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Andrew Peterson (Film Major)
“Ad Infinitum: Co-branded advertising for children's films, from Star Wars to The Incredibles”
Sponsor: Professor Linda Williams, Film Studies
Project Description
Co-branded advertising is a movie marketing strategy allying films such as Star Wars and E.T., with brands like Burger Chef and Atari. Though film and advertising have always engaged in a mutually shameless relationship, there are many important distinctions between co-branded and conventional film advertising. In contrast to the prologue-like tone of movie trailers, co-branded advertising is presented to the spectator as a kind of hyper-utopian epilogue to the film's narrative conflict, in which "good guys" and "bad guys" alike are rewarded with consumer products. The aim of Andrew's project is to analyze and interpret this emerging trend in film advertising, using commercials preserved at the UCLA Film & Television Archive, and stored online in the AdLand database. He will focus on children's films: those most often paired with consumer products in the contemporary marketplace.
Scholar's Photo
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Andrew gives a reassuring thumbs up, as he traverses the perilous co-branded landscape.
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Scholar's Journal
I began the summer with a drive from Berkeley to L.A., in lieu of flying, so I could bring my dumb TV with me. The TV was a necessary evil, as an integral part of my plan to watch movies and play video games related to my project throughout the summer. The drive was long, and it made me feel weird about driving (pollution, accidents, etc.). It also forced me to acknowledge all the harsh driving I would be doing in the City of No Reliable Mass Transit.
Once in Santa Monica, however, I ate some pizza, and then promptly learned of the "Big Blue Bus," which travels straight to the UCLA campus daily for only 75 cents each way!! Oh, how my heart rejoiced! I took a trip to campus and met with Mark Q. and Mark G. from the Archive Research and Study Center. Mark and Mark are great guys, and it was great seeing them again after having only email correspondence over the past few months.
A list of about 50 tapes and DVDs on reserve at the ARSC, and a stack of books on loan from the UCLA library, I was ready to start my research. I also started a blog, which I hope will be a good outlet for the project, and a way to keep me writing semi-formally throughout the summer: http://www.urbanhonking.com/cobranded
On Mark Q.'s recommendation, I viewed a documentary on the history of the movie trailer. This turned out to be a terrific resource, as it set me on the path to discovering the writings of Lisa Kernan and Vinzenz Hediger, two of the only scholars who have dealt extensively with the topic of film advertising. Kernan's book especially is an inspiration, and I would like to use a similar methodological approach to hers for my analysis of co-branded TV spots.
Focusing more and more on the co-branded TV spots that are the subject of my research, I have several lenses through which to view the ads: histories of film, advertising, brand management and trailers; theories of consumerism and postmodernism; etc. It will be a challenge trying to tie all these different strands together, though I've managed to narrow my initially quite comprehensive bibliographic library down to a few key texts. In the meantime, I am really leaning on UCLA’s collection of TV spots, trailers and electronic press kits, to bear out many of the ideas I have been having about co-branding.
I am trying to keep the blog updated, and if any of you comes across anything co-branded, think of me, take a picture or tell me about it, and I will blog it. I notice more and more co-branded things with every passing day, and this convinces me of the necessity for interpreting the practice. The summer has been a long one, and I have more data than I could ever hope to articulate all at once; and yet a strong desire to keep collecting more data, and learning new things.
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