Euro RSCG's Bollywood Predictameter
I am particularly interested in how the emergent creative economy will influence Hollywood financials. One of the hypothetical parallels I have drawn in this blog is between movie making and the pharmaceutical business. The latter is a creative industry that continues to formulate and incorporate efficiency measures into R&D. There is no question creativity is and will always be risky, time consuming and expensive. How are these respective types of creativity/innovation similar or dissimilar? I suspect that media and entertainment will continue to evolve in respect to how efficiently they do business. Creative flukes that generate a conflagration of interest are certain, but what about measurable success for creative content considered more standard fair. What implications do these developments have for the nature of content? Here is an interesting article on the Euro RSCG study the "Bollywood Predictameter":
Do you watch a film 'coz a 'prosumer' said so?- The Times of India
Called the Bollywood Predictameter, it has written off movies like Don, Umrao Jaan andDhoom 2 as flops even before they have been released. The predictameter, which is actually a study based on marketing and advertising efforts of yet-to-be-released movies, claims that Munnabhai Lagey Raho will be a bigger hit than Kabhie Alvida Na Kehna. Not only that, it has already 'predicted' the BO fates of 18 A-list Bollywood movies to be released later this year!
Says RSCG's CEO Suman Srivastava, "Word of mouth marketing is critical to the success of any movie. How does it sustain its second, third or subsequent weeks? Because people who go and watch it in the first week recommend it to their friends. Ultimately everyone is influenced by someone else's opinion." Adds Sushant Panda, the company's regional director, "This study is based on the opinions of a set of people called the prosumers, who are given info about the movie, before their opinions are recorded.
They are a special group of customers – more knowledgeable in a given category, they love new products, they search for the best value and are very demanding. But most of all, prosumers love sharing their knowledge and their opinions."
Asserts Adlab's Manmohan Shetty, "Study or no study, there are no guarantees in Bollywood.
There never have been, there never will be." To which Komal Nahata, trade analyst, adds, "Filmmaking is not like arithmetic. When the predictions that are given even after watching a film do not turn out to be accurate sometimes, how can anyone predict the fate of a film before watching it?"
