Abstract
In this chapter, we illustrate that there is value hidden in the way the different elements of the entertainment marketing mix are coordinated. We introduce the blockbuster concept and the niche concept as two integrated entertainment-marketing strategies. The logic of the blockbuster concept is to “pre-sell” new offerings by creating strong pre-release buzz, essentially separating the success of an entertainment product from the quality of its execution (and the risk that is associated with the production of such quality). The niche concept has a post-release focus, building on high quality for a specialized audience and the triggering of informed cascades via word of mouth and other stakeholders. We provide empirical evidence that the blockbuster concept is the dominant one in entertainment, and that it is often taken to extreme levels. We note that the dominance of the blockbuster concept carries industry-wide risk, potentially driving consumers away from traditional forms of entertainment to new ones such as social media, and thus implies the danger of massive, very expensive failures.
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- 1.
What kind of word is “blockbuster” after all? Originally, the term was used by American journalists in the early 1940s to describe massive bombs that were capable of destroying a whole city block. Later this impact was transferred to anything that made a strong public impact—for example, the Chicago Tribune described Broadway managers’ reaction to a request to collectively shut down all entertainment as a result of war mobilization “as if a blockbuster had landed on Manhattan.” In the context of entertainment, “blockbuster” was first used as a “purely economic term” (Shone 2004, p. 28)—early mentions named theater plays that were so successful that other shows (“on the block”) were “busted,” and later, all extremely successful products, regardless of their characteristics. The use of the term blockbuster, regardless of an entertainment product’s actual market performance, is a more recent phenomenon; it began to gain popularity in the early 2000s.
- 2.
We discuss the limited pricing decisions for entertainment that are in use today in the previous chapter.
- 3.
The 25-words rule is featured quite prominently in Robert Altman’s Hollywood satire The Player, when executive Griffin Mill is pitched a story—and then criticizes the pitch for exceeding the “magical threshold.”
- 4.
Today, the novel has sold more than 11 million copies (Canning 2010b, p. 573). Interestingly, Benchley’s book never made it to the top spot of the New York Times list (that spot was occupied at that time by Richard Adams’ wonderful rabbit novel Watership Down).
- 5.
The immense production problems (which, as we argue in this book’s distribution chapter, were responsible for the film’s summer release) led the crew to nickname it “Flaws” (Canning 2010b, p. 573).
- 6.
For an overview of the prominence of other brands in Hollywood films from 2003-2013, take a look at the database that Elberse and Krasney (2013) have compiled.
- 7.
Please keep in mind that the actual costs of producing and marketing a film are even higher, as these numbers contain only the North American theatrical release. See also our discussion of production and marketing budgets as critical resources for entertainment firms in our chapter on entertainment product characteristics.
- 8.
As we will discuss, the faster return of money brings several advantages for producers. But the time a product needs to return its investments must not be confused with its overall success: the first Star Wars film still remains the most successful in terms of total North American theatrical revenues, at least when re-releases are considered.
- 9.
The film received a C + CinemaScore rating and an IMDb rating of 4.1 out of 10 from moviegoers, along with a “Tomatometer” score of only 24% from reviewers.
- 10.
See our discussion of recommenders and their role for consumer decision making in our chapter on “earned” entertainment communication.
- 11.
Their follow-up study also points to certain limitations—Brynjolfsson et al. find that while the tail got longer, consumers were not particularly interested in the far end of the tail, with the slope of the curve becoming steeper for “ultra-niche” titles (those with a rank below 100,000).
- 12.
For example, No. 1 albums in the UK sold more in 2008 than four years earlier, while all other music sold less. The five most-viewed TV shows in the U.S. clearly lost less audience between 2001 and 2009 than all other shows. And Top-10 bestselling books sold 75% more in the UK in 2008 than a decade earlier, easily beating the trend for all other books. For details, see The Economist (2009).
- 13.
The increase in inequality of budget allocation over time is almost linear; respective regression functions have R2 values of 0.84 (for the 100 largest films) and 0.95 (all major films). All numbers we mention here refer to the normalized version of the coefficient (which ranges from 0 to 1).
- 14.
Satterwhite et al. (2016) offer an interesting audio-visual analysis of the music of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, concluding that the producers intentionally avoid intense and memorable musical themes for their films to avoid the risk of confusing or offending audiences. They argue that the films do not use “bad” music—but music that is “bland and inoffensive.”
- 15.
This insight also offers a final chance to remind us all of the limits of empirical research that uses historical data (in Entertainment Science, as well as in other disciplines). The usability of a study is always tied to the relevance of the context in which it was conducted. If the context changes in meaningful ways, past empirical findings lose their predictive power.
- 16.
Our discussion here is inspired by what we wrote earlier in Hennig-Thurau (2013). We feel that things haven’t appeased since then, but rather worsened. (Although we have been wrong with our expectation of The Lego Movie…)
- 17.
Mr. Ratner was speaking of Rotten Tomatoes in particular, but it’s easy to see that his critique would also apply to other sources and forms of immediate quality information.
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Hennig-Thurau, T., Houston, M.B. (2019). Integrated Entertainment Marketing: Creating Blockbusters and Niche Products by Combining Product, Communication, Distribution, and Pricing Decisions. In: Entertainment Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89292-4_15
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