Beyond Big Heads : Cottage Industry Serving Studios’ Ad Operations Flourishing

Call it the Big Head syndrome. From every bus stop, splashed across billboards and plastered on the sides of buses cruising around town, they seem to jump in your face.

But every once in awhile, a movie poster--or “one sheet” as they are called in the business--will catch your eye, one that seems a bit offbeat with a message hyping more than just an actor’s mug. Often that movie message carries the stamp of Global Doghouse.

Quirky. Unique. Artistic. Those seem to be the catch phrases branding this small marketing company that is becoming one of the houses of choice for studios and filmmakers. Global Doghouse, a fledgling company of 10 employees founded in 1993 and based in Santa Monica, is run by creative director Stephen S. Perani and his business partner and Global President Barbara E. George.

At Global, the two have worked on nearly 30 movie print and/or audiovisual campaigns ranging from Columbia Pictures hit “Clueless” and Disney’s “Powder” to Warner Bros.’ “Natural Born Killers” and Gramercy’s “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” Recent trailers tagged onto “Muppet Treasure Island” plugging Tim Burton’s “James and the Giant Peach” have their signature all over it.

Global is one of a dozen companies in a flourishing cottage industry that serves as an adjunct to the studios’ vast marketing operations.

Like most of their competitors, Global has worked for nearly all of the major studios and most of the independent production companies, which face enormous pressure to come up with compelling advertising campaigns to open movies.

Part of that is due to the filmmakers themselves. Directors and some producers are pressing studios to have a say in how their movies are promoted. Directors such as Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone and James Cameron or a producer such as Joel Silver want to put their stamp on the two-minute trailer, the audiovisual pitch played out in theaters before the airing of whatever feature film is showing that day.

Ron Moler’s Aspect Ratio, a Global competitor, says he’s felt more of the input from filmmakers lately. “We entering our 19th year and when we started I can tell you that the campaigns were very much left up to the studios’ marketing departments. This kind of teamwork was unheard of. But having the filmmakers involved is a very positive thing for us, as outsiders being brought in. More importantly, it’s positive for the film and ultimately the studio.”

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Companies such as New Line, which contract the vendor services, say they tend to cut about 80% of their campaigns in-house--including print and audiovisual. The campaigns are expensive. A TV trailer alone can cost anywhere from $40,000 to $1 million depending on the amount of revisions required, says Chris Pula, New Line’s president of marketing.

Why would studios, which are essentially powerful marketing and distribution machines, need outside help for ad campaigns?

“Quite frankly, all movie campaigns just aren’t as slam-dunk as a ‘Lethal Weapon,’ ” says Michael Smith, Warner Bros. senior vice president of advertising. “The way the process works from our end, is we sit down and if it looks like something that needs a different approach, we look around and see who would be best for it. . . . Honestly, I think it’s good to have a mix.”

“Everybody in town has some idea of what they are going to get from any vendor,” says Global’s George, who has worked for both United Artists Pictures and Grey Advertising. “Even when studios started rebuilding their departments--and there was a time when some studios didn’t have them--I don’t think any of them ever intended to do every movie in-house. There isn’t one vendor who does everything equally well. So, neither does an in-house department.”

George says an audiovisual campaign is broken down into several stages. The first is the conceptual phase where creative ideas are pitched, strategy meetings with studio executives are held, a script is rendered and usually one revision is done. Studios typically pay $120,000 or more for the design of a print campaign and about $100,000 for a completed trailer, which uses actual footage from the first cut of the movie.

Trailers are tested and often the vendors will be asked to make additional revisions, which boost the cost higher. The process can take as long as four to six months.

Regardless of the expense, more and more outside input is becoming the modus operandi.

New Line says it crafts all of its newspaper advertising in-house, although it may use outside design firms for input. “The thing about these firms is that they tend to have these grand resumes, a wide mix of different approaches. It would be a mistake not to try and use that resource,” Pula says.

Warner Bros.’ Smith says Global’s Perani has an avant-garde approach that captures the spirit of certain films. When Perani designed the “Batman Returns” poster, it showed only the infamous black cowl against a white background with this text: “Returns June 19.” (No Michael Keaton, Michelle Pfeiffer or Danny DeVito in sight.)

And on Universal’s “Fried Green Tomatoes,” it was a huge green tomato, not Oscar winners Jessica Tandy or Kathy Bates, looming from the poster.

“I like to take a concept, or a franchise like Batman, and turn it inside out . . . never do the same thing twice,” Perani says. “Genius is doing something original, breaking form. Knockoffs means you’re creatively bankrupt. It’s cultural strip mining. That’s what I try to avoid.

“There is nothing that I love more than reading a script, analyzing it and trying to find its essence and conveying the message in a concept,” Perani says. Hence, the big tomato. “It’s not about commercial values; it’s about communication values conveyed in an artistic way,” he says.

Studios such as Warner Bros. know Perani is not the guy to use when a movie demands a Big Head campaign.

“Look, if you spend $7 [million] to $12 million for an actor and you’ve got two or three of them in a movie, the studio wants to get their money’s worth,” Smith says. “The theory is the stars’ faces attract the public’s eye to the one-sheet.”

There are also contractual issues involved. The stars’ names, in many cases, have to be the same size as the lettering on the film’s title. So it stands to reason that they want their faces to get equal play.

When concept--not a famous face--is the focus, Perani steps in. And that’s why Smith says Global is designing a campaign for the upcoming “Joe’s Apartment,” adapted from the MTV show.

“Why Global? Because this movie will have complicated special effects,” Smith says. “Steve gets what movies like this are all about, so I know right away he’s perfect for the mix. I would say Global may be small, but it’s probably the hippest of all.”