UPDATED 13:38 EDT / MARCH 16 2011

NEWS

Hollywood Gets in on Groupon Deals, For McConaughey’s Sake!

For the first time ever, a film studio partners with a deal site to promote a movie, as Lionsgate today announced a partnership with Groupon to promote The Lincoln Lawyer, starring Matthew McConaughey, Marisa Tomei and Ryan Phillippe. The Hollywood move will open on Friday, March 18 in over 2,500 theaters all over Untied States.

“We are always looking for ways to reach our consumers with targeted, cost-effective and innovative campaigns,” said Lionsgate Vice Chairman Michael Burns. “Groupon is one of the most dynamic young companies in the world today, and their emergence as a digital commerce pioneer made them the perfect online partner for Lionsgate and THE LINCOLN LAWYER. We believe this agreement is the shape of things to come as Hollywood studios discover a natural alliance with smart, entrepreneurial digital partners in bringing our content to consumers with cutting edge promotional campaigns that harness the unprecedented reach of the online world. We’re delighted that our LINCOLN LAWYER partner, Tom Rosenberg at Lakeshore, shared our vision in helping us create this historic first.”

This strategy is pioneering in some regards, even if it was reserved for a McConaughey flick. Lionsgate is taking advantage of Groupon’s reach, which spans across 60 million online consumers and has become marketing gold for a lot of brands seeking digital campaigns with real-world interactions. The Lincoln Lawyer tickets will be sold for $6 each during two days of promotion on March 16 and March 17, Wednesday and Thursday respectively. After purchasing the ticket, the buyer will get a special code to redeem the ticket at a Fandango outlet.

Along with the ticket, Groupon will also dole out trailers to its subscribers and almost 10,000 affiliate partners. They’ve also gotten an interview with lead actor Matthew McConaughey. In its entirety, the deal was an idea of David Spitz, Executive Vice President of Domestic Distribution, and his team of Hollywood cronies, along with some Groupon marketing executives eager to branch out into as many verticals as possible.  One thing has rang true for Groupon from very early on–it’s location-based marketing tactics have won the hearts of advertisers and consumers alike.  Now it’s just a matter of finding a sweet spot for the blossoming romance.

“The agreement enables us to be innovative in creating new partnerships for a digital world and efficient in developing marketing and distribution strategies for our films that capitalize on the power of new media,” said Joe Drake, co-Chief Operating Officer and President of the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group. “The deal extends THE LINCOLN LAWYER’s visibility to millions of Groupon subscribers without significant incremental marketing spend and it’s a win for everyone, especially our moviegoers.”

While Hollywood is making efforts to reach customers through partnerships, companies like Zediva seem to be burdening their promotional efforts. Zediva is a startup company that offers newly released movies at $1.99 each and for as low as $10 for a set of 10, which sounds too awesome to be legal. It even flaunted a provoking tag line saying “new movies before Netflix and Redbox,” which poses a major threat to these two online video streaming companies in terms of content access and availability. However, Zediva is only a recent problem which can be solved not too long from now. The “real” problem which Hollywood has been facing for decades now is piracy, thus, a government campaign is urging Google to prioritize Hollywood sites in order to fight the scheme. Well, let’s face it, who wants to pay if you can get it for free?

Parting from Hollywood, daily deal sites like Groupon are mind-blowingly influential in new-age marketing schemes. They have an existing online consumer base that spans millions of localized users. However, it is also believed that Groupon breeds the kind of people that expect everything to be free or to be priced insanely low via coupon. It also raises a good question of whether or not Groupon is the point of downturn for retail marketing as we know it (I don’t think i’d mind so much). Regardless, daily deal sites are great.

Groupon, having the largest consumer base of its kind, can’t possibly take all the credit in its industry effect, which is why it needs big competitors such as Living Social, and more recently, Facebook. Moreover, its Chinese counterpart GaoPeng.com has started operating in Beijing and Shanghai.


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