Cymfony's Influence 2.0

I'm not writing another post about SoaP

Aside from the occasional editorial comment, I'll shut up and let the viewers tell New Line Cinema how to monetize SoaP further:  instead of a traditional post-release marketing strategy, New Line must continue to expand on the social media marketing strategy by:

1. Exploiting this campy B-movie with special fan showings,
2. spicing up the DVD with an audience participation track,
3. packaging "how to throw a home SoaP viewing" kits, and
4. Stocking offical Snakes Gear in the online store, like official SoaP rubber snakes, masks, and snake puppets.

Jim: Forget the movie -- the fun is in the social experience.

Zubkavich: Is it a "good" film? Hell, no! The core premise...is completely ridiculous and mind-numbingly stupid. Does it make for a fun B-movie worthy conflict? Yuppers."

Martini Republic: "...the enjoyment had only 50% to do with the movie itself, which is not up to par with the director's previous effort. The beauty of the evening ... was the fun of listening to a sarcastic, cynical, ruthless audience."

A Bunch of Us: "I think the cash I laid down was the best Hamiltons I ever spent. The movie in and of itself won't be good unless you see it in a crowded theatre....the best parts were the really the crowd antics:

• There were dudes running around with snake masks on before the movie began, and started alternating crowd chants of "snakes!" vs. "planes!"
• Whenever there was a lull in the film, everyone hissed. Like snakes.
• When Sam Jackson delivered THEE line, the crowd went nuts. People stood up and cheering and whistling, and people threw rubber snakes at the screen.

Jim: Give us more of this social experience

BrillBuilding: "Hisses and snarky jokes were already going strong by the time the trailers rolled around...When the snake-timer counts down and the snakes were free...those who brought their own snake toys threw them into the air for what seemed like a solid two minutes....There was certainly a Rocky Horror aspect to all of this."

AimlesslyWandering: "I would only recommend this movie if they have a fan showing after this weekend, like a Rocky Horror midnight showing. I would assume that these will start in the very near future."

Jim: Give us cool snake merchandise (PS. the stuff in the official online store is pretty lame in comparison to what fans came up with on their own)

Queencallipygos: "I met my friends...and [they] presented each of us with a snake hand puppet, complete with a little squeezy thing inside the mouth to make it flip out a rubber tonge and hiss...someone else seeing the movie came up, looked at the size of the line, and saw us standing ther giggling and playing with snake puppets. 'Wow,' I heard one of them mutter, 'and I thought we were obsessed.' "

Jim: Watching the DVD won't cut it...

Kungfurodeo: "Good mindless fun, with or without the hype, and I did jump in my seat a couple of times. I don't think I'll ever watch it again -- seeing it in my living room will never compare to a packed Staten Island theater filled with 15 year olds."

Zubkavich: "Home video viewing will take the wind out of this thing's sails like nothing else."

Jim: ...unless they add special features to it

Bigmaki: "I just don't see it playing nearly as well on DVD as it does with a (mostly)full theater. I'd put money on an "audience participation" track of some sort whenever that DVD does come out."

A Bunch of Us: "The movie in and of itself won't be good unless you see it in a crowded theatre, or alternatively, on DVD with your drinking buddies (playing one of the drinking games that will inevitably pop up on the internet)."

new line cinema SoaP marketing strategy social media

New Line Cinema: Stop Your SoaP Griping!

New Line Cinema's apparent disappointment with the box office take of Snakes on A Plane shows they have missed the point of WOM.

Since everyone else in the blogosphere has written a post about SoaP, I have restrained myself. Until I saw this article in the New York Times with the headline "Snakes: A Letdown After Hype on the Web." The following facts in the article pushed me over the edge:

• "The film was still the No. 1 draw at the box office during the weekend."
• "It basically performed like a normal horror movie." said David Tuckerman, president for theatrical distribution for New Line.
• The article notes they only spent $20 million on marketing
• Box office was $15.2 million on the opening weekend.

So let me get this right -- New Line spent about half the marketing budget they normally would ( Hollywood Reporter notes $36.5 million is average), drove the same amount of revenue they would expect from this type of movie, and still grabbed the #1 slot for the weekend.

And they're disappointed?

They make a consciously low-budget, B-movie and are surprised when the alchemy of WOM doesn't turn this lead into gold. Duh!

Count your profits, go home, and plan the WOM campaign for your next movie! (and fire half of your marketing staff since you don't need them anymore).

work of mouth new line cinema Snakes on A Plane

Five indicators that 2007 will be the Year of the Corporate Blog

2006 was the year for early adopters of corporate blogs. Based on these five indicators, 2007 is shaping up to be a year in which major companies kickstart their blogging initiatives.

The summer vacation/doldrums have kept me away from blogging for a while. And, I confess, I'm cheating with this post that was in iMediaConnection about a week ago! But in case you missed it there....

Here it is: 

2006 has seen unabated growth in blogs. Just since February, the blogosphere has grown from 27.2 millions blogs to 50.1 million, continuing the trajectory that David Sifry has cited that the blogosphere doubles every 6 months. Companies like Boeing, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Intuit continue to use blogs effectively from high-level corporate communications vehicles to intimate conversations with their customers and other partners.

But these pioneers remain the exception among Fortune 500 companies. Dell is a notable addition to the list of corporate bloggers this year, but today’s count at the Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki shows only 30 companies, or 6 percent of the list of the premier companies in the

United States

have public blogs. A Jupiter report in June confirmed that smaller companies surpassed larger companies in their embrace of word of mouth strategies and communication tools.

Recently, I’ve seen 5 indicators that lead me to believe that 2007 will be a breakthrough year for corporate blogging.

Indicator #1: Mainstream industries join the corporate blog list. Nike, Starwood Hotels, McDonald’s, and Wells Fargo Bank have joined the technology and Internet companies who first embraced the blogosphere. Microsoft, Oracle and Google have clear business reasons to adopt new technologies. The fact that these new entrants offering distinctly non-digital products have begun to see the value of blogs will encourage their peers and competitors to join.

Indicator #2: Corporate blogging topics are diversifying. McDonald’s “Open for Discussion” blog presents the fast food chain’s corporate social responsibility initiatives from their employment practices, packaging and purchasing. Starwood Hotels’ “The Lobby” taps a group of travel writers to post items like travel tips, news about new mobile devices, and information about their hotels. Wells Fargo Bank took advantage of the 100^th anniversary of the

San Francisco

earthquake (and the role the bank played in helping the city recover) to launch its “Guided by History Blog”. The blog addresses emergency preparedness, and given this year’s extremes of rainfall, temperature and predictions for the hurricane season their choice of topics is very timely.

Many of the early corporate blogs including GM’s “Fast Lane” and Boeing’s “Randy’s Journal” involved executives discussing corporate strategy. Understandably, some companies may not want to take this approach. The range of topics in these new examples will stimulate creative thinking about topics that best fit a company’s goals and strategies.

Indicator #3: Interest in best practices continues to grow. We recently had direct experience with the level of interest in the market for blogging knowledge. Cymfony teamed up with one of our PR agency partners, Porter Novelli, to survey business bloggers to learn more about their experiences with this emerging communication tool. For the webinar presenting the research findings, well over 300 people registered and 82% of those attended! We also conducted a poll of the attendees and while 36% of them currently have blogs, 66% indicated they were at least somewhat likely to have a blog in 2007. In the survey itself, 89% of respondents agreed that blogs will grow in importance over the next 3 years.

Indicator #4: Positive results decrease the Fear Factor. Many companies I’ve talked to are reluctant to engage in the blogosphere for fear that they will receive negative comments and criticism. The results of our research indicate negative experiences are the exception, not the rule. Of the 42% of companies who said a blog post had impacted their company, over 90% said the impact was positive. Three-quarters of respondents further indicated that blogs had achieved their initial goals and cited increased media coverage, web site traffic, and sales leads. The lure of these benefits will bolster blogging while the decreasing fear will fade as a deterrent.

Indicator #5: Social media can be a source of market insight. Just as fear of criticism is subsiding, so is the belief that monitoring the blogosphere is only about detecting potential attacks on the company. The top three reasons for monitoring blogs were to discover emerging trends, gain competitive insight, and to understand the word-of-mouth about their company. Since crises are (fortunately) rare events for companies, alone they are not sufficient reason to devote resources to blog monitoring. But staying in tune with market trends and competitive moves are vital daily activities for companies.

2006 was the year for the early adopters of corporate blogs. Based on these indicators, 2007 is shaping up to be the year that the fast followers will kickstart corporate blogging. This wave will spur greater experimentation with topics, audiences, and formats, leading more companies to jump into the blogosphere.

Will all this change the freewheeling nature of blogs? I doubt it. The blogosphere thrives on diversity of voices. But this time next year the voice of business, currently almost absent from the dialogue, will have a more prominent presence.