Launching Next Wave of ‘ID4’s’ Invasion

One might think that for Friday’s video release of “Independence Day,” 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment’s marketing team could fly on autopilot. Like the current best-selling non-animated videos “Jurassic Park” and “Forrest Gump,” the release of “ID4” has event cachet.

A pop culture phenomenon that received simultaneous cover mention on Time and Newsweek this summer, the box-office record-breaker has earned $300 million domestically and is currently the sixth-biggest film of all time. Fox’s research indicated that consumer intent to purchase the video was double that of its current bestseller, “Mrs. Doubtfire.”

Indeed, “ID4” is already on its way to the top of the video charts. Retailers have ordered 21.9 million copies, which translates to a suggested retail value of more than $500 million. Some stores reportedly will extend their hours tonight to sell the video beginning one minute after midnight. Fox has its duplication facilities working around the clock in an effort to fulfill all orders in time for Christmas.

But in a holiday season brimming with an unprecedented number of high-visibility titles priced for less than $25, it takes more than peak consumer awareness to stand out from the competition and challenge the sales champion.

It takes, among other things, a 50-by-60-foot billboard in New York’s Times Square. It takes a 30-foot inflatable spaceship hovering over the Virgin Megastore in Los Angeles. It takes an “Inside Independence Day” CD-ROM, a Web site (https://www.id4movie.com) that includes an interactive comic book and online fighter pilot game, and the creation of a collectible premium to spur impulse video purchases.

“People may think that if a movie is very big that it’s an automatic shoo-in,” said 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment President Bob DeLellis. “It’s a shoo-in if you’re satisfied with selling 10 [million] or 11 million copies, but to bring it to a level over 20 million, then there is nothing you can take for granted. You have to find every angle in the book to make this thing a high consumer demand product.”

The angles began Nov. 1, with billboards and promotional buses in 25 major cities. The nationwide strike was launched on election night eve. In a 15-second spot broadcast on network and cable television, a narrator warned, “Don’t forget to vote . . . before it’s too late,” as viewers glimpsed the White House taking a hit from those pesky alien invaders.

This indelible image from the film has become the focal point of a $30-million marketing attempt to make “ID4” the biggest-selling live-action video of all time.

The question of whether to price “ID4” for the retail or rental market was answered almost immediately in the wake of its record-breaking opening box office over the Fourth of July weekend, which handily surpassed the traditional $100-million yardstick. It will be sold for the suggested retail price of $22.98.

The film also satisfied other criteria that would make it a candidate for the sell-through market. Since it’s rated PG-13, it has no adult rating that could scare off most parents, who do the majority of video buying. Its phenomenal theatrical run demonstrated that the film had what video retailers call “repeatability.”

To an extent, the video could ride on the coattails of the theatrical marketing campaign. “It’s very much a question of timing,” said Fox senior vice president of marketing Brad Kirk, “because the film is still very much on people’s consciousness. They can remember the experience of seeing it over the summer. Our job is not as hard as if we were releasing it a year from now and had to remind them about the film. Now the heat and the coattails are such that all we have to say is, ‘It’s on video,’ as opposed to, ‘Hey, remember?’ ”

That’s not all. The challenge for the video marketing team was to give “ID4” its own video identity. The theatrical campaign had utilized four visual images, including an ominous outer-space perspective of Earth and the alien spacecraft sending a destructive beam upon the Empire State Building.

“You want to focus in on one icon for people to clearly identify the movie and keep reinforcing that,” director of marketing Hosea Belcher said. “Everyone describes this movie as the one in which the White House blows up.”

Overwhelming positive response from focus groups spanning all age demographics allayed studio concerns that in terms of family purchasing, this potent image would be too intense for the front of a video box, so much so that actual footage from the sequence was transformed into limited-edition “3D Live Action Art” that will be attached to the box.

That premium “is a chance to break through the clutter of the fourth quarter [and stand out on the shelves],” said Julie Markell, vice president of creative services.

Spots that did not make the cut played up only one aspect of the film, such as the patriotic angle, or pandered to one segment of the audience, such as Generation X-ers. “Every time we tried to get too cute for our own good it backfired,” Markell said. “People responded, ‘That’s not my movie.’ ”

The spots drew on lessons learned from the surprising sales earlier this year of “Waiting to Exhale,” a perceived niche title that enjoyed crossover success.

“Even though a lot of people saw ‘ID4,’ ” Belcher said, “there are some people who have not. It is not only convincing those people that this is for them, but also reminding people who have seen it that they can own it and watch it again and again.

“ ‘Exhale’ was a good exercise because we had to pick out the messages that would make non-African American women who hadn’t seen the film feel they could relate to the movie and want to buy it.”

In marketing “ID4” on video, Markell said, efforts were focused on resisting the science-fiction label and reaching out beyond fans of the genre. “It’s not a niche film,” she said. “It’s not a movie about the aliens. It is about the people’s reactions to them.”

Another line of attack has been to make sure that parents, the primary purchasers of videos, are comfortable with the film. Thus, some TV spots will include a shot of Viveca Fox’s dog jumping to safety. None will include images of individuals in peril.

Any parental resistance, Belcher noted, was addressed during the film’s theatrical run. “A lot of mothers commented that they were a little concerned about the film until they saw it,” he said. “Then they took their kids to it.”

After getting parents on board, the further challenge was to engage and not alienate other targeted audience segments. The spots, Belcher said, had “to have a good balance between the suspense, the action, the drama and the humor.”

The commercial that tested best, “World,” is a quick-cut call to action: “It’s taking over our world. It’s entering our cities. It’s invading our streets. And now it’s coming to your home.”

And video retailers are armed and ready for the invasion. Said one: “People stayed out of the store during the film’s opening weekend to go see it. We’re looking forward to getting that money back.”