Jack Born On Marketing, Online Business, and PHP Code

I’m not a fan of watching the Oscars, but obviously I watched some of it, or else I wouldn’t be able to comment on Sid Ganis’ silly little self-serving monologue about the benefits of watching a movie on the big screen versus seeing it on DVD.

Sid is the president of the Acadamey of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. And during the Oscars he came out on stage and was given all the time he wanted to pontificate about the magic of experiencing these movies on “an eye enveloping screen, with sound coming at you from all directions” and something to the effect of “coming together in a dark theater with a room full of strangers that are brought together by the story.” That’s not an exact quote, but it’s damn close. I wasn’t able to find the exact quote online, yet.

Sid, buddy, if you think you’re in the “big screen movie business” then you’re an idiot. Because what we’re buying when we go to the movie theater isn’t a bunch of photons bouncing off a big wall… it’s an escape from reality.

Even those of us with pretty darn good lives get overwhelmed by reality and like to become enveloped in the fantasy of a good story. I’m sure Sid would agree with me so far.

But Sid doesn’t understand is that “coming together with strangers” is more often than not a detriment to this attempt to escape reality. In fact it’s a reminder of how much reality can suck.
For example:

• I can’t tell the other people in the audience to shut the f- up
• I can’t yell at them for letting their cell phone ring in the middle of your precious movie and actually answering the damn thing
• I can’t tell the parents of the two year old how incredibly rude it is to detract from my movie experience because they were too cheap to get a babysitter
• I can’t pause the movie in the middle so I can get up and take a leak after polishing off a $5 soda big enough to take a bath in

There are other downsides to the present day movie experience, but you get the point. What’s really funny is the universal nod of agreement as the camera panned the audience as Sid was remarking about the evils of DVD watching.

Sid isn’t the only one completely out of touch with their audience. It can happen to any of us, if we’re not careful.

When I build a website for someone, I have to remind myself that my client isn’t really buying a website. Depending on the client, they might be buying a chance to escape corporate America, or a way to attract new clients, or a way to reduce their workload.

One of the things I’m working on in 2006 is to get completely out of the ‘website business’ and give my clients what they really want… which may or may not involve a website.

Have you asked yourself what business you’re really in? Maybe what your clients really want and what your competitors are offering isn’t quite matched up and there’s an opportunity for you, if you see it.

I watched an online movie of a presentation by a marketing guru yesterday and he made some interesting points. He said that people don’t buy Fancy Feast for their cats… they buy it for how it makes them feel about themselves.

A recent example from my life:

My wife wanted to try out Infamil “lactose free” baby formula for our daughter. She’s very smart, but her desire to buy “the best” for our girl short circuited her logic. A little research online showed us that by and large, babies are rarely lactose intolerant and only lose their ability to digest the protein later in life.

So why go through the trouble of making a lactose free baby formula? Because people will buy it.

Next question… why do people buy it? Well, it’s not because their baby needs it.

(Back to my rant against Sid and the movie industry he represents…)

Sid, your whole industry is predicated on the notion that Hollywood can churn out a crap movie with awful acting and a horrible script… where the only exciting thing about it is the trailer that promotes the movie… and you guys laugh all the way to the bank.

Is it any wonder that Hollywood is out of touch with reality when a horrible movie can put millions in the bank accounts of directors, actors, and industry execs?

As I write this, prices for sophisticated home theater systems are coming down while the quality is going up. There are fewer and fewer reasons to schlep the family out to the movies. Heck, DVD’s are even in danger of video on demand services. I expect it won’t be long before we can order any movie ever made and have it streamed to our homes.

Face it, Sid. If nothing is done to improve the “big screen” experience, movies are going to go straight to DVD or go into simultaneous release (which one movie already did this year as a marketing tactic).

As an aside… I’d love to see a movie theater show some backbone and offer money back guarantees for crap moview (which they’ll stop showing because they know they’re crap) and special theaters for people willing to pay for a better, quieter, movie going experience. Bouncers sit in the movie theater and eject anyone making a disturbance. Your cell phone goes off, you personally reimburse everyone else in the audience for their ticket. Age limits on who gets in… blacklists for people known to cause problems.

Airplanes have first class… why can’t movie theaters?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 7th, 2006 at 12:42 pm and is filed under Marketing . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.