When Burger King launched its Spider-Man 2 promotion on July 5, parents everywhere steeled themselves for their kids' demands to be taken to the fast food chain-"Please! You said we could!"-in hopes of finding that elusive Disc Attack Doc Ock to complete the set.

Unless, of course, those children demand to be taken to Wendy's to get Garfield sunglasses. Or to Baskin-Robbins for a scoop of Shrek's Swirl Sherbet ice-cream.

Movie tie-in promotions have become so numerous in recent years-their ubiquity is evident in ever mall and magazine-that few now qualify as news. Exactly how numerous has long been a proprietary matter, a statistic kept private between movie studios, promotional agencies and their corporate clients.

However, a new study of film promotions conducted by Los Angeles-based entertainment marketing consultancy The L.A. Office reveals that tie-in activity has doubled in the last five years, raising concerns among studios and marketers over how to prevent consumer tie-in fatigue.

The study, developed at the request of Brandweek, counted major brand promotions with multimedia, packaging and/or POP support among the 2,870 movies released since 1998. Promotion information was provided by studios, as well as through independent research.

The results show that the number of movie tie-in partners increased significantly among the top 10 box office hits, where tie-in activity was already crowded (see chart, page 24.)

For instance, the top 10 movies of 1998-led by Saving Private Ryan, Armageddon and There's Something About Mary-pushed a total of 25 different promo tie-in partners. That is, each movie had two or three corporate partners attached to it. By 2003, the top 10 attracted 40 clients, or four for every movie.

The increase was felt across the board. Hollywood releases a steady stream of about 475 movies a year. Five years ago, those movies carried a total of 98 partners. But by the end of 2003, a slightly smaller number of movies opened with 196 clients attached, an exactly 100% increase in activity.

"It's continuing to grow," said Mitch Litvak, president of The L.A. Office. "I don't believe we have reached the maximum output yet in terms of promotions."

Thus, the threat of clutter is starting to loom over the movie theater in much the same way that commercial overkill has cast a shadow over television. The Cat in the Hat, Dr. Seuss: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Universal Pictures) and Die Another Day (MGM), among others, are frequently mentioned as vehicles that dragged too many other brands-sometimes as many as 15-behind them.

That has led to some awkward juxtapositions. The James Bond movie, for example, included a tie-in with Heineken even though Bond famously favors vodka martinis "shaken not stirred." That partnership triggered hoots of derision from some corners of the media, who suggested that Bond's tie-ins to Ford Motor and Omega watches turned 007 into an infomercial pitchman. The movie should be re-dubbed "Buy Another Day," some scoffed. (MGM, however, laughed all the way to the bank: Globally, the film grossed $364 million.)

"When you start looking at more than five or six different partners, and everyone wants to do TV, print, Web . . . if the property owner doesn't provide you with enough material, the promotions all start to look alike," said Litvak.

The view is similar among marketers. "Nobody wants to be caught up and lost in the clutter. A lot of our missions [on previous tie-ins] weren't being met," said U.S. Postal Service manager of promotions Greg Allen, whose brand has been promoted with major films including Grinch and, currently, Shrek 2. "It's no longer the case that you can put a Shrek or a Grinch on your point-of-purchase [materials] and just expect that to satisfy your business goals."

Movie studios and their partners have already taken note of the proliferation, and a number of new strategies have begun to emerge to deal with the problem. The most obvious is that some studios are bringing down the ceiling on available tie-in opportunities on tent-pole releases.

"We want three to five core partners" for any given movie, said Erin Corbett, svp-domestic theatrical promotions for Warner Bros. Pictures. While those numbers aren't a hard-and-fast policy at the studio, Corbett said some of her clients "were really, really disheartened" at finding themselves among more than a dozen partners on other movies in the last couple of years. "They're a little over being one of 15 partners," she said of her current clients.

Her view is echoed at Miramax. "I don't think it's an exact science," said Lori Sale, evp-worldwide promotions. "I think we're maximum five partners per film. If you've got 15 partners on a film it's too much."

The fewer-is-better mantra began percolating between the suites of Beverly Hills and the corner offices of the Heartland over the last 18 months, according to several industry executives. Earlier this year, Tina Manikas, evp/director of promotion and retail marketing at Chicago agency Draft, began discussing how many was "too many" with her clients, who include USPS, Kellogg (Finding Nemo) and Masterfoods USA (Shrek). She, too, sees a limit of about five on a single title.

But as the ceiling comes down, she said, the floor must also rise. "You don't want to be the only one because only your marketing dollars are helping promote this movie; it's not just the quality, it's the quantity."

Not all marketers are sure, however, that studios are changing, or even that less is more. "I don't think there's been much change . . . it's case-by-case," said Michael Tabakin, director of of sales, promotions, licensing and marketing at Toys "R" Us.

In Tabakin's view, some properties still warrant additional partnerships while others would be better served with a limited number. As a general principle, he said, "I would ask, 'Why is more promotional partnerships a bad thing?' . . . It still extends the brand out into the marketplace."

While it is difficult to imagine a studio turning down money to promote a film, Tabakin is a relatively lonely voice in arguing publicly for mass-partner blockbusters. And in order to answer the question that Tabakin poses, studios and agencies must better demonstrate to clients whether tie-ins actually work. Although the field is well developed as a business, it is not as mature in terms of return-on-investment measurement.

"The scale goes all over the place," said The L.A. Office's Litvak. "There's some amazing numbers when you talk about Shrek and Spider-Man and how it's boosting their partners, but on the same level I bet there's partners with both those properties that may not be experiencing the same level of success, and it's hard to point to why."

While the results of a promotion can be tracked with a fair amount of accuracy by an individual client, there's no database of benchmarks-such as Nielsen (TV) or the Audit Bureau of Circulation (newspapers and magazines)-for future clients to use in attempts to predict outcomes.

At least two agencies are attempting to develop measurement tools: The Salter Group in Los Angeles and iTVX in New Rochelle, N.Y. Both firms claim to measure effectiveness and audience size for product placement, which isn't the same thing as a tie-in, although tie-ins often involve placement. A true industry standard, however, has yet to emerge.

In the meantime, Litvak sees clients and studios trying to make their promotions more sophisticated, and more in tune with movie themes themselves: "Brands and studios are looking for partnerships that really work thematically, and are more creative and more skilled."

The search has produced three complementary trends in tie-in activity:

1) The long-term relationship, where a brand ties in with a studio over a number of years and a range of movies.

Miramax, for instance, is in the middle of a seven-year deal with Coors. The beer giant sponsors all parties and premieres for Miramax, and in return, "[theirs] are the only beer brands that we will use in our movies," said Miramax evp Sale.

A deal of such length is relatively unusual in Hollywood. McDonald's has one with Disney, in which the burger flipper gets first shot at partnerships with any Disney release until 2006. Other marketers have said they were looking for alliances of similar longevity and scope.

2) A push by studios to encourage marketers to look at smaller, niche movies where the audience is more tightly targeted and where promotions can be more sophisticated or unique.

In 2002, Auntie Anne's pretzels hooked up with Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie. Anne's CEO Anne Beiler is an evangelical Christian, so the movie-based on the Old Testament story of the whale, only with animated vegetables as heroes-was a smooth thematic fit for her chain, according to Anne Groben, svp-business development at Tic Toc in Dallas, who executed the deal.

3) Brands working together instead of separately to link their promotions.

Studios are actively engaged in a search for a mythic Grand Unified Movie Promotion, though so far, there does not appear to be a working example.

"I haven't yet seen the model where all five hold hands. I think that's what we all strive for," said Toys "R" Us' Tabakin.

Some marketers might be more compelled to note not how crowded the field has become, but how empty most of it still remains: The majority of movies (about 57%) are released without any marketing partners whatsoever. Those films are often historical dramas with little relevance to today's marketplace, smaller independent releases that have tiny audiences or films with risky themes that Corporate America currently regards with distaste.

Agencies have not stopped dreaming about brave clients and sophisticated target audiences. One studio promotion head wondered aloud why it was that Working Title Films (Bridget Jones's Diary, Love Actually) had not tied in with a brand like clothing company French Connection U.K. The movies and the brand both have modest audiences, but would be perfect thematic fits. "Most [smaller movies] can have promotions creatively attached to them," said Litvak.

As Tic Toc's Groben said, selling clients on non-mainstream fare is a battle. "It's scary because you have to go to upper management and say, Hey, I've found this little indie film, Pieces of April, and I think it would be really good, and it's harder to sell in."

Still, with the marketplace becoming more crowded, studios and clients will likely be forced to find more ingenious ways to join forces. Take for example, Seabiscuit, whose box-office success belies the minimal opportunities for tie-ins it initially provided. The star is a horse which (obviously) can't go shopping; the film takes place in the early part of the 20th Century before the existence of many current brands; and it's set during the Great Depression.

"How do you do a marketing program around that?" said a source involved with the movie.

Ultimately, Universal Pictures hooked up cracker maker Carr's (which once actually baked seabiscuits) and Buick, which got the opportunity to display some vintage wheels in the film. The result was "really tasteful," the source said.