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Negotiating product placement deals
[Mon 07/07/2008 01:13:51]
By Simon de Bruyn
Templar Films’ producer Jeff Purser knows how to negotiate a good deal. Prior to entering the film industry in 2002, he was business development manager for the Sydney Olympics organising committee and also worked for the South Sydney Rabbitohs where he was instrumental in the fight for their re-inclusion in the NRL.
In 2002 he was part of the team that organised the financing and distribution of Fat Pizza: The Movie, which went onto make $3.7m at the Australian box office and an additional $4m on DVD and other sales. In 2005, he established Templar Films with property investment manager Ranko Markovic and screenwriter Edward Berridge, which has continued his aim to bring more ethnic stories and actors to the screen.
Purser has recently joined forces with producer Matt Dabner for a new feature, Cedar Boys, a story of Lebanese male culture in Sydney’s west, and says he is using all his business smarts to keep the budget below $1.5m.
“I come from a corporate background; I never went to film school or anything like that. I think a big problem with a lot of Australian filmmakers is they make films with budgets between $3m and $5m, because they know the only way they’re going to get paid is by taking a big wage out of the production budget,” he explains.
“Our business model is different. We try to keep production costs really low and get branded content and sponsors on board. The money for Fat Pizza was all raised privately, through investors and product placement.”
He says producers need to let go of their preconceived notions of product placement, as it hasn’t always been done well in the past – at least by Australian producers. Hollywood has been doing it for years, however he says local filmmakers tend to treat product placement in two ways. They either see it a shameful practice to be avoided to maintain artistic integrity, or they take it for granted – and the only time the brand is actually shown clearly in the film is during the credits.
“Not many audiences stay for the credits. To me that’s rubbish; that’s not marketing, that’s not integrating the brand into the medium. You need to see product placement as a long-term partnership, which will not only save you money during production but also in distributing and marketing your film,” he says.
Purser explains that he starts looking for product placement opportunities as soon as he reads the script. For Cedar Boys, the Templar Films’ team sat down and made lists of products that were relevant to characters or scenes in the script.
“The story is about Lebanese guys in the western suburbs, so we asked ourselves what they are into. We listed cars, mobile phones, drinks, stereos, things like that and that became our hit list which we took to the market,” he says.
“It’s important to come up with a creative idea based around a product’s brand values and demographics, which also fits in with your audience. We are currently negotiating a mobile phone deal worth $100,000 for Cedar Boys. One phone company is currently looking at a deal where they will have their phones in the film as well as be involved in some sort of viral text messaging campaign. Hopefully there will be a seamless integration of their product, and hopefully if we’ve done our job the audience won’t know there’s product placement.”
In addition to the financing process for Fat Pizza, Purser honed many of these skills in the financing of Templar’s first television show, ClubLife TV, which recently started airing on Channel V. ClubLife TV is a reality TV show set in a nightclub in the western Sydney suburb of Penrith, and the project was funded through branded content.
“Channel V paid $10,000 which is nothing really, but it was our first TV show and they were taking a punt on us. So we funded the show through our sponsors, which are all products associated with our audience, including alcohol or energy drinks. So instead of filming people drinking with products that weren’t sponsoring us we ensured that they had our sponsors’ product in hand,” he explains.
He believes as long as producers are willing to rethink old financing models, product placement should have an important place in the financing and budgeting process.
“A lot of producers and directors come out of film school and they have very fixed ideas about how things are done, and that there’s a certain way to do things. Our company tries to think outside the square; we’re very results orientated and not really very process orientated,” he explains.
This article appeared in IF #111 July 2008
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