Mashups and Movie Openings
Had a fun, stimulating chat with Clay today about decentralization, mashups, Reality TV, and word-of-mouth movie hits. It got me wondering when we'll see the first mashup-influenced TV show. Seems like something MTV would be all over...
Clay mentioned that several recent movies (My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Supersize Me, and Saved) had opened 'small' but had then gone on to become big hits many weeks later -- something almost unheard-of in the movie industry. He attributed this to the speed and ease with which people can communicate their opinions to the world via SMS, email, blogs, etc. Really interesting trend - and a testament to the power of loosely-coupled, distributed communication systems.
On the other side of the coin, last summer that Hollywood blamed SMS messaging for the poor showing at the box office of several films that were expected to do well. Unfortunatly, that article is behind a paid-to-see curtain at the original newsite:
Texting blamed for summer movie flops
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/story.jsp?story=434778
There was a subsequent Slashdot discussion of it:
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/08/19/1918243.shtml?tid=100&tid=137&tid=188&tid=97&tid=98&tid=99
Maybe these two trends will meet in the middle? *g*
Posted by: Scott Moore | June 15, 2004 at 12:19 PM
Isn't this the sign of a new type of marketing and branding - the people who set the record success/fail are tightly connected now. If they like it - it happens =My Big Fat Greek Wedding. If they think it stinks - Gigli = flop.
Rogers' Early adopters now have much better links between each other and the trend can be set more accurately (Smart Mobs etc and disseminated more quickly. Less chance of the masses being snowed.
I have noted a growing discussion in many good sites that marketing is reversing from clever sell/push to clever listen/ react deliver. Have you noted this too?
Posted by: Robert Paterson | June 27, 2004 at 05:55 AM
>> marketing is reversing from clever sell/push to clever listen/ react deliver. Have you noted this too?
Absolutely -- I've noticed the same trend, I think you're spot-on. It's the slow social upheavel that's being wrought by networked, always-on communications.
Posted by: AJ Kim | July 01, 2004 at 05:23 PM