Bringing Out The Faithful

Brandweek, March 27, 2000 by T.L. Stanley

With Omega, Matthew Crouch cracked the code on getting the word out on Christian-themed entertainment.

Matthew Crouch had slogged through the indie film world for five years, searching in vain for funding for Christian-themed entertainment. Might as well try to part the waters.

"I felt a little like Moses; I kept saying, 'Let my people go to the movies,'" Crouch said. "Church-goers could be solidified into a consumer group, but they were completely untapped."

That changed, dramatically with The Omega Code.

Crouch, the son of a prominent Evangelical broadcaster, might well have converted some heathen in Hollywood with his movie, an apocalyptic, Book of Revelation-based tale that opened in the box office's coveted Top 10 on a paltry 304 screens. Mainstream studio films typically release on 2,000-plus screens, and their marketing budgets alone dwarf The Omega Code's production costs. When it released last October, Crouch's $7.2 million movie had the best dollars-per-screen take of any in the Top 10, including such mega-money studio fare as The Fight Club and Double Jeopardy. Code, with a $7,745 per screen average, raked in $2.4 million in three days.

It did so not by studio-style spending, but through an under-the-radar marketing campaign that reached out to the faithful through churches, local and national TV programming, Christian bookstores and the Net. After personal pleas from Crouch and his team at Gener8Xion Entertainment, L.A., preachers became Omega Code proselytizers, buying blocks of tickets and planning movie-going outings for their congregations. A small but mighty volunteer army distributed fliers and posters picked up at local Christian TV stations or downloaded from the movie's Web site.

Gener8Xion and the movie's distributor, Providence Entertainment, spent $650,000 to distribute and market the movie. They kicked in another $400,000 to tout the video and DVD, which hit shelves this week.

"We worked with people in the same Lifestyle mode because they wanted to help," said Michael Harpster, president-worldwide marketing at Providence. "That got us extra promotional juice."

The time was right, Crouch said, for a movie like The Omega Code, an action adventure that mixes spirituality with a bit of Indiana Jones. Though Hollywood, and some of the world, knows the Christian community only for placard-carrying and boycott-staging appearances on the evening news, Crouch said he sensed a new, less strident thinking afoot. Just in case, he spent time speaking directly to the hard core, starting with the 25,000 who had protested Universal for The Last Temptation of Christ.

"I told them the only way you'll ever change anything is by supporting something," Crouch said. "Protesting is old-generation stuff. The new way is to do something about it. People need to understand that their $7 is a vote." Crouch looked in an unlikely place for marketing inspiration: Artisan's The Blair Witch Project (heralded for its effective guerrilla marketing in Brandweek, Sept. 27, 1999). He and his team knew they were targeting the country's loyal church-goers, and tried to focus on them as efficiently as Artisan executives did on the 18- to 24-year-old, Web-addicted horror film fan.

Crouch had grown up watching his father, Paul Crouch Sr., build Trinity Broadcasting Network into an Evangelical powerhouse, with 1,300 stations in 40 countries. Using Trinity's massive database as a guide, plus his instincts, he felt sure he could reach the Christian community on familiar turf. But he had to be sure he was taking them the right message, starting by not contradicting the Scripture the film was loosely based on. Crouch, as producer, worked with writer Steve Blinn on a treatment that retold the biblical story of Revelation, with a modern-day media baron, played by Michael York, as villain. Casper Van Dien and Catherine Oxenberg also starred.

"I know where the land mines are buried, and if you step on one, you're dead," he said. "The movie never touched on those traditional hot buttons."

Meanwhile, Paul Crouch had been developing small-budget original movies for TBN, spending as much as $3 million on production. He needed programming, and when he read Code's script, he agreed to bankroll the movie for broadcast on TBN. Matthew Crouch asked for theatrical rights; his father agreed, but contributed no money to that effort.

Crouch approached year-old Providence Entertainment, L.A., then building a stable of Christian, family, country and Latino niche films. He took out a second mortgage on his home and, with Providence's contribution, pooled $650,000 for film prints, ads and marketing.

On TV, Crouch took full advantage of TBN. The promotional barnstorming for Code started a year in advance of release, with behind-the-scenes shows sprinkled among TBN prime time programming, along with lots of on-air chatter by Paul and his wife, Jan, about the film, which will air on the net after its pay-per-view run.

As release grew closer, the fervor began in earnest, with TBN running almost telethon-style coverage of activities by the 2,000-strong volunteer force, which handed out fliers and put up posters in laundromats, malls and bookstores.