A marketing attitude tickles the creative genius in many entertainment entrepreneurs. Marketing "place" is about making one's products and services available to prospective buyers when, where and how they want them. Marketing strategies mix and match indirect channels such as wholesale and exhibitor channels. Single or multiple channels. Long supply chains or short. Domestic and/or global. Urban, suburban and rural.
With the ever-inventive entrepreneurial energy in the entertainment whorl, people find venues for entertainment sales not only through traditional theaters and broadcast, but on street corners, in homes, over the Internet, over phones, through clubs, by ship, plane and with leaps over tall buildings!
Options for delivery of intellectual property are exploding: movies, games, music, news, and educational content. Distribution takes place through theaters, rental stores, sell-through stores, catalogs, non-theatrical groups, the Internet, even cell phones and the latest new media gadget.
Just a few of the technologies that have provided platforms for creative sales of digital media include broadband, cellular phones, hard disk miniaturization, database tools, simulators, and the growing options in integrated home theater systems.
Technologies that were invented for delivery mechanisms become the entertainment themselves. There hasn't been such a cross fertilization of place and function since the Italian Renaissance shook the communications world with the mixture of art, music, literature and political ideas in the 1400s.
In today's digital renaissance we have digital entertainment, education and news tapping the political and military fronts. Digital delivery of information affects business, education, government and family communities.
The half-life of platforms, strategies and formats are shorter than ever. Affiliate programs on the Internet saw their peak. Now we have RSS feeds, blogs, vblogs, audio blogs and mobile computing. Many families no longer lease a land-based phone line--relying strictly on their cellular phones, instant messaging and e-mail for personal communications.
Through all these mobility and technological changes, the human factor remains constant. People like people. They like meeting places and a reason to get together. The campfire might be digital, but it hasn't lost its glow. That's where marketing shines.
A marketing attitude about technology is really about availability of personal and business photos and recordings and letters and records -- not to mention collections of music, games and movies.
Place is about availability -- not just sales availability, but usability. Ability is the heart of a marketing attitude. Successful technologists think about people as they contort bits and bites into new opportunities. .
Today, the "place" of entertainment distribution is mind-boggling. Producers and distributors must pick and choose their distribution avenues, but also manage their presence in all of the key market distribution channels. When technologists work closely with marketing strategists, they can keep pace with groundswell market shifts created by competitors, collaborators and global shifts in economic, political and social changes.
Finally i would like to end my blog with the words of a famous promo director in Hollywood:
“We’re in the business of cheating, let’s face it. We fix voice-overs, create dialogue to clear up a story, use stock footage. We give pushup bras to flat-chested girls, take people’s eyes and put them where we want them. And sometimes it works.”
- David Schneiderman
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