Entertainment retail has been ripe for reinvention for a long time, so thank goodness the studios are finally stepping up and having a go.
When it comes to selling online, the entertainment industry has always been more “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” than “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” You take your product - be it a movie, a book, whatever - you chuck the packshot next to an ‘add to basket’ button and you wait for Joe Schmo to come along and purchase. From Joe’s point of view, he browses or searches, he clicks and fills in some forms, then he waits - either for a package to land on his doormat or a download to land on his hard drive. It’s an experience more akin to queuing in a Soviet potato queue than cascading into a world of fantasy and imagination.
Which is weird. Because this is the entertainment industry. It’s supposed to be about pushing boundaries and making dreams come true but, right now, the purchase bit - arguably, the most important bit - is just about the most leaden experience imaginable. If the entertainment industry really is under threat from elements like digital bootleggers, surely the one thing it has in its locker is making legitimate shopping fun?
From Solo Web to Social Web
If you go to iTunes or Amazon - the two behemoths of digital entertainment retail - the experience is much the same as it’s been for the past ten years: you, a screen, a catalogue and a credit card. And that used to be fine: once upon a time, everything on the internet (including shopping) was a solitary pursuit. But, in 2014, 80% of a consumer’s digital time is spent being social, and that means you need new, social tools to convert potential customers into paying customers.
The world of entertainment lives and dies by changes in technology as, every year, the tools we develop allow us better to realise the dreams in our heads. Where would we be without the printing press? Without broadcast technology? Without CGI, 3D or IMAX? But the way we sell entertainment online simply hasn’t kept up with the biggest technological transformation of the past decade: the jump from the solo web to the social web.
Word of Mouth: The Next Generation
Entertainment - as an industry - is all about numbers. I couldn’t tell you what the best selling deckchair is in the UK, but I can tell you what film is currently Number One at the box office, and which games are blistering the nation’s thumbs the quickest. And behind those numbers are customers - existing fans, for sure, but new acquisitions, too. If you’re not selling to new customers with every release, if you’re not growing your numbers, you’ve had it.
That’s why the studios spend a massive 35% of the average movie’s gross budget on marketing. They have to influence people to put their hands in their pockets, a little bit deeper, a little bit more often than they did before. Of course, the best way to market entertainment products is word of mouth. Your friends take you to gigs, your peers lend you books, no one goes to the cinema alone. (Okay, no one except me. Stop judging.) Word of mouth is so pivotal they even put vox pops in the adverts these days, imaginary friends standing outside a cinema telling you that ‘Slime Monster 6’ is the scariest movie since ‘Slime Monster 4.’
But let’s be frank: traditional marketing can try to wear the clothes of peer-to-peer buzz, but just isn’t keeping pace with the modern world. It’s still selling to an imaginary ideal customer, who’s loyal and trusting and wants to hear what brands have to say. But loyalty’s become a plastic card and some cookie-cutter coupons, while, according to Forrester, only 8% of people even believe what brands say online. How about social? Well, brands are a tiny bit better trusted there but, unfortunately, no one’s listening to them. We all knew that organic reach was tricky, but the latest data shows that as little as 2% of the content that brands produce makes it as far as their fans’ timelines and news feeds.
How do you Solve a Problem like Organic Reach?
Entertainment brands need to try a new kind of marketing, where it’s all about giving the people who are on-message, the people who do love your products, ideas, campaigns and offers that they can take out to their friends. Because, while we don’t trust brands, we do trust each other - eight times as much, in fact. And that’s a massively compelling contrast.
The trick, though, is to ensure that your existing customers aren’t just talking to their friends, they’re selling to them, too. That means keeping people in a social experience, not jarringly dragging them out of it and asking them to spend five minutes, credit card in hand, at iTunes or Amazon - or even at your own e-store. You need to provide a social call to action (“join me as I buy this” instead of “click here to purchase”), and you need to make the transaction itself social, blurring the lines between talking and sharing and shopping. And that’s what Social Selling is all about.
NBCUniversal: A New Frontier (for Social Selling)
NBCUniversal changed the way movies are made, they changed the way television is broadcast and now they’re about to change the way entertainment is bought. They won’t just be shifting products, they’ll be working with the fans to create products. They’ll reward their passion and evangelism with money-can’t-buy access to their favourite stars and influence over their favourite titles. They’ll actually be selling entertaining things in an entertaining way.
Combine the three elements of co-creation, dynamic pricing and gamification into your online retail strategy and suddenly, social isn’t just a place where you talk about your products, it’s a place where you can sell them, too. It’s a whole new channel. And that’s the path the entertainment industry is beginning to explore as, finally, technology is beginning to power the way it sells its wares as well as producing them.
By Gideon Lask, CEO and Founder of Buyapowa.
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