Logical conclusion not leapt to

TV Week

Yes, the TV commercial format continues to exist even after so many have predicted its downfall. But the more important point is that this is obviously something that people want to go away, it just hasn’t happened yet.

Dear Marketers – Grow a pair

Advertising Age

Either don’t create the ads in the first place or have the courage of your convictions and stop apologizing. But most of all remember to ask that guy in the corner why he’s giggling when you unveil the name of the new campaign.

Go, Diego, go to the snack shop

MiamiHerald.com | 02/24/2007 | Nickelodeon, Miami MetroZoo strike marketing deal

This makes a lot of sense, if you’re evil.  I just wonder how many times this is going to lead a small child to try and speak Spanish to a monkey since all the animals on “Diego” and “Dora” speak that language.

Chrysler…I don’t even have a joke

Chrysler is said to be courting suitors – Los Angeles Times

Who has the money for this? Do any of the Big Three actually have the cash on hand to buy Chrysler? Nope, didn’t think so.

Starbucks need to talk to the gypsies that restored it in the first place

Starbucks must find lost “soul,” Schultz says: Business & Technology: The Seattle Times

Starbucks has, I’ve long felt, seriously diluted its brand with all the books, music and everything it’s started selling. It should concentrate on coffee, a market that it can – and does, largely – own.

LOTD: 2/26/07

• Nice round-up, if you’re not already up on such things, about the business potentialof Second Life. (CT)
• Cramer-Krasselt has been let go by CareerBuilder.com after the Super Bowl ads it created for the jobs site failed to win the USA Today poll. Jaffe, Collier and Green all chime in on just how ridiculous it is to make strategic decisions like this based on the results of one poll, especially one as oddly put together as this one. (CT)
• Heather Green is looking for input for a panel on blogging she’s moderating. Go help her out if you have a minute. (CT)

Oscar win = revenue

There are a couple points in this story about how Oscar wins translate to increased revenue I want to take issue with. See the quotes followed by my thoughts.

• “Last year’s winner, Lionsgate’s “Crash” — a May release that hit the video shelves the previous September — suggested that a new pattern had arrived.”: This isn’t the first sign of a new paradigm emerging, it means that a quality movie was released earlier in the year and that theater-to-home video windows are shrinking. There’s a difference
• “As far as the theatrical life of this year’s best picture contenders went, being nominated wasn’t just an honor but also an opportunity for some of the smaller films to raise their box office profile.”: Because, as we all know, you never want to actually let people see quality films until they’ve won an award. Asshats.

Effective distribution (not the current model but something that lets people choose when, where and how they get to see a film) combined with effective marketing (something that continues to support a film even after its opening weekend or month) combined with post-filter recommendations that let people see what other films are “like” a film they’ve already enjoyed can have the effect of flattening out the release of high-quality movies over the entire course of the year. They won’t have to be all lumped into the last two months of the year.

And speaking of Oscar, I was wrong the other day when I estimated that Warner Bros. spent $25 million on convincing voters to go for The Departed. Turns out the campaign was fairly subdued. I know I saw a number of online “For Your Consideration” ads but I guess they didn’t go all out like other studios (cough/ paramount /cough) did for their flicks.

Feature films come to mobile handsets

Independent filmmakers, some of whom have been commissioned by the Sundance Institute, are increasingly looking at the best way to utilize mobile handsets as feature film distribution platforms. While there are still some technical hurdles, such as poor reception at time, these folks believe that the ubiquity of mobile devices can be a powerful way to circumvent the limited number of movie theaters and connect directly with the audience.

Quick Takes: 2/26/07

• Social media and its allures are tempting people away from movies, movies that are increasingly losing their ability to speak to where the culture and society are at the moment. Robert Young at GigaOm and Steve Bryant at ReelPop each have their own thoughts on this as well.
• Steve also says that the behind-the-scenes footage on Oscar.com would have been more useful to the Academy if they had been embeddable, allowing bloggers to pass along their favorite moments and getting free impressions for the Oscars.
• Video game playing is becoming a mass social experience, taking place in movie theater type palaces. Imagine if movies were this good at attracting people.
• Tim Nudd makes a good point about the opening of last night’s Oscar ceremony, a broadcast I did not watch due to extreme lack of caring.
• Mario comments on the Apple iPhone ad that debuted during the telecast and the references to social media tools that were littered throughout the ceremony.
• While it’s great that so many theaters across the country ran marathons of the five Best Picture nominees, it should be noted that in many instances this was as close as many audience members got to the flicks, some of which had distribution that limited who could see them and when.
• Angela at AdRants covers the really, really wrong-headed Number 23 “would-be viral.”
• The iMediaConnection panel reviews the online efforts for Black Snake Moan.

BitTorrent to begin renting movies, selling TV shows

Peer-to-peer file sharing service BitTorrent will begin selling TV shows and renting movies to users thanks to an agreement with a number of studios. TV episodes will be available to own for $1.99, the same price point other services offer.

Movies from MGM, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox and Paramount will be available for downloading, with new movies costing $3.99 and older ones costing $2.99. The catch is that movies are only rented files that expire 30 days after you download them. You also will not be able to transfer the files to another computer or send them over the internet thanks to Microsoft’s DRM encoding. BitTorrent does have an agreement to sell movies to own but the studios, in addition to insisting on DRM, wanted to charge a price that BitTorrent felt wasn’t competitive or reasonable (likely the same as a new DVD).

The price point for rentals is comparable to a bricks-and-mortar store like Blockbuster, which charges more for a new release than it does for an older movie on DVD. The article does not state whether there’s a limited number of times you can play the movie that will trigger the file to expire so I’m assuming there isn’t one. That makes the service comparable, roughly, to a program like Blockbuster’s Total Access, with no due dates on a rented disc.

BitTorrent works by delivering the file to one person by grabbing bits and pieces of that file from other computers that have it. That means download times should increase as more people purchase the movies and shows. BitTorrent is open-source software and this P2P technology has been a major tool used by illegal movie downloaders.

PaidContent has more on this, including news that BitTorrent wanted to wait to do this until it had deals with all the major studios but decided to get in now while the getting was good. It did, however, delay the launch by a week so that it could include MGM’s movie.