While the movie industry occasionally presents investors with an opportunity for great wealth, its vagaries more frequently allow them to create a small fortune from what was previously a large one. by Andy Rice
Andy Rice, advertising and marketing guru, broadcaster, frequent advertising industry awards judge and winner of a Lifetime Achievement Award for his services to the South African advertising industry, stands on the delicately balanced brink of just such a scenario.
In his first tentative foray into the film world, he could be about to either enjoy what he describes with tongue in cheek as “Ferrari time” – or see nearly two years of toil amount to very little.
As the much anticipated South African-made animation movie Jock of the Bushveld prepares to debut on local cinema screens in late July, the lanky and snowy-haired Rice waits to see how his sweat-equity investment in marketing and merchandising the classic story of the beloved dog of Lowveld adventurer Percy Fitzpatrick will play out.
“Like so many people involved, I haven’t drawn a cent out of the business; I’m just banking on my equity in the marketing company being worth something at the end of the day,” says the man whose claim to fame includes playing soccer at Wembley and cricket at Lord’s in the same weekend, and being brother to famed lyricist, Tim Rice.
The equation is simple: If American audiences like it, then it will go on circuit in Europe and elsewhere – and things will be looking good for Jock Marketing, the branding and merchandising company (of which Rice is a director) that was created specifically to maximise opportunities around the movie, as well as for producer/director/writer Duncan MacNeillie and his group of small and large investors.
If not, then no matter how successful Jock of the Bushveld becomes in South Africa, it will not even recoup its reported R70-million production budget.
“Going global is the only way that we will recover the investment cost because the South African market is simply not big enough,” explains Rice. “If it’s a huge success only in this country, and the sale of merchandising does extraordinary things here, then it might just break even. But at no stage was the business plan premised on a South African launch only.”
The ultimate end game – the pot of gold at the end of the animated movie rainbow – is to achieve sufficient international success with this release to generate interest in two full-length sequels and perhaps even a television series.
The accepted business model for successful animation movies, according to Rice, is the original plus two follow-ons. The second movie usually outperforms the first by some margin as the brand gains its own momentum, while the third generates profits similar to, or below the level, of the first. However, it is only the brave or foolhardy who attempt a fourth.
At the time of this interview with Leadership, MacNeillie – the kingpin and creative driving force behind the project – was in Los Angeles, showing early cuts of the movie to potential distributors, so there was not even confirmation as to whether the fickle American movie industry would take the movie at all.
However, the urbane and Cambridge University-educated Rice is confident that this is a formality, given the positive noises from those in the know in Hollywood, not least of whom is a former head of marketing for Disney, who has agreed to promote the film to United States’ distributors.
But whatever the nationality of Jock audiences, Rice’s role will be critical. Unlike live-action movies (with notable exceptions such as James Bond and Star Wars), animated productions typically generate half or more of their revenues through character merchandising involving everything from figurines and related toys to games, clothing, school satchels, posters, books and stickers.
“George Lucas of Star Wars fame was the first to see the potential of merchandising and licensing,” Rice points out. “He waived his director’s fee in favour of the movie’s merchandising rights, which was visionary at the time. But he took the chance and it made him very wealthy.”
That ability to generate massive secondary revenue streams, together with the growth in 3D cinema, are among the main reasons the global animated movie industry has grown so rapidly, both here and abroad.
Rice is unwilling to predict how much money the merchandising side of Jock of the Bushveld will ultimately generate, but says it is running well ahead of original expectations.
“We’ve surprised ourselves with how many categories we’ve achieved licences in. When we started – and I and everyone else came into this with no licensing expertise – we thought we should be able to merchandise clothes, toys, something dog food-related and maybe some books. But we’ll have about 15 licences in place in South Africa by the time the movie breaks,” he says enthusiastically.
Among these are clothing deals with Woolworths, Edgars and Mr Price; two dog food agreements; First National Bank; a high-profile fast food chain; a national fuel retailer; and Smarties sweets. Penguin, a major publishing house, is set to release 11 titles, ranging from sticker books to pop-ups and activity books.
While Jock, the animated lead character based on Fitzpatrick’s bull terrier in the book, is the most popular for merchandising purposes, Rice says there is a host of other “marketable characters”. “Every character in the book has a part to play in the movie as well,” he explains.
“We may have taken some liberties with their importance – elevated some and knocked others back a bit – but the movie is faithful to the spirit of the book.
“Obviously, though, once you allow your animals to talk, you have moved some distance from a first-person memoir, which is what the original book was,” Rice adds.
However, there is one newcomer created by the production team – a poodle introduced to give Jock a love interest and allow some friendly sparring with a rival for her affections.
“Because a lot of the action takes place around a trading store in Pilgrim’s Rest, we did also think about product placement and looked at all the products that were around in the 1880s and are still around today,” says Rice. “But it didn’t happen, as Duncan wanted to ensure there was no compromise of his directorial integrity.”
Getting involved
As is so often the case, Rice’s involvement with the story about a courageous and loyal dog living in the beautiful Lowveld more than a century ago was entirely coincidental. He was in the midst of selling and winding down his day-to-day involvement in Yellowwood Future Architects, a marketing strategy consultancy he co-founded 14 years ago (and of which he is still chairperson).
Then the phone rang.
Two years into the production of Jock, MacNeillie had realised his animated creation was a potential box office hit and that professional marketing expertise was required to maximise its revenue. He ended up talking to Rice who, with time on his hands, thought it would be an interesting part-time project. The rest, as they say, is history – although ‘part-time’ has long since become an unfulfilled notion.
As a student at Cambridge in the early 1970s, Rice could hardly have imagined being involved in an iconic movie about the African bush. More as a career avoidance exercise than anything else, he and some varsity friends drove overland from London to South Africa, intending to hang around just long enough to earn money for the return leg.
Instead, he stayed. “I suppose I fell among thieves,” he recalls with a smile.
Rice worked for years in the advertising agency business at what was then Ogilvy & Mather Johannesburg, before leaving to become a freelance marketing strategist and subsequently starting Yellowwood, which specialises in strategic brand guidance to blue-chip companies such as Coca-Cola, Unilever, SABMiller, Edcon and others.
He is now a candid writer on the advertising and marketing world, co-hosts a radio show on the same topic, and is the chairperson of the jury panel for the 2011 Apex Awards, which recognise excellence in the local advertising industry.
The business of advertising
How does the local advertising industry compare with its global counterparts?
Rice is emphatic: “We do really well; you only have to look at the number of South Africans who have made waves around the world: John Hunt is an obvious example – he is the creative el supremo for the whole TBWA group; Tony Granger runs Y&R creatively from New York. Then you have Mike Abel who was a huge success in Australia and is now back in South Africa.
“There must be several hundred South Africans scattered around the world’s agencies who are achieving success.”
Rice foresees a bright future for the profession on a global scale, despite doomsayers who believe that social media, audience fragmentation and the arrival of the personal video recorder are among the trends that will do irreparable damage to advertising as we know it.
“I don’t think advertising will ever die because it is a simple commercial imperative,” he says. What is ‘dying’ is the traditional form, but the discipline – the need to introduce an audience to a brand – will always be there. The means of that introduction is what is changing so fast.
“I get cross at this assumption that social media, Facebook, the Internet, etc. have changed everything. They’ve changed an awful lot and you can’t deny the numbers. But they haven’t changed us as human beings,” says Rice.
“Facebook, ultimately, is the 21st century manifestation of the need to belong and that’s why it has been so successful because underneath every technology that’s successful is a human truth – and we lose sight of that truth and think the most important thing is the technology. In fact, it is the need to tap into something much more important underneath.
“I’m not ‘dissing’ social media; I’m saying contextualise it and understand that if you only rely on the social media, then the business competitor who gets into that truth beneath it is going to outsmart you,” he explains.
“That’s why I’m surprised that people see the need for digital ad agencies, as if the rules had changed. There weren’t ‘TV agencies’ when TV was launched, or ‘print agencies’. There are agencies that understand human behaviour and deploy the right media.
“Agencies that have set themselves up as digital agencies are riding the wave of novelty and will inevitably have to change to become communication agencies with a strong specialisation in digital,” Rice reasons.
And what of his famed twin appearances at Wembley and Lord’s in the same weekend?
Rice played football (“badly”, he says) for a Sunday morning team called The Cloggers, who managed to scrape together enough money to participate in an “end of an era tournament” held just prior to the hallowed old stadium being demolished.
The organisers arranged everything from national anthems beforehand, to recordings of the 100 000 crowd cheering and a trophy handover by a look-alike Queen Elizabeth.
Barely 24 hours later, he was at Lord’s playing in brother Tim’s cricket team.
Sadly, on neither occasion did he bother the scorers.
Not to worry; perhaps he will score a big success in his endeavours with an iconic African movie.
