Six Flags Boss Man Becomes Pitchman
Time Warner Inc. has a new strategy for promoting its Six Flags theme park division: humility.
In an advertising campaign geared to the summer tourist season, the media conglomerate is touting Six Flags as the No. 2 theme park that tries harder. Starring in the commercial is Six Flags Entertainment Chairman and CEO Robert Pittman, who entreats families to pay the parks a visit as he and a huge crowd of gleeful children stroll past vertigo-inducing rides.
The Avis-like approach is surprising for Time Warner--which prides itself on dominating its businesses. It was only last year that the company enraged Walt Disney Co. Chairman Michael D. Eisner with a series of advertisements that lampooned the much larger Disney park operation.
It’s also unusual to find a division head playing the role of pitchman at the New York company, where senior executives tend to be insulated from the outside world.
Joe Redling, the Six Flags marketing executive who helped devise the TV and print campaign, said Pittman gives the message more credibility. “We wanted to personalize it,” Redling said. “An announcer’s voice-over didn’t do it for us. To have the chief executive officer saying the things we need to say means something. There’s an obvious commitment level there.”
While Pittman was traveling and unavailable for comment, Redling said it took some time--and a bit of convincing--to get the affable executive before the cameras.
The spot--which begins with Pittman saying, “We’re America’s No. 2 theme park company, which means we have to work harder”--also marks a strategic shift in the way the seven U.S.-based parks are promoted. After two years of running “comparative” advertising, Six Flags is trying to create its own national identity as the country’s second-most popular theme park destination.
While it is still the David to Disney’s Goliath--the park division’s $550 million in revenue in 1993 compares to $3.44 billion for Disney--entertainment analyst Jeffrey Logsdon of Seidler Cos. in Los Angeles says Six Flags seems to be on track to meet its 15% annual growth target.
The company is also credited with skillfully exploiting its Warner Bros. connection by creating more attractions based around classic Warner cartoon characters and movies, such as “Batman.”
“We’ve created a national brand called Six Flags theme parks,” Redling said. “From a marketing standpoint, the interesting challenge is making it clear that No. 2 is a great position.” Or, as Pittman says in the ad, “Look around you--we’re in a fantasy land.”
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Barring a total turnaround in discussions, which is always possible with the parties involved, legal obstacles to a new Eagles album are close to being resolved.
Sources privy to the talks say the album, mainly based on MTV recording sessions, would be released by Geffen Records in September under the tentative deal, which guarantees the group an estimated $10-million advance against sales. Geffen would also release a solo greatest-hits album with two new songs by Don Henley for the 1996 holiday season.
Henley’s back royalties from Geffen are among several unresolved issues. The singer and his label have been engaged in a bitter and protracted contract dispute that’s approaching trial. Glen Frey, the other Eagles founder, is also suing his label, MCA. Since MCA owns Geffen, the agreement under discussion would put an end to all the litigation. It would also free Henley and Frey to pursue solo record deals with other companies.
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On the same day Sony Corp. released its disappointing financial results last week, Sony Pictures Chairman Peter Guber had lunch in Manhattan with Walter Yetnikoff.
Entertainment historians will recall that it was Yetnikoff who helped persuade Sony to name Guber and his then-partner, Jon Peters, to head the studio five years ago. Yetnikoff, who was chief of Sony’s CBS Records division at the time, subsequently lost his job. Most recently he’s been working to line up financing to start his own ambitious record-film company. Among other things, Yetnikoff is developing a movie based on the life of legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis.
Guber called the timing coincidental and said there was no business agenda. “I’ve known him my whole business life,” Guber said Thursday. “Walter’s a talented man at a good place in his life, and I’m happy to see it. We’re just two friends getting together for lunch.”
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If Hollywood seems more bustling than usual over the Memorial Day weekend, blame the publishing industry. Many executives who would ordinarily clear out of town are sticking around for events tied to the American Booksellers Assn. convention here.
The convention has a distinct show business vibe this year, which shouldn’t require much of a stretch since most major publishers are units of entertainment conglomerates. Conventioneers have been invited to hang out with everyone from Motown Records’ Berry Gordy Jr. to Hef himself at the Playboy Mansion.
Hugh Hefner’s party on Saturday celebrates the upcoming release of “The Playboy Book, Forty Years,” a pictorial history of the men’s magazine. “Pajamas aren’t necessary!” the black-and-white invitation notes. Later that evening, Disney-owned Miramax Films launches its publishing wing with a party at the Monkey Bar. At the same time, the New York set at Paramount Pictures is the setting for a party in honor of “Saturday Night Live, the First 20 Years,” which is being published by Paramount Communications’ Houghton Mifflin imprint.
Befitting its size, media conglomerate Time Warner has invited 1,000 people to the St. James Club on Sunday to celebrate “the genius behind Motown.” The party marks the upcoming Warner Books publication of “To Be Loved,” Gordy’s autobiography. “Get down with your bad self,” says the invitation, a phrase not often heard in publishing circles.
Chuck Philips contributed to this report.
