The slump in Hollywood pictures continues. Ticket sales are off 11.5 percent from last year.
There are many thoughts on what the trouble is. Waxman of the Times reviews them:
… a failure of studio marketing, the rising price of gas, the lure of alternate entertainment, even the prevalence of commercials and pesky cellphones inside once-sacrosanct theaters. But many movie executives and industry experts are beginning to conclude that something more fundamental is at work: Too many Hollywood movies these days, they say, just are not good enough.
There is another factor that does not seem to be getting much play: the fragmentation in consumer taste and preference.
Hollywood continues to rely on the blockbuster to make its numbers…and occasionally, this miracle of consensus is forthcoming (e.g., The Wedding Crashers). But any marketer can tell you that markets are fragmenting. This must mean that blockbusters are harder and harder to manufacture. To be sure, Hollywood has always promoted “chick flicks” that could talk to men, and mature pictures that could bring in the young. But the differences of gender and age map only a relatively small part of the difference “out there.”
To make matters more difficult, TV has got better at responding to difference. Hundreds of channels, and the opportunity to leap between them instanteously, this is what responsiveness looks like in the "channel" channel. (Skipping between films in the multi-plex is just wrong somehow.) Furthermore, the relative health of the indie film industry means that there are more and more films that can be precisely targeted (Bend it like Beckham) and one or two “sleepers” that come from narrow origins to go wide.
Packaged good marketing has had the great luxury of offering multiple offerings in fragmenting channels. Hollywood is obliged to make a one size that fits all. This is not impossible, but it will take a reinvention of the filmmaker’s art and science. As I understand it, marketers in Hollywood now stand mostly for artistic compromise. They encourage market accommodation with scant regard for artistic costs.
And this is interesting to contemplate: marketers as fully committed to the success of narrative as they are to the demographic reach of the product. What business school is prepared to take this on? Where is the MBA program capable of this breadth? Let’s be honest. Existing MBA program are currently doing a terrible job preparing their students to ride the Tsunami of a dynamic contemporary culture. What makes us think they could add to this new knowledge, the ability to engage in “product innovation” (aka script development) that spoke to many audiences with both artistic engagement and marketing acuity. Because, and this is the marketer’s new lesson, it can’t work as a marketing enterprise unless it works as an artistic one.
In sum, as Hollywood struggles to respond to the challenges of contemporary culture, marketing partners must struggle, too.
References
Grant–you raised a good point at the end about MBA types. I see a real opportunity for anthros to become more involved in developing B-school curricula. I know of a few early attempts–John Sherry at the Kellogg School of Business and Eliot Lee at the Leeds School of Business in Colorado. As more practitioners becomes emersed in business and marketing I would suspect that this trend might continue. Thoughts?
Grant–you raised a good point at the end about MBA types. I see a real opportunity for anthros to become more involved in developing B-school curricula. I know of a few early attempts–John Sherry at the Kellogg School of Business and Eliot Lee at the Leeds School of Business in Colorado. As more practitioners becomes emersed in business and marketing I would suspect that this trend might continue. Thoughts?
You would think that the modern multiplex was a good solution the fragmenting of the market. And yet….
One of the things my father remembers about being a kid in the forties, was how much fun the movie experience itself was, regardless of the movie on the screen. He is an interesting case, retired VP of a major bank, bought his last car based on internet research…and wouldn’t go to a movie thearter no if you paid him. Why? (I was talking to him about this after going to see the Cusack vehicle last weekend)
The movie house itself does everything in it’s power to let him know, HE DOES NOT MATTER. He is not the customer, the studios are the clients of the theater chains. I liked his point. He also made the following obversation (he started his banking life at the teller position, first management position was manager of same tellers):
Not only do the theaters dislike him, but they dislike the kids they hire too. They are unmotivated, afraid and very, very unsure of their place in the game. As a former manager, this drives him crazy (at this point we talked about the CEO of whole foods belief that it is managements job to inspire the employee’s).
In other words, while many portions of the equation are keeping up, in the end the weakest link damages them…
Is it a fun and rewarding expenditure of your time and money to see a film in a theater? No, not really. I am going to a concert tonight at the “new” northerly Isle concert pavilion in Chicago, I won’t make any comments on the political correctness, or lack of it that makes the place an issue among libertarians, but I will say this, so far, I haven’t even been there, but:
I recieved an e-mail a week in advance reminding me.
I recieved an e-mail yesterday reminding me.
Both included directions and helpful info, both were freindly, both were simple and cheap programs to run.
I am already having “fun” and I haven’t even gotten there yet. From all appeances, the venue is “fun”, after tonight I’ll know if it was all talk, or if they really follow through on the sale they have made, or if like the theaters, drop the ball once I walk in through the door.
As you can guess, what I find will determine whether I frequent the place often, or only when my “must see bands come to town.”
I realized I wanted to add this and didn’t. In speaking of my father, I always liked this picadillo of his. He was on the tech cusp, he helped design the first of the optical scanners to process checks within 24 hours of deposit (remember the old 7 to 10 day thing), in all the projects he has worked on, on all of his teams, dating from 1978 to his retirement in 2003, he refused to have anyone on his team who posessed an MBA. He only made one exception, and that was young black man who said, “yes, I am aware that my NU MBA is essentially meaningless, I have only memorized case studies and managed to not disagree with my prof’s for a few years, but as a black man I did it anyway to make a point.”
The problem with a lot of business types and marketing types especially is that they’re confused. They think marketing is the art of convincing people outside your company to want to buy what you’re making, when in reality it’s the other way around…the art of convincing people _inside_ your company to make what people outside want to buy.
The problem with Hollywood marketing isn’t that. It’s that studio marketing types have a fundamentally broken system of beliefs about the moviegoing public and what they want.
And the problem with Hollywood isn’t even really that…it’s more that the system is set up to _require_ a blockbuster-oriented product line. It’s too centralized and thus too addicted to making tons of money off a few big hits. It’s _especially_ too dependent on theater revenues. For the reasons Johnny cited above (as well as others previously explored on this blog and elsewhere), theaters are going to be a diminishing market.
Just dropping a line. I admire your work and would be pleased to have you or your readers check out my own infant blog at the URL above. Thanks.