Disney Accomplished This Feat
Wow, this is bad. This article from Deadline is pretending that Guardians of the Galaxy was an amazing stellar mega-hit this weekend instead of an underperformer that probably isn’t going to make a profit unless its got one hell of a set of legs on it.
From Deadline:
“Disney accomplished this feat this AM off a global promotional partnering campaign valued at $90 million.”
A promotional partnering campaign is when you go to various companies like McDonald’s, or Kellogg’s, or Walmart Tee-shirts, or whatever. They chip in some money into the production and in exchange, they are allowed to plaster Guardians of the Galaxy stuff all over their products. Disney doesn’t make any bank off this other than lowering promotional costs. It’s the partner that benefits when the hit launches. Disney gets an echo chamber that it doesn’t have to pay for.
Sounds good right?
Here is the big thing: A partnering campaign is an expression of general confidence in a product. The Deadline article tortured the numbers until they confessed that this partnering campaign was twice that of the first two films. That is probably true BUT there wouldn’t have been much money kicked in on the first one (since no one had ever heard of the Guardians of the Galaxy back then) and the second came out six years ago when promotional costs were half of what they are now.
But here is the REALLY big thing: Spiderman No Way Home’s partnering campaign raked in $200 million. Promotional partners are redirecting their money the hell away from Marvel.
