Reelist: 500 Million Facebook Friends
Sony Pictures keeps on improving its marketing game online. With the upcoming “Facebook” film, The Social Network, directed by David Fincher, Sony’s domain choice in 500millionfriends.com is inspired branding.
Compared to all of the usual/uninspired studio domains, e.g., blankmovie.com, blankthemovie.com, blank-movie.com, blank-thefilm.com and the random .net absurdity, 500MillionFriends is welcome creativity/cleverness from a major studio.
The teaser below explores the hyperbolic yet real-life world of Facebook’s origins, with lines like: “Your best friend [Eduardo Severin] is suing you for $600 million dollars…” With a majority of Americans using Facebook (okay, 3-4 out of 5 Americans), how do the filmmakers take an everyday utility like Facebook, and market (then tell) a story that captures a blockbuster audience?
X|Media|Lab Amsterdam Keynote/Interview on Media
From my X|Media|Lab keynote at Amsterdam last November, 2009, addressing the NPOX public broadcasting group.
After the jump, a 10-minute breakaway interview on media…
The Reboot of Transmedia Content
Transmedia is a reboot of saying multi-platform media or IP, but now tied to a hopefully valuable piece of IP real estate. It’s like adding interactive curb appeal to your content property. A little viral interest or insurance doesn’t hurt…
Transmedia content is also “bite-sized, buy-in for consumers” or “low-cost lure,” i.e., it creates additional interest beyond the basic trailer and press materials while telling a story.
Check out what Saban Brands is doing in this space with $500M – basically, significant backing on IP that has been exhausted, and needs a refresh in terms of 360 degree merchandising.
Labels had their lunch eaten by digital, same is happening (incrementally) with media studios. So, labels are doing 360 merch, which studios like Disney, Summit (Twilight Saga, anyone?), Warner Bros (“Why So Serious”) and Paramount realize adds significantly to their bottom line growth. Read more >>
Google to Identify Content Searches for Publishers
Complicating Demand Media, Yahoo!/Associated Content and potentially Aol/Seed’s algorithms and content milling plans, Google has a patent in play to harvest users’ searches for publishers.
Via FT: Google obtained a patent this year for a system that would help it identify “inadequate content” on the internet, based on comparisons of what people search for and what they find, executives who have reviewed the filing, said. The filing said data from the Google system could be sold to online publishers or given away for free[.]
Open Angel Forum and AngelList
Two relatively new resources for startup entrepreneurs looking for angel investments. AngelList springs from the VentureHacks group, while Open Angel Forum was founded by Jason Calacanis, after he challenged all of the angel forums and keiretsus who charged fees to startups seeking angels.
Via WSJ: Earlier this year, Internet entrepreneur and blogger Jason Calacanis started Open Angel Forum, which holds free pitch events in various cities where entrepreneurs selected from a pool of applicants can pitch to about 20 to 30 angel investors. [...] Another free service, AngelList, started in February by angels Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi, vets dozens of deals before highlighting the best ones in emails each week sent to a group of 200 investors.
These are open source solutions, like Y Combinator, for startups and angels:
- Open Angel Forum: http://openangelforum.com/
- AngelList: http://venturehacks.com/angellist
- Y Combinator: http://ycombinator.com/
Foot in the Future: PwC Global Media & Entertainment Outlook
With the recession clearing in digital media, the case is being made via PricewaterhouseCoopers that traditional media will drink more from the digital well, and be forced to take risks with their models.
This redrawing of the traditional/digital value chain will not change the conversion rate of digital dimes to analog dollars overnight, but it accelerates the conversion or transition process, and forces studios to get a “foot in the future,” as Bob Iger said recently.
Via THR: The biggest challenge in running a company as big and varied as Disney is “to maintain the balance between heritage and innovation.” Also tough is to resist those folks who want the company to invest in assets that are not “core or that don’t enhance the brand.”
[Iger] ”We looked at digital media and believed that there was a migration there by consumers whether we were there or not,” he said. “We didn’t want to be marginalized. We have to be where the fish are. [...] We’re in business with a lot of important third parties — theater owners, big-box retailers, satellite providers, TV affiliates — and this was deemed threatening. That was difficult to manage. But I felt it was important to do.”
With PwC’s new outlook, that equates to a validation of the digital subscription and download models. In addition with Blu-Ray and gaming consoles, more digital distribution gives the home entertainment market a slight upward bounce with, we suggest, strong social media marketing drivers. Read more >>
CAA Exit Package: $250M from KKR
Private equity is interested in the agency business, most likely because of their spin-off businesses in sports – is sports the new Hollywood model? – and less due to the changing value of talent in the media marketplace.
Via Deadline: Is this the beginning of the end of another Hollywood agency era? My sources tell me that, after months and months of negotiations with potential financial partners pursued by CAA, the agency has focused on KKR – Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co, the NYC-based private equity firm.
Via WSJ: The KKR investment would come at a tough time for Hollywood talent agencies, whose commissions have faltered. Plummeting DVD sales and the credit crunch have left studios cutting back on the number of shows and films they produce. This has limited work for actors and directors that agents represent, leading the agencies to explore new avenues of growth. Read more >>
Transhumanism: What Geeks Can Learn From Gurus
Robert Tercek – a friend, colleague and futurist – crafted a fascinating how-to on Transhumanism (i.e., “human enhancement”) movement marketing for the recent H+ Summit at Harvard.
Robert’s take was how today’s lifestyle gurus – Oprah (Tercek’s recent role was running digital media for her OWN network), Deepak Chopra, Tony Robbins and the like – all drive humanity forward with their respective and well communicated platforms.
Subtitled “Lessons for the Transhumanist Movement from the Self Help Industry,” the talk walked through media/culture’s take on transhumanism: from other political movement comparables to mass-culture film memes – 2001, Blade Runner, T2, X-Men, Gattaca, The Island and Brazil – and into other memes like unfair advantages (steroids), hybrid (larger-than-life animals) and into a self help outline (slide 47 onwards) that suggests humanizing the marketing around Transhumanism, so to speak. Read more >>
3Dios: Next Steps for 3D Film
From this morning’s 3D Next conference in Los Angeles, a diverse panel from Michael Stroud/ iHollywood on the future of 3D films.
The 3D industry that has created quite a boon for studios and exhibitors, while creating an area of potential upsell or backlash for consumers.
Panel: Next Steps for 3D Film: In the wake of the huge success of Avatar and Alice in Wonderland, 3D appears to have a secure future in cinema. The question is just how big: the appeal outside of kids, sci fi and horror remains unclear; and there’s still the dearth of theaters. An examination of the likely future.
Nike vs Adidas Football: Write the Future and Celebrate Originality
Two amazing visual feasts from the upcoming World Cup sports brands. Nike’s “Write the Future” which is an otherworldly transmedia snapshot from the football (okay, soccer) world of fame with surreal pull-outs of all of the stars. Brilliant diversity of camera work and video storytelling hyperbole.
A Tale of Two Netflix Strategy Decks
In a world where CEOs eschew social media sharing, Netflix’s Reed Hastings likes to share. Two recent strategy decks speak to Netflix’s desire to lead by standalone example: via company culture and the business opportunity that Netflix’s longtail and tv-driven consumption model with streaming has created.
The first deck on Netflix Business Opportunity was published to Slideshare five days ago and has 8.6k views; the second on Freedom and Responsibility Culture was published 10 months ago and has 404k views (here’s hoping a lot of HR directors use SlideShare). Read more >>