Actress Keira Knightley poses for photographs on the red carpet for the new movie "Laggies" during the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto on Wednesday, September 10, 2014.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
Amid all the celebrity glitz and glamour of the past week, the Toronto International Film Festival also rolled out the red carpet for advertisers.
On King Street in downtown Toronto, a shiny red Ford is parked among the pedestrians. A giant coffee cup helps McDonalds' McCafe brand loom over moviegoers. Last weekend, when the street was closed to accommodate more crowds, an Rdio lounge and a Grolsch open house offered views of a nighttime concert from Montreal band The Dears.
As the profile of the Canadian festival has grown exponentially in recent years, it has also evolved how it does business. The not-for-profit has more than doubled its sponsorship revenue in the past five years, a result of a concerted effort to become more sophisticated in its pitch to marketers.
"It's a new approach to how we sell sponsorship," said Franca Miraglia, the festival's director of sponsorship who came on board four years ago after a career in public relations and marketing. Presentations do not only include a summary of the festival; now, TIFF's team has begun coming up with suggestions for each marketer on how they might take advantage of its profile. "We do as much research as possible trying to understand their brand. We really try to figure out, if we were their advertising agency, or their PR agency, how we would put the festival to best use."
The effort is crucial for TIFF, which relies on sponsorships for a third of its yearly revenue. And that growth is continuing – according to Ms. Miraglia, sponsorship revenue will reach more than $13-million this year.
"It's increasing in scope, scale and relevance every year," said Wade Oosterman, chief brand officer for TIFF's largest sponsor, BCE Inc., and a member of TIFF's board of directors. "…They've done a terrific job of continuing to market the festival, and put it on the map in a bigger way."
That growth has resulted in an increasingly crowded brand environment. This year, Ford is the official car of the festival, Jackson Triggs is the official wine, Pepsi is the official soft drink and cold beverage provider, and Jaeger-LeCoultre is the exclusive watch.
Existing sponsors are also spending more to increase their presence.
For example, L'Oréal Paris Canada started out as a minor sponsor, but increased its commitment after its first year. Now four years in, it has beauty teams that prep celebrities for press conferences and red carpet appearances, and gives how-tos on A-lister looks on social media. It has launched a festival product line to coincide with TIFF, in more "glamorous" black and gold packaging. It's expanding its digital content production, and it has its own correspondent interviewing stars on the red carpet – the only sponsor to do so, through negotiated exclusivity.
The festival provides exposure not just in the Toronto market, but across the country. The first year it produced online videos with its red carpet correspondent, L'Oréal attracted 250,000 views. Last year, that number jumped to 1.3 million in two weeks. It has now doubled the size of its editing team to turn around videos faster – they're ready in less than 12 hours this year, compared with two or three days when it started.
And those investments lead to sales. After the festival last year, all four shades of lipstick launched as part of the limited-edition TIFF collection were among the top five bestsellers for L'Oréal nationwide.
This year, the brand also flew in representatives from France, and is looking at how to use TIFF on a wider scale.
"TIFF is the biggest festival in the world, after Cannes," said Hugo Thibault, communications and digital director for L'Oréal Paris Canada. "… It's become so big, it's now part of the global platform."
That perception plays into TIFF's vision of itself for the future.
"More and more, we're appealing not just to Canadian marketing dollars, but seeing it as a global property," Ms. Miraglia said. "We think that adds a level of excitement, and also a bigger opportunity to get bigger budgets from global budgets as opposed to just the local market."
TIFF spent $6.4-million on marketing and communications last year and roughly $3-million on fundraising targeting sponsors, philanthropists, and government grants – a jump of roughly $1-million in just two years, and a significant increase from 2010, when it spent just $1.6-million on all fundraising, including government, philanthropists and sponsors combined.
The rise of social media has also helped to broaden TIFF's marketing potential beyond Toronto. Visa Canada, now in its 18th year as a sponsor, has seen that firsthand. It has offered film enthusiasts opportunities to ask questions via Twitter when stars appeared at the Elgin Theatre (known during TIFF as the Visa Screening Room). It has a spot on site where fans could have their photos taken and flashed on a giant LED screen, then share them on their social networks.
And Visa built a video booth with a storytelling game, where each new visitor added a small snippet to a story started by Visa's voice-over pitchman, Morgan Freeman. Just past the halfway mark of the festival this week, Visa had already received 132 per cent of the non-paid exposure online that it earned in the entirety of TIFF last year.
"The emergence of social media has provided a lot of opportunity to marry what you're doing on-site with taking it out to a broader audience," said Brenda Woods, head of marketing at Visa Canada. "… It changes the dynamic."
The marketing link is not as obvious for a credit card or a bank than for a beauty brand specializing in red carpet looks. But advertisers such as Royal Bank of Canada say their research shows the connection with TIFF drives consideration to do business with them.
"Our job as marketers is to warm the consumer up to our company," said Andy Shibata, vice-president of brand marketing at RBC. "Everything that we do is to tie people to the understanding that we care about them … so they'll be more emotionally attuned to our brand over time."
But how much advertising is too much? As TIFF grows – and as its sponsorship plans become more ambitious, and global – can it avoid becoming over-commercialized?
"The incorrect perception is that those two things can't co-exist," Ms. Miraglia said. "… The research is quite definitive. People know that the sponsors aren't something they have to put up with. Sponsors help make the thing that they want happen."
Editor's Note: A giant McDonald's McCafe cup appeared at the TIFF festival. An earlier version of this article said it was a Tim Horton's cup.