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September 2006 - Strategy Magazine
Who to watch

A marketer's adventures in Hollywood
How Jeff Norton's disciplined P&G background is giving him an edge in Tinseltown

by Annette Bourdeau
page 17

He was once P&G's "launch guy."

In 2000, after successfully launching Febreze and Dryel in Canada, the CPG giant sent Jeff Norton stateside to work his magic on its vital Dawn brand to reinvigorate it south of the border and re-launch it up here. The Canadian "launch guy" stuck to the States but traded CPG for CGI.

Now Norton is focused on the biggest launch of his career: the DVD release of The Abominable Snowman, the first interactive "Choose Your Own Adventure" movie, produced by his own Beverly Hills-based start-up, Lean Forward Media, and featuring the voice talent of stars Frankie Muniz, Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy.

Norton's marketing background is evident in his multi-faceted launch campaign. Aside from traditional print, TV and online efforts, he has created some unique co-promotions. In the U.S., the movie is being promoted on 18 million Life cereal boxes across the country, directing consumers to the Life website where they can download a $3 rebate off the purchase of the movie, play "CYOA"-branded advergames and enter a contest to win a chance to be animated into the next "CYOA" movie. In Canada, consumers can enter to win their own adventures at choosemovie.ca, (supported by TV and print efforts running on kid-centric media like YTV), where they can build their ideal vacations at their choice of Intrawest Resorts.

Norton's marketing adventure began with a summer internship at P&G, where he worked on Bounce. The CPG giant scooped him up full-time as soon as he graduated from Queen's University in 1997, and he launched Febreze and Dryel from the Toronto office in 1999, then headed to Cincinnati to work on Dawn. He came back to Toronto briefly in 2001, when he made a short film before heading down to Harvard Business School later that summer, where he began seriously contemplating his interactive movie venture.

Norton fondly remembers reading the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books as a child, and thought the series would be the perfect fit for his interactive movie concept. In 2003, while attending Harvard Business School, he cold-called "Choose Your Own Adventure" author R.A. Montgomery one morning, and he and his business partner Michelle Crames drove up to Vermont that night to dine with him and his family and discuss the project. Norton's obvious passion for the books helped win the family over, and they agreed to grant Lean Forward Media the home entertainment rights to the series.

After securing the rights, Norton and Crames headed for the Hollywood Hills in 2003 to work on turning Norton's vision into reality. He frequently drew on his marketing background throughout the process of wooing investors and raising capital for the project. "We use creative briefs, we use issue sheets...I've always seen this as a brand management exercise," Norton explains, adding that his disciplined approach helped separate him from other producers. "There are so many horror stories of people in Hollywood asking for your money and then throwing it away on vanity projects."

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