Cinema Advertising is Not Cool
Certain to cause our Tivo-addicted, ad avoiding culture to unleash a mammoth-sized torrent of popcorn on him, National CineMedia CMO said, "How cool would it be for someone to walk into your living room, sit down and watch a large-screen version of your commercial, and know that there is nowhere else for them to go?" Yes, Cliff, how cool would it be to hang from a noose tied to your nuts? We've paid our ten dollars to see the movie and will pass on the ads, thank you very much.
Comments
This really is amazing. The box office is in it's worst slump since the 80's and they wonder why people aren't showing up at the theater. As usual they'll blame piracy and any other factors yet never look at the real reasons:
1. The high cost of ticket sales
2. Poor quality of product
3. The red-hot DVD market (and shrinking release window from premiere to DVD)
4. And finally the god-awful ad's.
Who in there right mind (on the advertising or motion picture end) really believes that consumers are going to put up with essentially paying to see ads? It really boggles the mind sometimes and makes you wonder if they have a clue...
Cliff better prepare himself for reality. People are getting fed up with the barrage of ads (and the lack of honesty about movie start times) - nowone likes to feel tricked into watching ads.
People are organizing and fighting back. Check out this movie commentary on badads.org
http://www.badads.org/movies.shtml
I've timed the start time of the last 2 flicks i saw and they both came in at 20 minutes past the posted time. Obviously some of it was trailers (which i generally enjoy) but a full 5-10 minutes are simply extended versions of crappy ads i've already been subjected to on TV.
In Canada people made enough noise that Famous Players (the largest chain) had to reduce their ticket prices. Much of the reason was the disgust at being subjected to so many ads.
dm
www.novareres.com
New independent theatres are fighting back against this as well.
I visited the IFC theater last week and when the gentleman introducing the film announced that they don't show ads, the audience broke out into applause.
Goes to show you where these ads are in the mind of the consumer.
Seems a lot of fuss about nothing. Probably because I grew up in UK where cinema ads were all part of the game. I used to quite like them because you got ads you didn't get on TV: at the time advertising hard liquor was not allowed on TV.....so it was the only time you got to see Bicardi ads and the like. Of course I'm now a confirmed alcoholic.