Beyond the Buzz Marketing

I admit it. When a year ends, I am one of those people who is always interested in looking back at the trends. Top television shows. Top music. Top movies. And this year when I was looking over the list of top movies, I noticed an interesting trend.

 According to Box Office Mojo, the top ten movies of the year rated as follows:

1: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

2: Cars

3: X-Men The Last Stand

4: The DaVinci Code

5: Night at the Museum

6: Superman Returns

7: Ice Age: The Meltdown

8: Happy Feet

9: Casino Royale

10: Over the Hedge

Now, in looking at this list, it’s pretty clear cut statement that the best movies if you want to make money are going to be family movies. It makes sense. Families with children (myself included) are all over the country looking for something that they can safely take their kids to go see. The movies are few and far between when you look at the sheer number of movies released each year. (Over 600 in 2006 alone!) So that’s pretty much immediately clear. “Night at the Museum” even made the list and it was only released two weeks before the end of 2006. That goes to show that a good story that’s done well has a pretty decent chance of making it big at the box office.

What isn’t immediately clear is how unoriginal the list is. Out of ten movies, five of them were movies from known franchises. You could make it six if you counted “The DaVinci Code” in that list since it was based on such an astoundingly popular book. This means that more than half of the movies were counting on the buzz from their predecessors. And this wasn’t even known as the ‘year of the sequels’ as previous years have been.

 This begs the question – Is Hollywood running out of stories to tell? Or is it just looking in the wrong places? Are there any new/fresh stories out there? Or is everything just a rehash of something that’s already been done? What do you think?

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Welcome to Beyond the Buzz Marketing’s blog. It’s an interesting phenomenon this first post. I work with clients all the time helping them to get over their fear and concerns about blogging, but that first post really is a doozy isn’t it? Feels like you should choose something monumental to break the ice you know?

But here I am and I’ve chosen something simple. A welcome and a post about what you’ll be able to find here in the future.

 First, you’ll find lots of discussion on viral marketing, grassroots campaigns, and the Internet. I’ll talk about the latest trends and things I think you’ll be seeing in the future. We’ve got our fingers in a little bit of everything, so it’ll be a mish mosh, but hopefully an entertaining one. If you’ve got a product to sell or something to share online, this will be where you’ll find a lot of useful information, tips and help to do so.

 You’re also going to see a lot of information about the entertainment industry. With clients like actors, movies, networks and television shows, I can’t help but discuss the latest happenings in the industry and how marketing is pushing more and more within that realm. We’ve all known for a long time that advertising has a powerful influence on what we watch and eat and how we dress. It’s becoming more prevalent and in more interesting ways. Some people see advertising/marketing as big billboards or in your face neon displays, but with the advent of the Internet it’s become far more sophisticated than just product placement. It’s become interactive and entertaining in and of itself. I’ll talk about that here as well.

I also keep an eye on popular fandoms and what they’re doing with their favorite movies, books and programs. These people are usually an indicator as to how well a program is going to do or what might help keep the program growing those all important ‘numbers’. They also show us the possibilities in marketing and advertising that most networks and studios miss because they aren’t paying attention. Fans are also an exceptionally powerful tool and valuable resource when marketing a show or movie. If they take ownership of your project onto themselves, they’ll market it for you. You’ll find some of that here as well.

Hopefully you’ll find it useful and informative but entertaining as well.  Thanks for stopping by.

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