Studying the Studio Brand

Apple’s powerful brand helps it sell its various computer devices to customers. Nike’s brand is similarly beneficial as far as sports shoes and apparel are concerned. Both brands have a certain ideology; cues that tip off the buyer as to what to expect from the product, or what kind of ethos they are buying into. Not so for a 20th Century Fox. With the 3D cash cow already struggling, what can film studios do to leverage affinity for their product?

In the early days of the filmmaking, the branding of a studio was more prevalent. The audience in turn, might have had more affinity for one studio over another, which may be what the choice comes down to when presented with a similar product – two asteroid films, for example, just like Nike must compete with other sneaker manufacturers. 20th Century Fox has a diverse stable of films, from Star Wars, Titanic and Avatar to Black Swan and The Wrestler. The latter two are produced by a subsidiary studio, focussed on smaller, art films, called Fox Searchlight. With such a narrow remit, it would be interesting to see the studio build its brand with consumers more, encouraging affinity. Could other subsidiary studios be created, in name only, to signal different genres and expectations to movie-going customers? They could take a leaf from Marvel’s marketing handbook, which, laden with the singularly uninspiring film Captain America, used the equity of the studio’s previous films to raise the hypothetical level of assumed quality: “From the Studio that brought you…”. It’s a great idea that could be used far more frequently by a greater number of studios.