NEWS: Now in the Movie Marketing Mix: Six Flags

[Airtime&Gravity]

Hollywood studios are always looking for ways to promote new releases. The Six Flags amusement parks are now offering themselves as a venue to introduce coming films.

 

To help promote the release on June 11 by Columbia Pictures of a new version of “The Karate Kid,” there will be competitions at 10 Six Flags parks around the country to find the most talented karate students and their senseis, or teachers. The public will help pick the winners of the contest, called the Karate Kid Challenge at Six Flags.

 

 

The event is one of many developed by the Six Flags Media Networks unit of Six Flags, which looks at the theme parks as the teams in a league, or the local affiliates in a television network.

 

The unit sells advertisers on-premise marketing opportunities that include events like the karate contest, commercial time on TV screens scattered around the parks, branded food stands and even ad wraps for roller coasters.

 

The goal of having “media inside the parks” is to help marketers reach the millions of consumers who visit Six Flags properties each year, said David McKillips, senior vice president for corporate alliances at Six Flags in New York.

 

Six Flags teamed up with MGM last year to promote a remake of “Fame” with talent contests held at each park. The movie may have flopped, but Six Flags executives say the contests performed well.

 

Information on the competition centered on “The Karate Kid” may be found on a Web site (thekaratekidchallenge.com), which goes live on Wednesday. Karate children and their teachers will be invited to put on exhibitions at the 10 Six Flags parks on the weekends of May 1-2 and May 8-9.

 

Judges will select a winning team and a runner-up at each park. Video clips of the exhibitions by the winners will be posted on Yahoo, and the public can vote on their favorite teams from May 18 to 25.

 

The three teams with the most votes will be invited to the premiere of “The Karate Kid” in Los Angeles, where the team with the most votes will be announced; that team wins the grand prize, which includes a private screening of the movie for family and friends.

 

In addition to the competition, there will be a presence for “The Karate Kid” throughout the Six Flags parks; examples include ad wraps for roller coasters in five parks and trailers for the movie appearing on TV screens and monitors.

 

Six Flags is considering other movies to promote this year, Mr. McKillips said, like haunted houses in the theme parks tied to the release around Halloween of a horror film.

 

The cinema presence at the parks has roots in the history of Six Flags; when the parks were owned by Time Warner, characters from Warner Brothers cartoons were featured on premise.

 

The promotion of the movies at the Six Flags properties is an example of experiential marketing, which seeks to bring brands, products and entertainment properties to life in tangible ways. Experiential marketing is growing in popularity as it becomes easier for consumers to avoid traditional ads like TV commercials.

 

Link

[Pufferfish]

I'm putting my money down now that each of the coasters named "Ninja" are going to get the ad wraps. Anyways, neat idea, but Six Flags has really become a sell out now. The ads everywhere really aren't helping their image, at least IMO.

[Jew]

^I think what they are doing is GREAT! Thinking outside the box to generate new revenue streams is exactly what the company needed. They are taking what Disney and Universal have done for ages (getting "presenting" sponsors for attractions) to the next level.