The future of marketing, buzzwords and why it seems that the studios behind the films have their heads up their asses.
The future of marketing, buzzwords and why it seems that the studios behind the films have their heads up their asses.
Earlier this week I attended the OMMA "Welcome to the Machine" conference. Maybe the title alone should have clued me in to the fact that it was very machine like in the information brought to the table. The conference was geared toward marketing and ad agencies about the future of web technologies and marketing strategies.
My reason to be there was looking toward trends and future technologies that would be useful for filmmakers. Admittedly, OMMA might not be the perfect conference for that, but every movie needs marketing and every movie needs visibility, so it did seem logical to me that I would hear some useful stuff. During one of the boring power point presentations, hosted by a generic guy in a suit, the last slide said "people are now going to the web to find information". No Shit!!! The conference seemed full of people that were happy to pitch you about their "cool" company or website, and less about what they were doing to stay "cool" and relevant.
Here is what I took away from the conference: BUZZWORDS!
Scalable viewing, evergreen content, wrappers, behavioral targeting, dynamic assemblage
In sessions we are still talking about "the long tail", and "permission marketing", but both of these topics have been covered heavily in the past years with books of information on the subjects. Standardization and analytics were the heated subject of all the jam packed Widget sessions. Yes I agree that these things are important, but really did I need to go to a seminar to find this out? The best was this AB TESTING and MULTI-VARIANT TESTING? Wow! Now that sounds really cool, but what it turned out to be was quite literally AB comparison shopping and multi comparison shopping. Pricegrabber and a zillion other website have been doing this for years, but it was brought up as if it was INNOVATIVE.
Yes the true buzzword of the show INNOVATION.
There WAS some good stuff I got from the conference. I did learn more about the business end of the agencies and how difficult it is to get and keep talented people. This is a fascinating industry and they certainly do want to push the envelope in far reaching directions, but a lot of the people involved seem to just be riding a wave and trying to stay on. With the exception of a few key speakers not many were doing much to push the creative aspect within their respective agencies.
Years ago I worked at a post production company that dealt with many high end clients and had vicious deadlines on a regular basis. My boss at the time seemed always to be nearing a heart attack as disasters and problems would arise almost hourly. The truth of the matter was that he would take any simple to normal task and turn it into a mountain of grief, run around like a chicken with his head cut off telling everyone in the building how hard his job is. Later after the supposed fiasco had cleared he would brag about what a hero he is for getting the job done. Here's the catch, I knew upon taking the job that the deadlines were tough, and the jobs were studio driven (as a rule studios change their minds a lot, and often at the last minute.) So when a fiasco occurred, it was really just part of the job, you deal with it and move on. I find NO value in people who live and work like this. Everyday brings new challenges and we all deal with them, tonight my fiasco would be doing the dishes. Oh my god the world will end! But I am happy to report, that after much writing about the dishes and analyzing the stack I was able to overcome and take the 5 minutes and put them in the washer. Fiasco averted! Phew that was tough! The point of this story is that it felt to me that many of the people that attended the OMMA show were doing just that, making mountains out of molehills and bragging about the tough clients and super creative work they were doing.
I call bullshit on this! If you are meant to be in a creative position then do something creative, don't follow trends, and don't copy and piggyback onto another's idea. Look hard and come up with a solution. Yes follow the necessary steps to monetize your work and be smart, but creating a widget that counts down to the release of a film is not really forward thinking. My 9 year old nephew can make a widget that counts down to his birthday! Yet tonight I read online the big news that the Indiana Jones people have created a WIDGET that does just this. How about a widget that takes Indy's trademark whip and smacks the executive of this innovative idea across the face until he comes up with something useful!
I will end on this, there were some speakers who really stood out and seemed to really know their shit. There were some that saw the potential of the web universe and had cool ideas and just didn't know how to rope them in to be user friendly. I do give credit to each and every person who had the courage to go to the front of the room and talk about themselves and their companies. When the focus of a conference is scattered its not surprising that their would be some wishy-washy speakers. At the next one maybe OMMA can really get use the analylitics to see that the behavioral target of the attendees was not to hear what they can read about on the web, or to be pitched to, but to learn techniques in innovation and monetization. Two buzz words that were thrown about, but never elaborated on.
SpookyDan
The future of marketing, buzzwords and why it seems that the studios behind the films have their heads up their asses.
Earlier this week I attended the OMMA "Welcome to the Machine" conference. Maybe the title alone should have clued me in to the fact that it was very machine like in the information brought to the table. The conference was geared toward marketing and ad agencies about the future of web technologies and marketing strategies.
My reason to be there was looking toward trends and future technologies that would be useful for filmmakers. Admittedly, OMMA might not be the perfect conference for that, but every movie needs marketing and every movie needs visibility, so it did seem logical to me that I would hear some useful stuff. During one of the boring power point presentations, hosted by a generic guy in a suit, the last slide said "people are now going to the web to find information". No Shit!!! The conference seemed full of people that were happy to pitch you about their "cool" company or website, and less about what they were doing to stay "cool" and relevant.
Here is what I took away from the conference: BUZZWORDS!
Scalable viewing, evergreen content, wrappers, behavioral targeting, dynamic assemblage
In sessions we are still talking about "the long tail", and "permission marketing", but both of these topics have been covered heavily in the past years with books of information on the subjects. Standardization and analytics were the heated subject of all the jam packed Widget sessions. Yes I agree that these things are important, but really did I need to go to a seminar to find this out? The best was this AB TESTING and MULTI-VARIANT TESTING? Wow! Now that sounds really cool, but what it turned out to be was quite literally AB comparison shopping and multi comparison shopping. Pricegrabber and a zillion other website have been doing this for years, but it was brought up as if it was INNOVATIVE.
Yes the true buzzword of the show INNOVATION.
There WAS some good stuff I got from the conference. I did learn more about the business end of the agencies and how difficult it is to get and keep talented people. This is a fascinating industry and they certainly do want to push the envelope in far reaching directions, but a lot of the people involved seem to just be riding a wave and trying to stay on. With the exception of a few key speakers not many were doing much to push the creative aspect within their respective agencies.
Years ago I worked at a post production company that dealt with many high end clients and had vicious deadlines on a regular basis. My boss at the time seemed always to be nearing a heart attack as disasters and problems would arise almost hourly. The truth of the matter was that he would take any simple to normal task and turn it into a mountain of grief, run around like a chicken with his head cut off telling everyone in the building how hard his job is. Later after the supposed fiasco had cleared he would brag about what a hero he is for getting the job done. Here's the catch, I knew upon taking the job that the deadlines were tough, and the jobs were studio driven (as a rule studios change their minds a lot, and often at the last minute.) So when a fiasco occurred, it was really just part of the job, you deal with it and move on. I find NO value in people who live and work like this. Everyday brings new challenges and we all deal with them, tonight my fiasco would be doing the dishes. Oh my god the world will end! But I am happy to report, that after much writing about the dishes and analyzing the stack I was able to overcome and take the 5 minutes and put them in the washer. Fiasco averted! Phew that was tough! The point of this story is that it felt to me that many of the people that attended the OMMA show were doing just that, making mountains out of molehills and bragging about the tough clients and super creative work they were doing.
I call bullshit on this! If you are meant to be in a creative position then do something creative, don't follow trends, and don't copy and piggyback onto another's idea. Look hard and come up with a solution. Yes follow the necessary steps to monetize your work and be smart, but creating a widget that counts down to the release of a film is not really forward thinking. My 9 year old nephew can make a widget that counts down to his birthday! Yet tonight I read online the big news that the Indiana Jones people have created a WIDGET that does just this. How about a widget that takes Indy's trademark whip and smacks the executive of this innovative idea across the face until he comes up with something useful!
I will end on this, there were some speakers who really stood out and seemed to really know their shit. There were some that saw the potential of the web universe and had cool ideas and just didn't know how to rope them in to be user friendly. I do give credit to each and every person who had the courage to go to the front of the room and talk about themselves and their companies. When the focus of a conference is scattered its not surprising that their would be some wishy-washy speakers. At the next one maybe OMMA can really get use the analylitics to see that the behavioral target of the attendees was not to hear what they can read about on the web, or to be pitched to, but to learn techniques in innovation and monetization. Two buzz words that were thrown about, but never elaborated on.
SpookyDan