• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • About Marketing Movies
  • About the Author
  • What experts say
  • Buy the book
  • Contact
movie marketing news

Marketing Movies

Film marketing news, features

  • news
  • Movie studios
    • Independents
  • exhibition
    • Cinema distribution
  • creative
  • promotion
    • Product placement
    • Merchandise
  • advertising
    • Prints & advertising
  • publicity
    • Talent
  • digital
    • Digital distribution
    • Digital marketing

Warners Vows to Trim $2bn Marketing Spend

October 16, 2014 by Robert Marich Leave a Comment

The $12.3 billion-revenue Warner Bros. movie studio revealed it spends $2 billion a year on marketing, which studio chief Kevin Tsujihara promised to trim during a Wall Street conference. Studio parent Time Warner Inc. wants to slash that expenditure by $200 million, as part of a broader plan to goose up its stock price. This comes after refusing a buyout offer from Rupert Murdoch-led 21st Century Fox.

Warner logo

“We also believe that the appropriate use of next-generation technologies can transform marketing efficiency,” Tsujihara said of Warner Bros. “Other than production costs, marketing is our single biggest cost center. It’s over $2 billion a year. It’s one of the reasons why we acquired Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes (movie websites) which, together, generate billions of searches for movie-related information every year. This data can help us reach consumers in more efficient and impactful ways. If we can cut marketing cost by 10%, that’s $200 million straight to the bottom line.”

There was no definition of what the $2 billion in Warner Bros. marketing encompasses; at minimum, it must count the cost of media buys—space in magazines or TV commercial slots. But does it also might include cost of creating advertising? What about audience research such as testing advertising before it is deployed? Finally, it might or might not include overhead of studio staff involved in marketing? The Warner marketing figure is for all studio products, including TV, though film is clearly the biggest marketer. As “Marketing to Moviegoers: Third Edition” notes: “At the high end for the top tier of major-studio films, this generally involves $30 million to $50 million in advertising, of which over half is deployed in the two-week period prior to a film’s premiere and the week afterwards, mainly on broadcast, cable TV, newspapers, outdoor billboards, magazines, radio, and digital media. Ad spending for second-tier studio movies and independent films is lower.”

Hollywood film distributors such as Warner Bros. periodically pledge to trim marketing budgets, but seldom make meaningful cuts because that means pushing pricy movies into the marketplace with diminished promotion push. Marketing is becoming more complex and expensive as the media landscape and audiences fragment with new digital platforms.

Related content:

  • Warner Bros., Turner Tighten Budgets for More Money for Programming

Filed Under: advertising, major studios Tagged With: data, expenses

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Learn Film Marketing

Robert Marich's "Marketing to Moviegoers" is the essential guide to selling films in a multiplatformed world. For students and industry pros alike.

  • About author Robert Marich
  • Industry pros review the book
  • Read excerpts from the film marketing book
  • Buy the movie marketing book

Search by keywords

Search by category

Recent posts

  • ‘Lilo’ Propelled by Merchandise Boom
  • Film Fest Ovations Stoke Marketing
  • Radio Pitches Wide Reach for Movie Ads
  • Amazon Emerging as Major Movie Studio
  • ‘Minecraft’ Ignites Rowdy Cinema Rally
  • Fan-Made Film Trailers Flourish
  • Best Bet for Netflix: Acquiring Theatricals
  • Wow! $215 for Cinema+Meal

Tags

affinity groups arthouse awards bombs branding buzz campaigns-strategy controversy critics data demographics documentaries economics education expenses festivals genre genres history-memorablia messaging mobile-wireless movie trailers organizations out-of-home posters regulations social media video-marketing windows

Copyright © 2025 Robert Marich · All rights reserved · Privacy · Contact