American Film Market Dailies

Renowned entertainment industry research outfit Screen Engine/ASI (SE/ASI) and award winning motion picture marketing executive Neil Goetz have teamed up to launch The Engine Room as a strategic creative think tank.

The Engine Room’s initial clients include Sony, The Weinstein Company, Fox and Lionsgate. The company is currently working on a number of upcoming studio and independent feature film projects.

The Engine Room has been designed as the first resource of its kind to offer filmmakers and the filmed entertainment industry a strategic think tank approach to creative strategy. Through its alignment with SE/ASI, The Engine Room will explore strategic approaches to trailers, TV spots, promos, print and digital media content based on SE/ASI’s extensive audience based research. Identifying prime target audiences and the most effective positioning strategies and themes for those audiences will be the foundation of The Engine Room’s work.

“The philosophy behind the launch of The Engine Room is simple,” said Goetz, the new company’s Founder and Executive Creative Director.  “All too often, trailers and TV spots are cut and recut based on testing results that never step back and consider strategy over tactics. This process can be lengthy and costly. The Engine Room’s philosophy is that every project needs a clear and viable marketing strategy at the outset in order to succeed. Clients can achieve their core positioning strategy faster, can provide clear direction to all partners more efficiently, and can better disseminate these strategic findings across their campaign’s publicity, promotional and media outreach initiatives.”

He adds, “Using complex online metrics to identify targeted audience segments, our team first develops a series of positioning strategies for each of our clients’ projects. These are tested via an online community of over 1,200 moviegoers through our exclusive partnership with Screen Engine/ASI. Once the data is analyzed, The Engine Room clients are able to see their suggested strategy come to life through specifically tailored promotional materials.”  

The Engine Room suggests that content creators and distributors reach out to them during any of three key points during the life cycle of a promotional campaign:

** Before a trailer has been created: To help identify the best overall positioning for the movie. The Engine Room uses research-based methods to identify the storylines that will appeal most to the target audience.

** After the trailer has been created, but before the TV campaign has begun: To target each demographic more specifically by identifying key storylines that will most appeal to each targeted segment.

** If TV spots or the movie are not tracking well: The Engine Room can be brought in to perform “triage” services by quickly identifying alternate ways by which to re-position the movie.

ABOUT NEIL GOETZ:

The Engine Room Founder and Executive Creative Director Neil Goetz has an expansive career conceiving, developing and producing creative advertising campaigns for domestic and international theatrical movies and television shows. He has held such senior creative advertising executive positions as Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing for Sony Pictures Entertainment; VP and Worldwide Creative Director for The Samuel Goldwyn Company; Director of On-Air Promotions for Movies and Mini-Series for CBS Television Network; and Worldwide VP of Creative Marketing for First Look Pictures. He has also served as an International Marketing Consultant for IM Global Films.  

Starting his career in Chicago in advertising, Goetz worked for Campbell Mithun Esty, a Saatchi and Saatchi agency. He then relocated to Los Angeles where he worked for such creative marketing agencies as Craig Murray Productions/mOcean and Intralink as Creative Director.

In addition to launching The Engine Room as an arm of Screen Engine/ASI in 2016, Goetz has also just launched BBMG, a film and television production company currently developing original content for all screens.

Recognized by Advertising Age Magazine as “One the Top 100 People

in Advertising,” Goetz’s advertising campaigns have been recognized and honored with numerous, prestigious industry awards, including Clios, Tellys, Art Direction, the Belding and the Key Art Awards. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

ABOUT SCREEN ENGINE/ASI:

Screen Engine/ASI is a research and analytics firm with an emphasis on big data focused on maximizing market potential while assessing risk for clients in the entertainment and media spaces. Working with clients to better assess and manage opportunity and risk, the company focuses its approach across all distribution platforms, including domestic and international film and television, digital and mobile.

Screen Engine/ASI is diligent in its commitment to approaching the right consumers to ensure that they provide impeccable data and meaningful insights that will lead to actionable interpretation. The company continually reassess its products and services to stay ahead of the dynamically changing media landscape. For more info, please see: www.screenengineasi.com

ABOUT THE ENGINE ROOM:

The Engine Room’s signature calling card is its unique ability to evolve extensive research data into compelling, powerful creative advertising campaigns that deliver “want to see” entertainment presentations. The Engine Room helps its clients establish their primary positioning strategies and advertising messages during the earliest stages of each campaign’s brainstorming and development.

The company also specializes in aiding filmmakers who seek distribution for their content by conceptualizing a unique marketing approach that will present the “best face” of their film or TV show to the world – an approach backed by irrefutable consumer research. Distributors and sale agencies struggling with how to crack the “right” marketing angle for tough films, or those looking for alternate audiences, have access through The Engine Room to critical research data – information that is now more accessible, efficient and cost-effective than ever previously available.   

The Engine Room offers multiple levels of strategic analysis and testing to accommodate the fluctuating economics of distribution. The company’s talented team of writers, editors, motion/3-D graphic artists and sound designers are provided from the resources of DG Productions. They consistently produce award winning, successful campaigns powered by a high degree of imagination with clear, powerful and strategic marketing messaging.

The Engine Room’s services include:

** Access to an Extensive Online Research Community

** Strategic TV-Spot Explorations

** Theatrical Trailers

** VOD Trailers

** Sizzle Reels

** Key Art

** Digital Content

** International Sales Reels

** Corporate Presentations

** Graphics: Motion and Print

** Full Finishing and Online Services

** V/O Studio and Music Licensing

 For more information, please visit: www.theengineroomla.com