FilmPlug

There's been a lot of talk this week about bad buzz and All The King's Men not performing well. It just goes to show how incredibly plugged-in consumers are now to what used to be industry sausage-making. Soon fans will boycott films because a favorite actress or director passed on it 2 years ago.

In "The Tyranny of the Customer?", MediaPost's Wendy Davis takes issue with Chris Anderson's remarks at a recent event. Paraphrasing, she disagrees with his assertion that Google now controls your brand more than you do, and that one customer can now create enough bad-buzz to bring a brand down.

Now, I wasn't there, but I'll bet Mr. Long Tail was engaging in a bit of hyperbole to make a bigger point - that fewer and fewer people are having larger and larger impacts on public opinion due to the equalizing effect of the Internet. It's a good thing.

Even more interesting than Davis' post are the comments that follow, mostly in disagreement. Nicholas Wright from Wireless World Forum writes:

"The tyranny of the customer is really just the overthrow of the tyranny of the marketers, sales is more of a two-way process than ever before. If you will, the marketing has actually fallen into the hands of the customers and placed greater pressure on companies to improve and provide the service they should be providing anyway. Brands must interact or at least observe and respond to their customer reaction if they want to survive: whether this counts as a tyranny or not is in the minds of marketers."

As for All the King's Men, we could take away that studios need to be more careful about chosing and pushing release dates, but I hope instead we think of new ways of addressing bad buzz for whatever reason, by engaging with the customers - not trying to control them.

Posted by Kirk Skodis at 11:21 AM | Permalink

The MarketCast study from my previous post is out today.

Chris Thilk examines it, listing some interesting stats and offering some great insights.

The real take-away jist I get from all this is that while initial awarness is still largely driven by word of mouth and TV/MSM, more and more moviegoing decisions are being made based on information found online - with 17% saying it is the most influential medium.

Online spending remains stagnant at 2.6% of the studio marketing budgets.

Posted by Kirk Skodis at 12:00 PM | Permalink

I had the pleasure of crashing a cool event this morning called "The Internet and Moviegoing: A Benchmark Study on Influences and Opportunities" which included a great panel discussion with Variety's President Charlie Koones, MPAA EVP Dean Garfield, Quinceanera Director Richard Glatzer, Google's Rick Krugh and interactive movie-marketing legend, Gordon Paddison of New Line.

The breakfast started off with the MarketCast Study that should be published soon on Variety.com. Yeah OK, I missed that but heard it was cool. I did however, enjoy the panel Q&A - especially interesting to me was the talk about raising the % of budgets being spent on new media, how it's been stuck at around 3% and how we need to start better quantifying the ROI so we can justify larger budgets. Gordon joked that while 30% might be a bit unrealistic, it certainly should rise above 3% for most campaigns.

The Keynote Speaker was none other than Dan Glickman, Chairman and CEO of the MPAA. Not the first guy you'd imagine evangelizing the importance of Pull vs. Push advertising techniques and change, but man, did this guy "get it"!

In the end, I suppose a lot of this was preaching to the choir, but I for one found it refreshing to see this group of entertainment executives sitting down for a little nosh and a healthy serving of New Marketing.

Posted by Kirk Skodis at 6:48 PM | Permalink

Long and drawn-out Flash intros on movie sites are so... 2002. I usually skip 'em unless the phone rings or my mind wanders... that is, until I caught wind of...

... the redesign of the Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny website with quite possibly the longest and most entertaining intro in recent memory. J.B and K.G. narrate the evolution of "The Greatest Website Ever Created" giving typical client feedback like adding fungus, devil girls and exploding guitars. What? You don't get notes like that?

If (like me) you were underwhelmed by the trailer, this site should restore your faith in The D. A site for a comedy needs to make you laugh and features like "As*trology" that lets me plot the freckles on my ass and then traces the constellation in the shape of Jack Black's head (on my ass) - makes me laugh.

Posted by Kirk Skodis at 10:34 PM | Permalink

Man, I love this keyart for The U.S. vs. John Lennon. As the film goes to draw comparisons to our current war in Iraq, so goes the keyart as it pays homage to the classic keyart for M.A.S.H., which Altman set in the Korean War to draw comparisons to Viet Nam... I think I just blew my own mind. Alas, this blog is about interactive, not print, so...

As much as I would've liked to see the keyart Flashed out and brought to life, what Lions Gate did instead is really cool. The official site is a satire of the Drudge Report, called the Grudge Report, and it links out to Lennon-related content all over the web. I'm guessing they worked a deal with Drudge since they're running ads (which rock too) on the site.

I'm a huge fan of sites linking out and becoming more hub than destination for the marketing of a film. This does so within an appropriately politically-charged concept that works well for this film. They even list traffic stats like Drudge with some pretty decent numbers!

Posted by Kirk Skodis at 1:31 PM | Permalink

Please allow me to break from the strictly interactive movie marketing format to call your attention to an important book that transcends brand advertising and deals with many of the threads in this blog.

I've been reading Joseph Jaffe's blog and listening to his podcast, Across the Sound, for a year now. Unfortunately, it's taken me this long to finish his book - and fulfill the promise I made to him to review it on my blog. Hey, with two kids and a business to run, who's got time to read books?

Probably the coolest part of this review is the fact that Joseph Jaffe bartered for it in a very open-source way. He calls it "Use New Marketing To Prove New Marketing" and it goes like this: Promise to review my book on your blog, and I'll send you a free copy. How could I resist?

Jaffe forces us to look past the catchy title and start thinking about advertising in new ways. Maybe it's not the 30-second spot, but the billboard or the newspaper ad, or even the banner ad. It's about training our brains to think in terms of pull instead of push. It's about pushing our clients to disengage from the status quo. This book implores us to recognize that advertising as we know it is changing before our eyes and if we don't wise up and start living New Marketing today, we'll be left in the dust.

Did I know this before I read the book? Yes. But I felt it in my gut. I sensed the sea changing around me and set a new course. So is this book for the enlightened ones who "got it" in 2004? Definitely, because what Jaffe does is confirm this feeling with facts and indisputable figures, while surprising us know-it-alls with several new concepts and strategies.

In the last section, Jaffe outlines 10 Approaches That Are Transforming the Marketing and Advertising Games - all of which are extremely applicable to interactive movie marketing - including Communal Marketing, Consumer-Generated Content, On-Demand Viewing, Search and Mobile. Each approach is detailed in-depth, providing insights that that will inspire even the most savvy marketer.

Aside from all this life-changing stuff, it's really a fun and easy read. Jaffe brings his witty, pun-riddled, sometimes goofy, but always entertaining and on occasion brilliant style of delivering a philosophy he is so obviously passionate about and you can't help but drink the punch.

Every time I recommend this book or the podcast, I feel as if I'm betraying myself by giving away a trade-secret weapon. But if there's one thing Joe has taught me, it's to give open-source and you shall receive open-source.

Posted by Kirk Skodis at 1:55 AM | Permalink

This week on one of my favorite podcasts (KCRW radio show) - The Business with Claude Brodesser-Akner - COO of Fox Atomic, John Hegeman, agrees with me that in the end what SoaP lacked was quality of content and that the connection was never made from buzz to genuine interest in the film.

Hegeman is credited with the success of The Blair Witch Project while at Artisan Entertainment, so the man knows movie buzz marketing. In the podcast, he makes the point that it's impossible to compare the two campaigns because Blair Witch took place in a time when the internet was more mysterious and in many ways, naive to clever tricks employed by movie marketing departments.

Posted by Kirk Skodis at 5:31 PM | Permalink

I'm loving the digg and del.icio.us links on the official Jesus Camp website.

But the "Wish I'd Thought Of That - Bet Your Ass I'll Steal It" award goes to the Coordinate With Friends To See Jesus Camp that links to a Google calendar with cities listed on corresponding dates. Bravo!

And by the looks of that trailer, I think they should've co-opted An Inconvenient Truth's tagline: "By far the most terrifying film you will ever see."

Posted by Kirk Skodis at 6:32 PM | Permalink