THE TOP 10 INSIGHTS

2.  Urban trend setters now drive change and race is the key. The melting pot model, where society tends to become more homogenous, has been replaced by the salad bowl model where each element remains distinct. Every race feels it is important to identify with their own culture. They embrace diversity. African-Americans and Hispanics feel that story is not being told by the entertainment industry. UPN’s Monday night "black ghetto" lacks the diversity needed for success. Nickelodeon has it. The findings are from the conference’s most talked about survey presented by Corey Fields and Kendra Hatcher of BlackSheep. The survey of 1022 individuals was conducted where they judged the trendsetters to be: in bars, shows and restaurants. It raised lots of the same questions of validity and projectability as the Flamingo research on leading edge youth in England reported just a month ago at the ARF’s New York conference.

3.  Disney is the gold standard for family entertainment. Nickelodeon Researcher Bruce Friend said this in describing Nick Films efforts to build a similar brand image for their ventures into movie production. Their first movies featured the same kid humor as their TV shows. Research showed kids loved them, but they didn’t hold parents, and that was a mistake. They switched their objective to broader and edgier subject matter that still did not betray parent’s expectations. They spent more on marketing one movie than they did on their TV channel in a year – up to $60 million. They ended up with their first film that grossed over $100 million, The Rug Rats Movie. The failure rate on new movies and new TV shows is 70% to 80%, but Friend said Nickelodeon is at a point where only one in ten of their shows fail.

4.  Major networks and studios are not "brands". Conference Chairman Bob Levin, President of Worldwide Marketing for Sony Pictures Entertainment said, unlike Disney or Nickelodeon, their product is not consistent enough to enable fulfillment of a "brand promise" or build a significant level of customer loyalty. Cable channels, movies and record labels were considered to be more likely to have the characteristics necessary for successful branding. Some felt the network’s news and sports departments had more of a potential for meaningful "branding" than the networks themselves. During the Q&A a cogent question was posed. With failure rates running up to 90%, why would a network or studio WANT to establish itself as a "brand"?

5.  Websites have become important in marketing movies. Dan Rosen, Senior Vice President of Warner Bros, said they now have 7-8 people doing nothing but building web sites. They are budgeting $500,000 per movie for each of them. With the number of new movies up from 200 to 400 per year, promotion is critical. 99% of what happens with a movie depends on what happens opening day, and that is where web marketing can help. They are running banner ads on 40 sites to get people to the movie site. For "Red Planet" they put up the site February 17 for a movie that starts November 15. Rosen said they have also become avid believers in using the web to conduct market research.

6.  Recognition-based tracking reveals Super Bowl problems for movies. In a joint paper with Dan Rosen, Senior VP at Warner Bros., I presented our syndicated results from nine years of testing Super Bowl commercials to show what worked and what didn’t, advertising movies on the Super Bowl. It started off with two memorable lines from the Super Bowl movie commercial that our recognition-based post testing showed reached and affected more people than any other. Tom Cruise shouted "All I want is the truth!" Jack Nicholson shouted back "You can’t handle the truth!" It was used to set the stage for two basic findings that have not been very popular. Spending a lot to keep a movie commercial on the air during the weeks after the game is a mistake. The number reached and affected per million dollars spent drops like a rock after the first two million. Dan Rosen stepped in to explain why it happens. Promoting the opening of a movie is so important studios don’t have a choice. They have to do everything they can. Cost efficiency is not a prime consideration. The second unpleasant finding was the number of movie commercials that had so many explosions, special effects, and short choppy scenes that many respondents found them confusing and pointless, rather than impressive. Still, emotion was shown to be the main driving force: both humor and empathy. So, we were able to sooth the troops a bit with a showing of the funniest movie commercials on the Super Bowl. They were classics.

7.  The "try anything, see what works" internet is finally settling down – somewhat. This comment emerged from Harry Hiner’s work to understand the motives for online shopping. He found they were many and diverse. They ranged from being able to do it in secret, to saving money, staying at home, enjoying automation and even a feeling of being connected to a world wide community.

8.  40% response rate achieved in 15 minutes. Ellen Veccia of Knowledge Networks described how they did this for the last episode of "Survivor". They made it possible for the follow-up show that came on immediately afterward to answer such critical questions as "Did America agree the right person survived?" They selected a representative sample from the online panel they have recruited from both the online and offline segments of the public by giving all a WebTV. They notified them of the special event by email, offered them a special $2 incentive, and asked them to hook up 15 minutes ahead of time. When they did, their TV automatically changed to the channel they wanted them to watch, and changed back to the questionnaire when it ended.

9.  Hollywood researchers are preoccupied with the promotion of "Blair Witch". It sounded like their managements had grilled every one of them asking if this low budget film could be so successful, why were they spending tens of millions promoting high budget films? They all had answers. The most common was that it may have been a low budget production, but as soon as it started to catch on it became a high budget promotion. $30 million was spent after it opened.

10.  $40 million a year is spent pretesting movie commercials – but apparently not with ASI. That was inadvertently indicated by a question from Gerald Lukeman, long time Chairman of ASI before its merger with IPSOS. Our BRC presentation had shown there was enormous variation in the number that had actually been reached and affected by movie commercials after they were all aired on the same program – the Super Bowl. Dan Rosen of Warner Bros. had cited these differences, and the risk of bombing out on this most expensive of all media buys, in describing his concerns about Super Bowl advertising. Lukeman asked why isn’t there any pretesting? Several jumped in to say there is lots of it, and offered estimates of the amount. That struck some as sad because decades ago ASI was a pioneer in entertainment research. We all used its Preview Theatre on Sunset Boulevard featuring state of the art GSR gloves and like-dislike joy sticks for measuring audience reactions to commercials, pilots and feature films. Dan Rosen, ARF President Jim Spaeth, and untold others are ASI alumni.

Don Bruzzone, November 2000