Indie Film: A New Frontier For Advertisers?

Product placement and celebrity shilling is nothing new when it comes to big-budget Hollywood movies, as Shrek fans can tell you. But now independent film is coming into focus as a new advertising vehicle, the LA Times reports, with certain companies investing directly in movie productions.

Unilever brand Dove is putting up $3 million--about one-fifth of the total production budget--for The Woman, a movie from director Diane English (TV's Murphy Brown) that is set in New York and stars Annette Benning, Meg Ryan, Eva Mendes, Jada Pinkett Smith and Candice Bergen. And Gatorade put up some of the seed money for Gracie, a story about a girls soccer team that hits theaters this weekend.

"With low-budget movies you have to have different ways to create marketing efficiencies and leverage your ability to fund them," Andrew Shue, producer of Gracie told the LAT. He said the seed money from Gatorade enabled him to raise an additional $7 million from a hedge fund. "This is absolutely something in the future for these kinds of movies that are smaller budget and under the studio threshold."

With these two examples, this kind of partnership seems like a win/win for all involved. Indie film gets to tap another source for funds when they are putting together financing, and national brands can give smaller movies a higher profile and broader marketing appeal at time of release. And as audiences becoming harder to reach on TV, advertisers have a new way to connect with consumers in a less obvious and invasive way, promoting a lifestyle instead of just a brand. Dove, for example, will launch a marketing campaign for The Woman that plays off its "Campaign for Real Beauty" concept. And director English will blog for Dove's website and shoot a short film for the site about the making of The Women featuring the movie's stars.

Neither Dove nor Gatorade demanded product placement in return for their investment, however, the girls do drink Gatorade in Gracie and English says she's open to incorporating Dove into Women if she can do it seemlessly. "I was being very, very careful about this," she said. "I didn't want to be put in a position where the product was running the show. Their campaign is about reaching out globally to women and girls about self esteem and empowerment and that is what we are saying in our movie."

Three Gatorade execs received a producing credit on Gracie. Dove isn't producing Women, but it will share in profits once/if the $15 million budget is made back.

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