Strategy & Competition January 7, 2010, 5:00PM EST

Brett Ratner, Hollywood's Ad Impresario

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If you get him engaged on a brand, whatever he's working on, he'll figure out a way to get the brand in there," says Kotick. There is a presumed quid pro quo at work. If Activision turns its games into movies, Ratner says, "who do you think is the first director they're gonna talk to about developing them?"

At least one of Ratner's ad hoc product placements proved to be a conflict of interest. He says Miley Cyrus' label, Walt Disney (DIS)-owned Hollywood Records, prohibited him from putting the Guitar Hero controller in the final cut of the video (Hollywood Records did not comment). Others simply shrug. "At the end of the day, a director is going to put in the movie what he wants to put in the movie, and we're going to make the best of it," says LeeAnne Stables, executive vice-president for Worldwide Marketing Partnerships at Paramount Pictures, which will distribute Ratner's Beverly Hills Cop IV (showing is not yet scheduled). Stables says she hopes any brand integrated into that film would assist the studio's marketing effort, as is standard practice.

Ratner's business relationship with Kerzner began when the South African casino mogul phoned the director asking whom he should call to refresh Atlantis' image after the recession. At the time, Kerzner says, he had no idea Ratner had started a branding agency. Ratner suggested himself.

As a film director, Ratner has never been critics' favorite. And the advertising world is less than enthusiastic about his Atlantis campaign, which sells the notion that a stay at the resort will transform vacationers. In one ad, a family of dolphins swims toward the resort. As they reach the shore, they morph into a vacationing family who walk onto the beach. "The effects do serve the strategy of communicating a fun, tropical, family, destination, but other than that—big deal," says Bob Garfield, advertising critic at Advertising Age. "If Ratner is supposed to bring Hollywood magic to the land of advertising, so far not so good." Ratner, surprised to hear that there are critics in the ad world, too, says: "As long as it gets people to book hotel rooms, I'm happy."

Ratner can help deliver those bookings, a key difference between himself and traditional agencies. This year the director plans to include the Atlantis resort as the setting for an episode of a show he just sold to the CW Television Network, called Lost Weekend. Then there is the attention Brett Ratner attracts for simply being Brett Ratner. On Jan. 4, Entertainment Tonight aired a segment devoted to the director's work for Atlantis. In it, Ratner trumpeted the resort's various charms. "It's not just a hotel," he said. "It's a destination." Later, an ET host invited viewers to visit ETOnline to watch an "exclusive Director's Cut" (a 2-minute version) of the ad. Kerzner also paid for ads to run on TV and the Web, but Ratner was the draw. "We wouldn't normally focus on a commercial campaign," says Marc Weinhouse, an executive at CBS Television Distribution, which owns ET. "But it made a lot of sense because of Brett."

Helm is marketing editor for BusinessWeek in New York.