Too much content, too many channels, too little time?

We all seem to have less time to ourselves these days. But there seems to be more to watch – on more platforms – than ever before. What trends have led to this, and what’s the result? Much editorial ink has been spilled over the years about how our lives seem to be getting busier, with less free time to ourselves. This is somewhat of a painful irony given that many of our more intellectual ancestors thought our evolution as a species would quickly lead to a civilisation mostly consumed by thoughts of how to fill the days of leisure. In last week’s New Yorker, Harvard professor Thales Teixeira noted there are three major “fungible” resources we have as people – money, time and attention. The third, according to Teixeira, is the “least explored”. Interestingly, Teixeira calculated the inherent price of attention and how it fluctuates, by correlating it with rising ad rates for the Super Bowl. Last year, the price of attention jumped more than 20%. The article elaborates,

“The jump had obvious implications: attention—at least, the kind worth selling—is becoming increasingly scarce, as people spend their free time distracted by a growing array of devices. And, just as the increasing scarcity of oil has led to more exotic methods of recovery, the scarcity of attention, combined with a growing economy built around its exchange, has prompted R. & D. in the [retaining of attention].”

It’s such thinking that has persuaded executives to invest in increasingly multi-platform, creative advertising during the Super Bowl, and to media production companies taking their wares to the likes of YouTube and Netflix. But it’s all circular , as demonstrated last week when Amazon announced it would be producing films for cinema release. The plurality of such content over different channels carries important connotations for pricing strategies. At its most fundamental, what is a product worth when it is intangible and potentially only available in digital form? It chimes with an article written earlier this month in The Economist on the customer benefits of e-commerce. Though most knee-jerk reactions would assume price is the biggest benefit to customers, recent research illustrates this is not always the case. Researchers at MIT showed on average people paid an extra 50% for books online versus in-store. This isn’t because that latest David Baldacci is sold for more on Amazon, but rather because of the long tail. Which means more products are able to find the right owner, for a price, whereas in store comparatively they go unsold. More channels have meant more availability for content, which should benefit consumers in that more content destined to be a hit now finds a home, where once it might have been lost if turned down by the major TV or radio network stations. The Economist elaborates,

“Seasoned publishers have only a vague idea what book, film or song will be a hit. A major record label can sign only a fraction of the artists available, knowing full well it will unwittingly reject a future superstar. Thanks to cheap digital recording technology, file sharing, YouTube, streaming music and social media, however, barriers to entry have been dismantled. Artists can now record and distribute a song without signing to a major label. Independent labels have proliferated, and they are taking on the artists passed over by major labels. Hit songs are still a lottery, but the public gets three times as many lottery tickets.”

So while we may have less time to consume it, more content over more channels will allow for greater chances for breakout hits, particularly with avid niche audiences. Amazon Prime video content was until recently confined to a niche audience, and the show Transparent dealt with niche subject matter. But the show has broken out into the zeitgeist and won two awards at the recent Golden Globes ceremony. (Full disclosure, we know a producer on the show and were lucky enough to visit the set on the Paramount lot in Los Angeles last summer). It is likely such a great show – recently made available free for 24 hours as a way to upsell customers to Prime – would not have found a home on traditional TV networks, and thus in people’s homes, were it not for this plurality.

Marketing Movies

At the height of summer, Hollywood can always be counted on to release its annual glut of rambunctious, noisy films for the gluttonous, rambunctious, noisy masses (read teenagers). Zeitgeist commented previously on the exceptional marketing efforts gone to by Disney and Pixar for “Toy Story 3”. The film was finally released the other week in the UK, having been pushed back to make way for the onslaught of the World Cup. This article will be focussing on four very different films and the differing marketing efforts employed in them; “Eclipse”, “Inception”, “Knight and Day” and “Tron: Legacy”.

The third film in the Twilight saga, “Eclipse”, has recently exploded into cinemas, making $280m in it’s first week at the global box office. In the film, Robert Pattinson’s ‘Edward’ drives around in a pining manner in a Volvo XC60 SUV. The car, owned by China’s Geely created their “most expensive campaign to date to promote its tie-in”, according to Variety. In the series’ sophomore outing Volvo had played on its product placement almost entirely online with their “Come and See What Drives Edward” campaign. In the new film there is another website, “Lost in Forks”, which is being more heavily promoted on TV in a cheesy, Americanised way (this is the ad Zeitgeist saw the other night). The site asks the user to play a game in order to be in with a chance of winning the XC60. The game, however, is interminably boring for all but the most dedicated of Twilight fans (who fortunately for Volvo number in the tens of millions); Zeitgeist lost all interest in entering the competition and having their information captured for Volvo to use in the future. Variety points out “the SUV is also being given away by Burger King as part of the chain’s own ‘Twilight’ tie-in and gives the vehicle a shout-out in its ads.” Even for the first film in the series, in which the Volvo C30 appeared but the brand had “no advertising budget”, the car “received millions of impressions [and] increased consumer traffic through [US] and international dealerships”. It helps that the author of the novels, Stephanie Meyer, had, bizarrely, sprinkled her books with mentions of Volvo.

Volvo took a back seat to Mercedes for product placement in Christopher Nolan’s “Inception”, the only product placement example in the film, writes BrandChannel. However, the film’s marketing has far more impressive accolades, namely its integration with Facebook. Although every brand and its uncle sees Facebook advertising as a sine qua non nowadays, the team at Warner Bros. created an imaginative and engaging campaign that helped raise awareness and excitement for a movie shrouded in secrecy. On the UK Facebook fan page for the film, competitions were announced that took place in Brighton, London and other locations. A man, suited and wearing sunglasses, and carrying the silver briefcase showcased in the film, appeared at various locations along with a vague clue or riddle as to where he was. The first person to solve the riddle and find the man was given tickets to the UK premiere. It’s an idea sui generis, and it evidently paid off. Apart from the film opening at No.1 and beating out “Toy Story 3” in its second week to retain its top spot, sometimes almost a hundred people would comment per competition when all was said and done. The great engagement continued in more simple ways when the film opened, with reviews posted from various publications, and asking fans whether they would be seeing the film again…

eConsultancy praised the efforts, saying they produced “a marketer’s dream campaign” (no pun intended I’m sure). The article details how Warner Bros. “went to great pains over its blog outreach campaign, utilising major and minor movie fan sites to help spread titbits of pre-release information.” They conclude with the pithy insight, “It’s worth contrasting this against that similar old media behemoth, the music industry, who have consistently struggled to find a new marketing model that competes with free sharing and piracy.”

All seemed not quite as rosy initially for the Tom Cruise / Cameron Diaz starrer “Knight and Day”, with the New York Times predicting before its release that it would fall short of expectations. The two stars, however, have gamely been showing their faces around the world, and not only at premieres, in this case touring Brazil before spending hours with fans in London. They also showed up at the Tour de France, watching from the side of the road before helping the eventual winner lift the trophy. Very soon the film will have it’s ‘People’s Premiere’ at London’s Somerset House, giving the film the added publicity of having two premieres. Finally, last week the duo showed up on the BBC’s “Top Gear”, driving the show’s ‘reasonably priced car’. The show is still available on iPlayer, and in Zeitgeist’s opinion well worth the watch. This kind of globe-trotting coverage is perfect fodder for the target audience, the kind who like big explosions, fast cars, and lean storylines.

The last film Zeitgeist will be discussing is the release this winter – December 17th in the US – of the second Tron film, “Tron: Legacy”, which, by the time it opens, Disney will have committed “three and a half years priming the audience” for, according to the New York Times. The team at Disney has – much like “Inception” did in a much shorter timeframe – been feeding rabid fans tidbits piece by piece, with the release of a new trailer (see below) at Comic-Con recently, where one arrived at the screening via a themed entryway, a great piece of experiential.

“Marketing campaigns for what the industry calls ‘tent-pole’ movies… have traditionally started about a year before their release in theaters [sic]. Increasingly, there is scarcely enough time… The goal is to make movies feel like must-attend events”.

Multi-channel integration, be it on Facebook as with “Inception” (and as with Disney’s newly purchased Playdom for $760m), through supporting Disney channels as with “Tron: Legacy”, or through mobile games that extend the movie’s universe, will help bolster revenues. However, as digital video recorders like Sky+ in the UK and TiVo in the US continue to erode film’s main piece of publicity – the trailer – and as DVD sales continue to plummet, without much offset from Blu-ray or online avenues, the film industry is increasingly less wary about taking risks when it comes to how films are promoted. One thing is for sure though, sometimes you just can’t beat a great trailer…

Surf’s up: Toward shopper marketing integration

Forrester estimates that $249b will be spent on online retail in 2014 in the US of A. (Great until you consider what Roland Emmerich estimates will happen in 2012.) When we think of people shopping online, our tendency might be to think of a housewife at home, at her desktop computer, slightly less bewildered than perhaps the average housewife would have been five years ago, clicking away at Tesco or Amazon. However, as a brand’s presence online is effectively communicated and merged with in-store comms, people are increasingly shopping online while in-store, as typified by last year’s notorious Dixons campaign.

As eConsultancy reports, while previously there may have been a fluid, predictable path to purchase, since the arrival of the Internet things have changed. “People research online and buy offline. They research offline and then buy online. And in both cases the brands and retailers are likely to vary. And in both cases satisfaction with the experience impacts repeat purhcase likelihood across all channels.” The risk is that someone might use the bricks-and-mortar store as a mere window, an experiential exhibition to test and get a feel of the products before buying them online. This is exactly what the article goes on to detail, albeit anecdotally. It calls the situation “apocalyptically galling” for offline retailers. Some high-street stores are responding. HMV for example has POS comms suggesting people buy the product just as easily from their website (a precarious strategy as somone might defer their purchase while in-store and for one of many reasons not go through with the online purchase). These online alternatives will be judged against the John Lewis et al. of the world by cost, convenience and service. Many will not be able to tick all three boxes.

More recently, eConsultancy wrote about the recent publication of a survey entitled “Respect the Shopper: Harmonizing the Cross-Channel Experience”. The survey revealed,

•    88% said they had shopped that retailer’s web site
•    75% said visiting the brand’s web site helps them to shop in-store
•    85% compared prices online
•    44% visited a competitor’s web site
•    26% will visit the retailer’s web site to continue shopping after leaving the store

This level of integration bodes well for promotional activity and awareness opportunities. However it also leaves the shopper open to exposure to competitive retailers while in-store, instantly. One way to combat this challenge will be to make the shopping experience – from specific promotions to the retail environment – more personal and engaging, to create some sort of an affinity for the store they are in and the brand as a whole, taking away the relatively bespoke nature of the online environment.