Market to Individuals, Reach the World - Part I

In the Jan. 27^th Business section of the New York Times, Michael Barraro and Hillary Chura write about the market missteps of clothing retailer the Gap. The article details the Gap’s downward sales trends by noting: “In an era of niches, when exclusion is as vital as inclusion, Gap has become an anachronism… [They’re strategy of] appealing to all has resulted in sales to too few.”

The message is one that producers, filmmakers and marketers of filmed media should take to heart. We live in a world of individuals. There is no such thing as one size fits all.

In industries as varied as automobiles, fashion and technology, smart companies are seeing that the path to success is dependent on finding niche markets and delivering products, services and media that appeal to people as individuals.

Yet if you listen to most marketers talk, you'll hear them continually refer to audiences in terms of broad demographic clusters. But when was the last time someone came up to you at a party and introduced themselves saying: “Hi, I’m 18 to 34 year old white male,” or “Hello, I’m 25 to 49 year old African-American woman.”

Producers and marketers of filmed media see a film or show become a hit and rush off to clone new projects based on this successful new "formula." And think that people would never want anything else. What they fail to see is that people are more than the sum of their demographic parts. People don't watch filmed media because of marketing - in most cases they watch in spite of it.

My audience-centric view does not mean I'm advocating we ignore marketing, quite the contrary. Audiences appreciate hearing about content that appeals to them and marketing is a way to get them that information. But the industry needs to shift focus. There is no such thing anymore as a broad-based American mainstream and the biggest problem facing the filmed media industry at the moment is their inability to embrace this. They cling to the myth of broad, homogenous audiences because having something quantifiable (however false), is comforting to people spending millions on content. They're only fooling themselves.

Overwhelming cultural and marketplace evidence continues to emerge showing that audiences are tired of one size fits all content (2006 MPAA survey, Jan 22nd Wall Street Journal article: Boss Talk, your own eyes and ears). Yet with few exceptions production companies, corporations and marketers of filmed media continue to develop one size fits all content.

So why is there a disconnect between what audiences say they want and what producers are delivering? In part II I’ll start to address that.