Buzz Advocacy for Movies

Have you ever been influenced by the online buzz?

Recently I read a report of buzz research by WaveMetrix, elaborating how online advocacy impact the sales of the movies. The analysis is based on multi-dimensions, identifying various attributes including film, filmmaker, cast, plot and their different level of influence on box offices. It correlates the movie sales with every variables such as positive/negative; implicit/explicit recommendations and also investigates the sentimental tendencies.

The highlight would be the case studies. For “Inglorious Basterds”, it identifies the director power of Qunteen Tarantino, the other key attributes from Buzz clouds and compared its importance with that of the overall conclusion; whereas in the movie “Up”, the touching plot has won the top attributes in the advocacy.

A very systematic report based on rigorous data. It points out that 37% of film revenues could attributes to online recommendations. Moreover, as the impact of the buzz is immediate and will soon fade away, constant advocacy would be a reasonable strategy for online movie marketing.

Well, in my master dissertation talking about the cross-cultural star effect on audience preference, there was countless of variables that would influence a movies’ box office. The extensive findings by both academic and movie executives have tried every method to compare different drivers and evaluate their importance in a film’s success – star power (actors/directors), genre types, critic reviews, investment, distribution strategies, etc……

Although the research has some valuable discoveries on its own research area, the limited matrix only focusing on the online advocacy as a corner of the overall critic reviews presents a single-equation type of analysis which is far from comprehensiveness. Online Buzz does have its impact, while how strong it is and whether it’s the most important driver remains unclear. For example, I choose to watch ‘Inglorious Basterds only because I’m a fan of Brad Pitt, I decided to see “Up” simply to enjoy the marvelous 3D effect when I saw its trailer before the my 3D film in the cinema.

On the other hand, although it takes audience sentiment as a key variable, there’s no adequate data on how these sentiments have led to the actual viewing decisions. For example, I might have positive feeling about ‘Inglorious Basterds’ but I won’t necessarily go to the cinema to ‘purchase’ the movie. In this sense, the analysis in this report about the sales and the sentiments are rather two separate conclusions without correlation.

References: Online Buzz Research. www.wavemetrix.com

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