mediation

Marketing and Movies: why Avatar, for all its three-dimensionality, felt distinctly two-dimensional

so I'm lucky enough to have just seen an opening screening of Avatar.  the movie has been a long time coming and if buzz is anything to go by its set to do rather well.  actually buzz is something to go by...  research by Aegis' ævolve shows a clear correlation between the amount of buzz a movie has in advance of release and the size of its opening weekend.  Google Insights for search, as you'd expect, shows the same thing, very significant increases over the last month or so:

its a big movie for both audiences and those involved but also for Hollywood.  with revenues increasingly moving to DVD and online, maximising revenues in cinema theatres is top priority for executives of studios that are feeling the pinch of a digitised economy more than most.

3D is key to this, and despite criticisms from, well, critics that far from adding to the cinema experience, 3D distracts from the quality of viewing, its a key strategy for maximising revenues in cinemas.  of course it also makes, for the moment, the cinema experience unique.  its normal if not preferable to watch a movie in the comfort of your home with the quality that we've come to expect from a cinema.  plus no one talks behind you and you don't have to cock your head to one side to see 90% of the screen.  3D is currently a unique offering in cinemas, an offering that can be uniquely monetised in cinemas.

in many ways, the technology is the draw of this movie; yet for all its future-facing there's been no sign of the ambitious and 21st century marketing initiatives some of us have come to expect post Cloverfield, Batman Begins and the like.  in fact for all its 21st Century technology Avatar feels distinctly 20th Century in its marketing...  all the opportunities to engage a potential audience up front thru transparency were dismissed, in favour of a publish-and-be-damned approach to make a movie and sell it.

and selling it is what this movie has been all about...  marketing efforts, for all their visibility, demand that you watch this movie rather than genuinely be part of the world from which it derives.  for all its 21st century capabilities there's nothing of the Wachowski in here: no world beyond the world to discover and explore.  and this seems distinctly ironic.  for a movie that cost $500m dollars to create, we surely deserve more than 150 minutes of cinema.  this movie begged for the trans-media but got nothing of the like: in a declined economy, $500m could be easily mistaken as a metaphor for what Cameron calls 'the Unobtanium'.

Covering a story like never before: what 56 newspapers in 45 countries can teach brands about the art of collaboration and cooperation

so the long and winding road of global climate change discussion and debate has brought us to 7th December 2009, and the Copenhagen Climate Summit.  the world's eyes and ears will converge on the gathering as political leaders meet to debate and, with luck, agree the principles of the collective action required to save us from ourselves.  an army of bloggers, Twitterers and reporters will all be there to capture - for us and for future generations - how it all went down.

the unprecedented media coverage that is no doubt to come is preceded today by a global media first orchestrated by the Guardian in London.  56 major newspapers in 45 countries have today published an identical editorial piece.  appearing in twenty different languages, the piece takes a single united message - the demanding of action - to a global audience.  Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger noted that "Newspapers have never done anything like this before - but they have never had to cover a story like this before"

collaboration on this scale is unprecedented, and difficult.  as the Guardian puts it; "Given that newspapers are inherently rivalrous, proud and disputatious, viewing the world through very different national and political prisms, the prospect of getting a sizeable cross-section of them to sign up to a single text on such a momentous and divisive issue seemed like a long shot"  ...but the long shot paid off and - with the very notable exceptions of the US and Australia aside - a united editorial piece is reaching a global audience, and its a good and powerful thing to see.

its a testament to what can be achieved when editors and publishers want to cooperate, made all the more potent at a time when much is being said about the waning power of the fourth estate.  and it begs a big question for brands...  where's the co-operation?  campaign after campaign has been rolled out to the world demonstrating commitment to reduce this or eliminate that - all inherently communicating on brands' terms rather than on the terms of the agenda against which they are developing comms...

the climate change agenda is bigger than any single brand, and some hard-fought co-opertaion could be just the thing to bring some increasingly needed credibility and scale to their - well intentioned - efforts.  and if the "rivalous, proud and disputatious" printing presses of the world can do it, then perhaps a group of enlightened, forward-thinking and pioneering brands can too.  its something I'd like very much to see.