Starcom, Pier 3 get together to revolutionise entertainment

NEW DELHI: Scene 1: Bedecked in a Raymond’s suit, Brad Pitt races a Jet Airways carrier on his red Hero Honda. Scene 2: A geeky SRK tries to access his Citibank account, intermittently interfacing with his lady-love on Google Talk.

Anything is possible after the recent partnership for Asia between one of the world’s largest media networks Publicis Groupe’s Starcom MediaVest Group and the Los Angeles-based Hollywood-entrenched Pier 3 Entertainment. Starcom, with billings in excess of $25 billion in 2006, and Pier 3 have got together to create the world’s first international entertainment marketing office.

While this marriage of convenience will enable Pier 3’s American clients like Kodak and Google to strategically place their products and services in the Asian entertainment domain, chiefly in the fast-evolving entertainment markets of China and India, it will give Starcom a leg up in Hollywood — India Inc can now look forward to, say, smudged up lips of Sharon Stone with dollops of Lakme gloss.

Starcom offers its clients consumer connection opportunities across media vehicles such as product placement and integration in movies, television, music, advertiser-funded programming, celeb endorsement strategy and negotiations, et al. Meanwhile, Pier 3 has been in operation since 1996 and holds a special relationship with Hollywood. For instance, it was responsible for the integration of AOL in You’ve Got Mail, or even the promotional partnership between Da Vinci Code and Google.

“Many of our clients in the US are now looking at entertainment marketing opportunities in India and China. With this tie-up, we are looking at cross-leveraging Pier 3 Entertainment’s decade-plus experience in Hollywood and Starcom Entertainment’s Asian experience and relationships,” says Thomas Loversky, president of Pier 3 Entertainment. Starcom, too, is starry-eyed about the alliance. “We have had good experience developing this competence over the last three years in India and the Philippines and many of our clients have benefited from our capability.

As we prepare to roll out the solution across Asia, particularly the large and attractive Chinese market, it is good to partner with an experienced company such as Pier3 Entertainment,” observes Ravi Kiran, CEO, special solutions, Asia, Starcom MediaVest Group.
Nowadays, as plain-vanilla product placements fail to deliver, media entertainment marketers are increasingly placing their faith in a more evolved in-script delivery mechanism. That explains why brands are getting associated with content right from scratch, which then seamlessly integrate with the story or the score. In many ways, the Starcom-Pier 3 alliance is a stepping-stone in not just telling the tale, but branding it.