27 Jan 10

Escape to the Reel World

Account Director, Paul Phillips investigates......

In straitened times, it’s always a breath of fresh air to learn of commercial success on a record-breaking scale. One such refreshing blast came this week with the news that James Cameron’s Avatar has sunk Titanic to second place in the race for the biggest-grossing movie in history. After just 6 weeks on release Avatar has surpassed $1.8 billion at the international box office and £55m in the UK alone, where it has delivered over 11m impacts for UK advertisers.

News of Avatar’s success serves as strong testament to cinema’s position - not just as a recession-proof medium - but as one which positively thrives in an economic downturn. History endorses this: during the 1991 recession, when UK GDP fell by 1.4%, cinema admissions increased by 4% and box office by 12.3%. Similarly, during the credit crisis of 2001, admissions increased by 8.6% and box office by 20%.

Why is this so? Well, it would seem that, in times of economic gloom, people seek affordable and escapist entertainment – and cinema delivers this in spades. Cameron ‘outdid his Titanic success’, writes CBS News’ Ben Tracy ‘by creating an entirely new world for moviegoers, combining state-of-the-art 3D visual effects with old-fashioned romance’ - clearly an appealing alternative to real-world austerity.

The success of last year’s Slumdog Millionaire bears further witness to consumers’ appetite for feel-good fodder in a recession. Taking as its theme the classic ‘rags-to-riches’ narrative, critics lauded it and audiences flocked to see it, yielding the £7m movie over £300m at the international box office and abundant awards, including 8 Oscars.

Film companies have clearly recognised audiences’ appetite for optimistic cinematic fare and have produced movies to satisfy them. The coming year promises a whole clutch of movies with nostalgically 80s themes: there are remakes of 80s film classics including Tron, Clash of the Titans, Short Circuit, Footloose and Karate Kid, as well adaptations of 80s TV favourites, like The A-Team. In all there are around 15 films with 80s themes scheduled for release over the next 12 months, each one guaranteed to transport all those jaded thirty- and forty-somethings back to a decade of greater prosperity.

And it’ll be the canniest advertisers that join them, in their millions, on their journey back in time.