Educating Advertisers
With the consumer empowerment that stems from the increasing use of internet technology for distributing media content, it will be interesting to observe to what extent companies that exploit advertising-based revenue streams are willing to dial down their use of ads in order to adapt to evolving consumer attitudes. For example, a recent news nugget from the IMDb Studio Briefing suggests that the film industry is experiencing its much-ballyhooed slump in part because movie theatres show too many ads before the feature presentation begins:
However, today’s (Tuesday) Los Angeles Times suggested that movie theaters themselves may be driving audiences away. “The overall moviegoing experience has become a shell of its former self,” the newspaper commented in an article about the box-office slump. “Even as theaters offer stadium seats and martinis, moviegoers are being bombarded with countless advertisements and coming attractions.” Several studio execs interviewed by the paper agreed. DreamWorks spokesperson Terry Press said that the ads ruin the value of movie trailers, the studios’ most powerful marketing tool. Producer Richard Zanuck added that moviegoers “come to see the film and not to be sold something else.”
This springboards nicely off an article from earlier in the month describing the outrage experienced by the publisher of a Hollywood trade rag after a visit to the cinema:
Robert J. Dowling, who apparently does not watch movies at press screenings, described attending a movie last weekend and being “assaulted with one inane commercial after another. Not commercials that are geared to movie fans, but ads for television shows, telephones, soft drinks, credit cards — seemingly every product on the market. And I could not stop thinking about how this onslaught of commercials was coming after we’d paid $20 for our senior tickets plus what we ordered at the snack stand. On and on the commercials went. They were loud, annoying, distracting, and, above all, they totally ruined that transcendent feeling you look forward to when you’re just about to watch a movie.”
It’s tempting to bash the film industry for passing the buck yet again with respect to falling year-on-year box office receipts. First it was Chinese DVD pirates, then it was BitTorrent jockeys, and now it’s the cinemas who are to blame. In this instance, however, I would tend to agree. With intense competition both from alternate means of viewing films (rentals, VOD, cable, satellite, etc.) and from new-fangled leisure activities (internet surfing, video consoles, opulent theme parks in exotic locations, etc.), the film industry needs to revive the perception that a trip to the movies is a full-blown fun-for-the-whole-family event, not just a run-of-the-mill entertainment fix.
The good news is that, for once, the media industry has put two and two and come up with four, or a rough approximation thereof. Quite plausibly the unconscionable fusillade of marketing propaganda that ticket-wielding consumers are subjected to in American movie theatres actually does have a negative effect on box office sales. The other good news is that this is hitting the studios where it hurts: right in the wallet. Expect those ads to get substantially toned down, or better yet eliminated entirely.
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I’d have to say that I’ve never heard any complaints about movie trailers before a feature. The difference between movie trailers and advertisements is that they are highly related to the content you have just paid to watch. As a matter of fact, I remember hearing a few stories about people buying tickets to movies they had no intention of watching to catch the trailer for some other movie. I’ve even seen some trailers that we’re more entertaining than the actual movie.
Advertisements mingled with content is going to be increasingly common. What will be different is that the advertisements will be closely related to the subject matter of the content. The reason why toothpaste ads in movie sucks is because it is so un-targeted, almost random. Most of the audience couldn’t care less. It’s a waste of their time and attention. But trailers before movies is the type of advertising we’ll see more of, not less.
Comment by Alex Rowland — 6/23/2005 @ 8:26 am
Hurray for trailers for sure! Their editors are artists and can often make a great trailer out of a bad movie (remember Pearl Harbor?). But a close reader would point out that Matt’s blog didn’t have a thing to say against trailers, he was only ranting about ads.
Comment by Julia — 6/23/2005 @ 12:35 pm