Marketing and Distribution in the Digital Age
Penguin December 8th, 2007
I was reading a post by Seth Godin about monopolies and it got me thinking about distributing your short film or indie movie in the current digital age.
First he talks about how the media companies got their monopolies in the first place.
There are three things that led to the monopolies we now enjoy:
1. The FCC limited the number of TV and radio stations in every market, allowing three networks to dominate TV and the record companies to dominate radio.
2. Copyright ensures that we can charge a lot for a book or a record… way more than it costs to make it.
3. The limited number of physical distribution outlets (record stores, movie theatres) guarantees that distributors with clout get more shelf space.
In the age of the internet, all three of these are gone.
1. Channels – We no longer have a limited set of channels that our media can go out on. Even though YouTube is the big daddy in video distribution, there are plenty of other sites that offer essentially the same features. Sure, they may not have the same number of views or hits, but have you seen how much garbage there is on YouTube? Your masterpiece will be lost amongst the chaff.
As important as YouTube is, I think all these services are just that, a service. You still need your own blog to act as the channel. Once customers know a consistent place to get their information or their entertainment, they’ll keep coming back. YouTube and all these other video sharing services are just the platform that enables you to create your own channel.
2. Copyright – Copyright is dead. It lost to Napster (which also died), BitTorrent, and all the other P2P applications out there. Although the media companies try and say that copying digital material is “stealing”, it’s technically only copyright infringement which is a civil law. But what does that mean for you? It means that the value of your work is the work, not the media it goes out on.
People are so used to getting free music or movies or TV that the idea of paying for it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Yet, people do. Look at Radiohead’s latest release, set your own price. And people paid for it when they didn’t HAVE TO. Those are the key words, “have to”. Radiohead can do this because their “channel” is consistent, we’ll talk more about this later.
3. Distribution – Copying 700mb, 4gb, is almost trivial today. The same reasons that make copyright dead enable distribution to cost essentially nothing: P2P. This isn’t to say that as an indie filmmaker you shouldn’t be pressing DVDs, but don’t make that the only option to get your movie into people’s hands. Especially if it’s your first movie. No one knows how good it’s going to be so no one’s going to invest the time in it without some sort of referral.
Have you heard the new album from Bill Frisell? Read Descarte’s Error? Seen Croupier? Didn’t think so. No time. Of course, if someone you trusted insisted that you spend the time to try them out, you might. Of course, if they were created by people you’d liked in the past, you’d be more likely to try them out. If you could try them out for free, you’d be more likely to try them out as well.
Conclusions
So, what does that mean to you, as an indie filmmaker? Stop trying to fit into the old model. It’s obvious that the old model is dying. Why jump on a dying boat? The new model is all about relationships. Your relationship with the customer.
Seth sums it up with these 5 points
1. Make it easy for your happy users to tell as many of their friends as possible.
2. Give away free samples early and often.
3. Get permission from anyone who likes what you do to follow up with anticipated, personal and relevant messages that benefit both of you.
4. If this requires changing what you make and what you charge for, fine.
5. If steps 1,2, 3 and 4 mess up your current business model, fine.
So here’s my little secret idea. Give away all your work until you’ve built up a fan base. That fan base could be 5, it could be 5000 people, but it’s a start. Prove to them that your product is worth consuming. Let them consume it on their time. Offer different options for the way they consume your product: YouTube or Veoh, BitTorrent in HQ, BitTorrent for iPod, DVD. And then price them accordingly.
For the physical product, differentiate it from the digital offerings. How can you make it different? How can you add value? Maybe a poster or an action figure. Maybe you get two DVDs so you can give one to a friend.
Even when you’re successful, I would say, give the first quarter of your movie away. Enough with the trailers that are a poor indication of story structure and what the film is actually about. Set them up so they will be interested in the product and people will eat it up.
- Penguin
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