, a founding sponsor of Tribeca Film Festival, has already branded itself rather memorably with the event over the past five years. A multi-platform campaign in heavy rotation last year featured festival founder Robert De Niro and the tagline “My Life. My Card.” Now American Express is using this recognizable connection and the Moviefone site to spark interest in its “My Life. My Card CLIPS Competition.” This mini film festival solicits amateur filmmakers to send in their own 15-second creations for a chance to win $15,000 and be personally honored at the Tribeca Film Festival’s final awards ceremony.

At first glance, the American Express aspect might seem haphazardly tied in to the bundle, but it really does add depth to the site’s sense of a film festival community. It makes every user a potential filmmaker themselves, and that allows them to see the event from an interesting new perspective. Plus, every site nowadays has something to gain from the quirkiness and hilarity that ensues from user-generated video.

“It felt like a natural allegiance between our strong movie brand and American Express’ commitment—not only to the Tribeca Film Festival—but to really associating their brand with creativity and movie makers and people like that,” Erik Flannigan, Vice President of Entertainment Programming at AOL, tells ADOTAS. “We’re always sensitive to over-sponsored, overbranded, oversold things, but this one felt pretty natural.”

While the AOL name is only subtly incorporated, it brings a very important element to this corporate gumbo. They have embedded portions of their City Guide content into the site in order to root it geographically within the context of the festival’s lower Manhattan neighborhood. Film fanatics—particularly ones visiting from outside of New York—can use City Guide’s Tribeca Film Festival guide to locate restaurants, bars, hotels, and—god forbid—more movie theaters to plan their festival agenda.

Using AOL City Guide to emphasize the local neighborhood was a wise step for Moviefone, because it pays homage to the fact that Tribeca Film Festival was initiated in 2002 to revitalize culture in the area after the devastating attacks of September 11th. If he knew anything about online marketing, festival founder Robert De Niro would be proud.

While they all contribute applicable original content to the Moviefone destination, the partnering sponsors also stand to gain an influx of traffic to their own pages from the numerous links and banner ads placed intelligently around the site. Links to the Tribeca Film Festival official site are also prominently displayed.

Although the festival began only yesterday, AOL’s Flannigan said that the partnership campaign has already surpassed his expectations. “That’s what’s nice, too, with a partnership—that American Express is committed to actually driving people into the experience, not just to brands.”

Roll camera, and play to win at: http://movies.aol.com/tribeca-film-festival-2006/main



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