There’s a memorable scene in Duck Soup when one of the Marx Brothers, who when caught red-handed while engaged in skullduggery, asks a witness, “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?” It’s a marvelous metaphor for those perplexing times in life when a common sense observation conflicts with information from a third party.
A few weeks ago, a reputable syndicated researcher reported its findings that 35% of consumers in a survey responded that they go to fewer movies over the past few years because they watch more films on video-on-demand. So are we on the cusp of the death of cinema?
Hardly…For years, domestic cinema admissions have tracked in a narrow band at 1.4 billion tickets sold. For 2009, domestic admissions were down about 4%, though that’s still within the historical band.
So who are going to believe?…your own eyes seeing the lines at theaters for The Dark Knight, Twilight, Marley & Me and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa?...or believe the surveys from experts?
Caution…All the experts are trying to pick the winners and losers in the topsy-turvey media
business, as consumers expand their consumption to the Internet, hand-held video devices, video game consoles and video-on-demand. There’s a pressure to be first to make dramatic calls. But don’t believe everything we are told, even if it comes from purported scientific investigation.
The second edition of Marketing to Moviegoers endorses forecasts that cinema ticket sales may trend very slightly down over the next few years – as exploding media alternatives fragment audience media consumption. But with 3D cinema projection and continued upgrade of theater facilities, movies will command higher average ticket prices so box office will be steady on a dollar basis even as unit sales slip slightly. Hey… that’s not bad for the 100+ year old medium of cinema!
The weakness in the consumer survey that produced the purported 35% decline in cinema-going is that it asked consumers what they recall, which is notoriously unreliable. TV program ratings service giant Nielsen is shifting from personal paper diaries that are manually filled out by viewers to wiring TV sets to electronically identify channels tuned. As part of the wired audience measurement, Nielson also has viewers confirm they are viewing by touching clicking hand-hand devices when prompted with on-screen messages. The reason for a rigid automated system is that consumers are sloppy with hand-entries in paper diaries.
When consumer electronics giant Philips asked consumers what software titles they wanted for an interactive disc player years ago, the dominant reply was “educational programs.” Philips dutifully marketed educational programs that ultimately did not sell well. Meanwhile, its competitors thrived with low-brow entertainment games like Donkey Kong.
As the second edition of Marketing to Moviegoers reveals, major studios conduct seven distinct kinds of audience research, which mostly does not rely on consumer recall.
Another canard making the rounds is that today’s youth doesn’t watch TV anymore and doesn’t consume other traditional media because they are glued the web and other new media. Using reliable wired metering measurement, Nielsen finds conventional TV viewing is actually increasing.
So what gives?…deeper analysis indicates the youth audience is indeed heavily new-media oriented. But overlooked is that it is also adept at multi-tasking—having a TV on while surfing the web. For this media-savvy audience segment, consumption is exploding because of overlap, which means old media consumption can still hold its own.
So don’t believe the gloomsters that today peddle the notion that movie-going is certain to the way of the 8-track cassette tape simply because new media is cluttering the landscape. If you ask them, consumers really don’t know where their consumption habits are going. They are particularly inarticulate about new media, since they have little historical experience and new media is evolving…a moving target.
A couple of things haven’t changed. People—particularly young people – crave out-of-home entertainment and cinema going is a shared human experience that is hard to beat. Films playing in cinemas earn big money in downstream DVD and TV sales, so the economic engine that produces movies looks to keep on running.
By Robert Marich
Robert is the authort of the excellent book:
Marketing To Moviegoers: Second Edition
A Lively Handbook Explaining Cinema Marketing
http://www.marketingmovies.net/