Warner Home Video (UK) Wins Marketing Innovation Award For “The Year Of The Matrix” At 2004 Home Entertainment Week Awards!

(May 18, 2004 – London) - Warner Home Video (UK) proudly accepted the award for Marketing Innovation and was named Top Retail Distributor of the Year at the 2004 Home Entertainment Week Awards last week. The award confirmed Warner Home Video as the UK market leader in developing and implementing innovative, creative and pro-active marketing techniques for The Year Of The Matrix campaign. The award-winning multi-media, multi-partner, marketing programme spanned the home video launches of “The Animatrix,” “The Matrix Reloaded” and “The Matrix Revolutions,” as well as a co-ordinated programme of catalogue activity. The Awards were accepted on behalf of WHV (UK) by Richard Burniston, New Release Marketing Manager, and Reena Goyal, New Release Product Manager. WHV (UK) also collected the award for Top Retail Distributor Of The Year 2003, hitting the top spot with impressive sales, including “The Year Of The Matrix,” “Two Weeks Notice,” “Dreamcatcher” and “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.” Neil McEwan, Managing Director, Warner Home Video UK commented: "We are delighted to have been honoured by the Home Entertainment Week awards. The Matrix trilogy of films has delighted millions of fans all over the world and in so many ways were pioneering in terms of their content and style of movie making. It is appropriate that our marketing campaign reflected that innovation and has been awarded in this way. We feel we broke new ground and this has been recognised. I am immensely proud of our marketing team in the UK whose hard work and creative ideas have helped us secure this honour.” With operations in 89 international territories, Warner Home Video commands the largest distribution infrastructure in the global video marketplace. Warner Home Video’s film library is the largest of any studio, offering top quality new and vintage titles from the repertoires of Warner Bros. Pictures Inc., Turner Entertainment Company, and HBO Home Video. Note To Editor (Abstract from HEW Awards of Excellent Winners Booklet): “Anyone not hiding under a rock during the latter half of 2003 and the first half of 2004 couldn’t have helped but notice that one monolithic franchise in particular stole a march on the competition and in doing so delivered results that, by anyone’s standards, were no less than staggering. Warner Home Video’s "Year Of The Matrix" not only consolidated The Matrix franchise as one of the most significant in the home entertainment industry, but it managed to do so in a uniquely inventive and effective way. Of course, there were a few surprises that “The Matrix Reloaded” and “The Matrix Revolutions” cleaned up at the international box office, and there were even fewer that the two films performed so spectacularly on VHS and DVD, but "The Year Of The Matrix" encompassed an awful lot more than simply releasing the final parts to one of the most influential trilogies in recent film history. The superb “Animatrix” – a series of beautifully animated adventures that stand alone as much as they add depth and clarity to the Matrix universe – performed incredibly at retail, thanks in no small part to perfectly positioned advertising and the tantalising use of FIVE as an outlet to effectively trailer them and the two Matrix movies. Warner added to an already impressive campaign that included striking lenticular advertising and good use of television spots, consumer press advertising and an intelligent schedule for the releases by further enriching the franchise with the massive video game, “Enter The Matrix.” With all facets of the series tied together, the result was a must-see line up for Matrix completists and the more casual consumer alike.”# # #