Exploring the Art & Science of Marketing
Archive for January, 2006
Brokeback Update
Jan 10th
I have been thinking more about my earlier post about Larry H. Miller and his pulling Brokeback Mountain from his theater’s.
Look at these numbers – 5 weeks. $22,436,190 divided among 543 screens. The movie is a loss by Hollywood’s standards. Do they care about awards and good film? Yes. But it’s all about the money. That’s about $5 million a week, and that’s taking into account that it has probably had twice the press attention of any movie I can recently remember. Thoughts?
Now, granted, Larry H. may have had his reasons for pulling the film, it’s history in the box office isn’t promising for a conservative, family-friendly place like Jordan Commons Theaters. Thoughs?
Quotable Kawasaki
Jan 10th
Guy Kawasaki is so quotable.
“The purpose of innovation is not cool products and cool technologies but happy people.”
After attending CES last week, I don’t think a lot of companies get this. You see a lot of wasted marketing dollars at CES, and we found out that the show sees a 40 percent turnover in companies from year to year.
CES Trip 2006
Jan 10th
I took a bunch of pictures at CES, and made a slideshow. No music. I don’t think the pictures are all that great either, but I took most of them in about 3.5 hours. I was buzzing through the show floor just trying to get a glimpse of everything.
Other CES Blog Posts
CES Transcripts
Coverage of CES
Relationships vs. Transactions
CES Update
Brokeback Dilemma
Jan 10th
Example:
BrokeBack Mountain (as describe by Kids-In-Film)
23 F-words, 3 sexual references, 9 scatological terms, 9 anatomical terms, 27 mild obscenities, 2 derogatory terms for homosexuals, name-calling (stupid), 11 religious profanities, 2 religious exclamations.
Note I didn’t link directly to the film because the description is even of an adult nature.
Hostel: Isn’t up yet.
Wolf Creek (another gory movie)
28 F-words, 1 obscene hand gesture, 9 sexual references, 21 scatological terms, 4 anatomical terms, 12 mild obscenities, 1 derogatory terms for homosexuals, name-calling (moron, loser), 6 religious exclamations.
Again, the description of this movie of too much.
My point in all of this is that if Larry H. Miller is going to pull Brokeback Mountain, there are a slew of other films that should also be pulled. There is way to much gore and sex in movies, and while I think his intent was good, I think it’s also a little two-faced that Hostel was making him so much money at the same time.
UPDATE:
Gayle Ruzicka, President, Utah Eagle Forum: “It’s about adultery, it’s about deceiving and lying to your wife and your children. And I guess Larry decided he was sick of it and didn’t want to promote it.”
via [ KSL.com ]
If I were his pr consultant, I would have advised otherwise.
CES, DRM, and Portable Video
Jan 9th
I wrote earlier that I think DRM is the reason that content companies won’t jump aboard and it is the reason the will jump aboard.
Bill Gates gives hint to this here as well.
Well, we’ve always believed in an open platform so that you can have choice of device, choice of where you buy music, what music subscription you go to, and yet you know that those connect up and the user interface is quite reasonable. Doing that, and still making it very simple to use so you have the best of both worlds, the variety, and the simplicity, that’s always a challenge as we tackle these new scenarios.
While I was at CES, I got the sense from listening to content companies like Comcast, Cablevision, ESPN and others that they don’t like how Apple is so closed. DRM is one thing, but Apple takes it too fair with only allowing compatibility on its players. Apple has shown that protected content is what the big boys want, but it seems as though Apple has become a little arrogant about it in the process. Thoughts?
CES, i’m here
Jan 6th
I’ll have to snap a few photos while I am here at CES and post them up. I have been on booth duty for a client, and things have gone fairly well so far. We have met with a lot of press and a lot of content companies.
Here’s what I think is going to happen.
Apple is going to lose out on more content deals than they will win. Why? Because of DRM. Many other portable media device makers are going to win out on content deals because of DRM. Make sense? Let me explain. Apple has it’s fairplay DRM, but only Apple can use it. So, it works, but only Apple uses it, which means content companies are going to not go after Apple because it is so stingy with it’s DRM. Microsoft has a DRM solution that many other companies can implement into their players. So, content companies are going to go with Microsoft because it gives consumers more choices when it comes to portable media players.
UPDATE:
More on why I say all of this when I get back. I spoke with or was in on many conversations during CES that lead me to believe what I have written above. I am a mac user, and I think Apple is a great company, but I get the feeling they are going to face some opposition from companies in the future because of the way they operate.
Other CES Posts
CES Update
Guy Kawasaki blog
Jan 3rd
Guy Kawasaki, managing director of Garage Technology ventures and long-time Apple man has started a blog.
Interesting. With all the fame and Bay Area connection, Garage still picked a Utah web design firm to do it’s web site.
