THE BIG OSCAR PAYOFF MOVIE STUDIOS' AD BLITZ COULD HELP BRING IN AWARDS.

Byline: Valerie Kuklenski Staff Writer

Thumb through any recent edition of the entertainment trades and there's no avoiding them - those ads appealing to industry insiders to think about one film or another when bestowing Oscars, Golden Globes and other highly desired shelf decor.

``For Your Consideration'' is the very polite phrase that really means ``Please pick me, please, please, pleeeeze.''

The question is, do ads really trigger votes for such Oscar, Screen Actors Guild and Golden Globe awards-track projects as ``Syriana,'' ``Walk the Line,'' ``Brokeback Mountain,'' ``Cinderella Man,'' ``Good Night, and Good Luck'' and ``Capote''?

If so, then woe to the academies and organizations who believe their members should vote on the merits of the film alone, not the artful persuasion of campaigns. If not, what a shame for the studios, independents and publicity mills that churn probably tens of millions of dollars into those come-ons in Daily Variety, the Hollywood Reporter and other media.

Tony Uphoff, newly appointed publisher of the Hollywood Reporter, is on the glass-half-full side, not surprisingly. His trade newspaper's yearly revenue relies heavily on awards campaigns, which include online advertising and an electronic billboard at the intersection of Hollywood and Highland. He sees his readership as show-business decision-makers who are primed to act on what they see in the Reporter's editorial content every weekday morning.

``This is a brand that you know is going to get opened and read and responded to and hung onto, so to use that as your (ad's) delivery mechanism heightens your odds that you're going to have an impact on the target audience,'' Uphoff said.

Lori J. Posner is president and founder of L.A.-based Yes Design Group, which last fall created Emmy-related ads and promotional materials for nine TV programs. She says her company's 2002 campaign for ``The Shield'' may have contributed to honors for the then-little-known FX drama and star Michael Chiklis, and definitely drove an upturn in the awards marketing business.

``Our job basically is to help generate votes. That's what we do,'' Posner said. ``We can't produce winners, but our job is well done if we can help people view the show and nominate it to win.''

Movie studios can do only so much after the theatrical release to ensure their films are viewed by voters. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has so many restrictions regarding DVD packaging and screening invitations - it even regulates the content of awards-related e-mails and phone calls to academy members - that trade ads seem to be the last bastion of unbridled, all-out hype.

Uphoff said it's the ages-old question about advertising: Does it work or not? The Reporter's advertiser feedback generally is proprietary, but he said one particular fall cover - a close-up of ``Star Wars'' heavy Darth Vader with a sound chip inside that played the character's mechanized breathing - prompted phones to ring off the hook at Lucasfilm Ltd. praising its cleverness.

Miramax and Universal have been hyping ``Cinderella Man'' in a campaign that supports its recent retail DVD release as well as its prospects for best picture, best actor (Russell Crowe) and best director (Ron Howard). Past trends would indicate that ``Cinderella Man,'' which came out June 3, and the hip-hop movie ``Hustle & Flow'' (July 22) have an uphill battle against more recent releases.

Those two titles are among the most frequently seen ads on the trades' Web sites, hollywoodreporter.com and variety.com, along with Gulf War drama ``Jarhead'' and ``King Kong,'' which has sponsored the Reporter's search engine.

Studios with later releases are not kicking back. In late October, Daily Variety's front page carried a three-column ad saying, ``Tomorrow, Variety goes black.'' It did indeed, with an all-black cover, save for the paper's masthead. The inside covers and rear page were devoted to the Man in Black himself, Johnny Cash, as played by Joaquin Phoenix in ``Walk the Line.''

``One of the things that's interesting this year is sort of the proliferation of 'for your consideration' ads beyond the trades,'' one awards publicity veteran said, citing pages in consumer publications such as Premiere and The New York Times Magazine.

``I've noticed the real strong proliferation of Internet advertising,'' she added, pointing to the glut of Oscar-related, but not academy-endorsed, sites and blogs.

The growth of Oscar-campaign ads in recent years, with ever-earlier openings of the season, suggests that studios fear a bad outcome if they don't advertise for awards.

``Mel Gibson last year famously said, 'We're not going to campaign for ``The Passion (of the Christ),'' ' '' one studio-side advertising veteran said. ``The idea of the campaign, it's not that, hey, you have to buy (a nomination or award) or pay for it. It's just to keep people thinking about your movie. It's really about making sure people are considering your film.''

The Golden Globes nominations, many times a bellwether of Academy Award voting, this year put the spotlight on small-budget films such as ``Brokeback Mountain'' and ``Good Night, and Good Luck,'' which in turn puts pressure on smaller shops such as Focus Features and Warner Independent Pictures to spend big bucks on campaigns for upcoming honors.

But Uphoff of the Hollywood Reporter said even small companies are willing to mount large campaigns because the results may pay off in the film's future value in DVD, pay-per-view and broadcast.

``What drives the awareness, let alone the actual adoption and preference of all entertainment products, is word of mouth,'' he said. ``And the ultimate word of mouth is acclaim - critical acclaim and high-end awards like Academy.''

The veteran movie ad executive holds a realist's view. ``There's no movie that you could do a campaign for, if it's a dog movie - no matter how strong a campaign you do, no matter how aggressive - it's not going to get in (the nominations).

``Listen,'' she said. ``Plenty of films have been nominated with not particularly terrific ad campaigns. And there's been aggressive ad campaigns that haven't yielded (nominations). Unfortunately, it's not an exact science. Nobody knows.''

Valerie Kuklenski, [phone]

valerie.kuklenski(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1) Two ads are running for the Depression-era drama ``Cinderella Man'' - one plays up the tender story, while the other illustrates the film's boxing action.

(2) One Hollywood Reporter edition, dedicated to crafts such as sound, costuming and art direction, was fronted by a close-up of ``Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith'' baddie Darth Vader. When the cover is opened, a sound chip of Vader's heavy mechanical breathing plays - a relatively inexpensive gimmick that attracted attention.

(3) ``Hustle & Flow,'' about a pimp who aspires to rap stardom, is running ads aimed at rekindling the awards buzz the film and star Terrence Howard generated when it hit theaters in July.

(4) A full page for historic drama ``Munich'' makes the title clear. Another ad, however, shows only a couple sitting on a couch watching a black-and-white television - no film title. A reader must deduce the project being pitched from small-type mentions of director Steven Spielberg and writers Tony Kushner and Eric Roth.