Imagine That Billboards Return For Lions Gate’s Lennon Biopic

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To promote a new John Lennon biopic, Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. has rented two billboards that will reproduce the famous “War Is Over! If You Want It” ads that were posted in 11 cities worldwide by Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1969.


“‘The U.S. vs. John Lennon’ is a film about what happened to the world-famous musician when he spoke out against an unpopular war and advocated for peace, thereby crossing a powerful and determined presidential administration (Richard Nixon was inaugurated that year) that did not take kindly to dissenters,” said Tim Palen, co-president of theatrical marketing at Santa Monica-based Lions Gate. “However you view the parallels to today’s political climate, John and Yoko’s message of peace is just as meaningful now as it was then.”


There’s no need to go back to the Beatles for an example of a musical group’s political stance affecting its career. Just ask the Dixie Chicks. Many country fans criticized the band after lead singer Natalie Maines told a London audience in 2003 on the eve of war in Iraq that the trio was “ashamed” President George W. Bush was from their home state of Texas. Country radio stations dropped them from their play lists and have been slow to welcome them back, even though their most recent album, “Taking the Long Way,” spent several weeks at the top of the country albums chart and has sold more than 1 million copies.


Political films don’t need to connect with the general public; the definition of a commercial cult film is a product that connects with a discrete segment of the population so deeply that they will pay to watch it again and again. It seems Lions Gate has a fair-sized segment of the U.S. market to mine for diehard anti-war moviegoers. According to political pollster Rasmussen Reports, only 31 percent of Americans rate Bush’s handling of the Iraq war positively. And these anti-war types tend to cluster in large cities in blue (Democratic leaning) states, making it easy to target them.


To maximize the efficiency of its campaign, Lions Gate will put up only two billboards one in New York, one in Los Angeles. The New York billboard went up Aug. 2. The Los Angeles billboard is scheduled to go up Aug. 15 on the north side of Sunset Boulevard at Cory Avenue, facing east.


Other elements of the retro anti-war blitz include 1960s-inspired T-shirts, buttons and stickers with the “War is Over!” mantra. “The U.S. vs. John Lennon,” a co-production of Lions Gate and VH1 Rock Docs, opens in theaters on September 15.



Saatchi Goes Hog Wild


Advertising agency M & C; Saatchi LA recently landed two major accounts. Last week the J. Paul Getty Trust announced Saatchi would be its new agency, and on July 12, Petco Animal Supplies Inc. announced Saatchi would become its agency of record after the retailer put the business up for review.


The Getty’s two museums, the hilltop Getty Center in Los Angeles and the newly reopened Getty Villa in Malibu, draw more than 1.5 million visitors each year. However, the Getty also runs a research institute, a conservation organization and a foundation. Saatchi’s mission is to promote all of the trust’s operations, not just the artwork.


The agency already has delivered work to promote “Rubens and Brueghel: A Working Relationship,” and “Rubens and His Printmakers,” two Getty Museum exhibitions running through Sept. 24. The project was a poster with the tagline “Rampaging Pig Tramples Man as Caped Hero Delivers Death Blow!” to showcase a Rubens painting about a boar hunt. The poster ad is currently on view in Century City and will appear in print outlets.


Maurice and Charles Saatchi started their namesake agency in 1995, after leaving the Saatchi & Saatchi agency they founded in 1970. S & S; was later renamed Cordiant and sold to Publicis Groupe, the French marketing conglomerate, for $1.9 billion in 1999.



Dialing In Sports Listeners


A new, more specific technology employed by radio rating service Arbitron Inc. suggests that its previous ratings underestimated the number of listeners and their propensity for spinning the dial.


The findings, based on the Portable People Meter measurement system, were part of a report measuring the listening habits of sports broadcast audiences.


Traditionally, Arbitron has measured radio audiences with written diaries. With PPM, each participating radio station broadcasts a silent code along with its signal. The PPM device picks up the signal and records the exact listening habits of the subject. According to Arbitron, the size of cumulative audiences for radio stations goes up with PPM, but the time listeners spend with each station goes down.


The study only looked at Houston and Philadelphia, two test markets for PPM. Arbitron has plans to start PPM in the 50 largest U.S. markets by 2012. That would have major implications for XTRA (AM-570), which broadcasts the Lakers; KXTA (AM-1150), which does the Clippers; and KFWB (AM-980), the Dodgers station.


Because PPM provides more timely numbers, it will give stations and advertisers a better idea of audience size quicker, rather than having to wait until the season is half over before the data appear.



Blue Lines, Bottom Lines


Some observers wondered if the recent decision by the Los Angeles Times to no longer send a sports reporter on the road with the local National Hockey League teams, the L.A. Kings and the Anaheim Ducks, said more about the sport’s perceived flagging appeal or the newspaper. An announcement last week by the Times suggests that it is belt tightening, at least as much as the melting fan interest in pucks, driving the decision. Publisher Jeff Johnson announced that the paper would begin to accept advertising on the front pages of some news and feature sections, but not on the front page of the main section.



Staff reporter Joel Russell can be reached at (323) 549-5225, ext. 237, or at

[email protected]

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