UK Independent: Texting Blamed for Summer Movie Flops
LA Times: High-Tech Word of Mouth Maims Movies in a Flash
These two pieces dissect how new technologies like SMS and other online forums cut the legs out from under Hollywood's traditional marketing strategies. Where it used to take a week, or at least a weekend, for the public to form an opinion about whether a movie is worth seeing, a movie's fate may now be sealed literally overnight, as kids are typing their pans or raves into text messages on their cell phones for all their friends before they even leave the theaters.
It's really the anti-marketing. True, SMS is still anemic in the U.S. market, but the trend does seem to be rising and has nowhere to go but up. Scariest of all (for marketers), I can't think of how marketers can turn this trend to their advantage. The whole reason SMS is having such an impact is that the new technologies are letting consumers do an end-run around the marketing spin to simply tell it like it is.
Movies may be uniquely positioned to live and die on the success of the opening hours of their product launch, but the writing may be on wall for all marketers who should take note of the lesson the movie moguls are learning: the only way to make money anymore is to make good movies.
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