Wright, Jon. "Leaders in Marketing."Journal of Marketing. Vol. 32, No. 1, (1968), pp. 62-63. 2 April 2008.       <http://proxy.library.upenn.edu:5549/stable/view/1249199?seq=2>

    As shorter workdays and lengthened vacations started to become the norm in the mid-1960s for middle and upper class families, leisure time became a subject worthy of study.  Once businesses starting to realize the implications of this new leisure culture, the need for leisure and recreation marketing increased.  E. Cardon Walker was the Vice President of marketing for Walt Disney, Inc. and was largely responsible for revolutionizing marketing in this era.
    Walker rose through the ranks of Disney starting as a messenger after graduating from UCLA in 1938 and eventually moving to the advertising/publicity department in 1949.  He was promoted to head of the department in 1950 and by 1960 became part of the three-man executive committee including Walt Disney himself that served as the top policy-making body.  Walker was in charge of sales, advertising, publicity and promotion.  In 1966 under his direction, Disney’s sales were $116.5 million and their profits reached over $12 million. 
     The marketing philosophy that Walker built for Disney in the 1960s has not changed much over the past half decade.  Walker’s philosophy is grounded in sound marketing policies.  Walker wanted to keep Disney limited to family entertainment and specifically film to maintain complete control of marketing from within the corporation.  Approximately half of the corporation was devoted to films and the other half focused on ancillary products such as sound tracks, merchandise and toys, all of which reinforced the advertising of the films themselves.  During this time, Disney was able to transition successfully from cartoon shorts to feature length animated films, to feature length live action films and eventually to television.  These smooth transitions show Disney’s flexibility and ability to maintain control over its market.  For example, when television emerged as a new means of entertainment, Disney embraced it instead of fighting this new technology and starting to produce television programs.  Again, Disney’s conservative but modern approach is apparent.  Disney did not expand its markets beyond the entertainment and film industry, and when it did, do so slowly and cautiously to avoid risk.  In addition, its marketing techniques have not changed significantly over the years.  At the same time, they were one of the first to jump on the television bandwagon and utilize marketing techniques to enhance their sales.

 Variety.com - MPAA tries to remove NC-17 stigma: Glickman takes a hard look at ratings

Sat., Mar. 10, 2007

 Variety.com - Fox Atomic brings new twists: Genre Label Adds to Conventional Tactics.

Tue., Feb. 20, 2007

 by Steven Zeitchick

The article discusses the creation of Fox Atomic--a division of Fox Film Entertainment dedicated to genre films and youth markets. However, Fox Atomic doesn't want to just create and market movies, rather "it wants to create entire worlds around those movies." The Fox Atomic website enlists current trends in digital culture to reach out to young, tech savy audiences. The studio has a presence in Second Life called "Fox Atomic Island, a virtual movie studio where citizens can pick up and play with avatars from all its leading pics." It also holds mashup and machinima contests, includes movie related video games on its website, as well as user forums and information on forthcoming releases. In addition, Fox Atomic has created a comics division that will release comics based on movie properties that are not adaptations of the films, but rather engage in "cross-media" storytelling. Current and upcoming film releases include The Hills Have Eyes 2, 28 Weeks Later, and Touristas.

Although other film studios and distributors have a web presence and engage with digital culture, few have ventured quite as far as Fox Atomic. The article remains skeptical as to the success of this strategy as it is still unproven in its ability to generate ticket sales, but this sort of "web 2.0" interactivity and media convergence may be something that film studios can ill afford to ignore.

“Supreme Court Finds Marketing Activity Creates Liability in Peer-to-Peer (P2P) File-Sharing Case” from the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science looks at how the Grokster decision will affect the marketing of new technologies that could potentially have copyright infringing capabilities. In the Grokster case the court looked beyond the Sony ruling on the issue of whether the distributor induced copyright infringement. The court put forth the active inducement test which meant that a company could be held liable if the courts could interpret its actions as inducing, enticing or persuading its users to infringe on copyrighted works.

The Supreme Court has been trying to find the line to balance technological innovation and protect copyrighted materials. The members of the Supreme Court differed on the extent of protecting the Sony ruling. Justices Breyer, Stevens, and O’Connor believed that Sony protects distributors unless it can be proved that their products are almost exclusively used for infringement. Justices Ginsberg, Kennedy, and Rehnquist would have supported modifying Sony to require that distributors anticipate and prevent infringing uses. While at present time, the law does not require companies to anticipate infringing uses, firms can be held liable if they intentionally profit off of illegal uses. It is possible that future courts will see acts that would not previously be seen as intentional as being sufficeint to hold companies liable.

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In this scholarly paper, Arthur De Vany and W. David Walls discuss, among many other things, how the studios used the “blockbuster” strategy in which advertising, box office ranking, and movie stars play integral roles in a film’s success. They acknowledge Jaws as the first movie to employ this technique on a national level, using television advertising in addition to a nationwide release.

According to this theory, the opening of the movie is the most important event in a film’s life. Producer Robert Evans compared it to a parachute jump, “If it doesn’t open, you are dead.” De Vany and Walls believe that if the theory were true, the choices of early movie-goers directly affect the decisions of people who see the movie later. Furthermore, a strong opening weekend or week can lead to a “dominant position in the film market.”

Jaws is indeed a strong example of the “blockbuster” strategy of marketing because it was the highest grossing film at the time (dominating the box office), and created a national buzz about the film, which included television advertising. However, Jaws was somewhat different in that it did not have any big stars, but rather quality actors on the rise in the industry.

There are people who refute the “blockbuster” strategy and argue that the success of a film depends almost entirely on the early audience of the film and how those moviegoers express their opinions to friends, family and acquaintances. In closing, De Vany and Walls agree that the aspects of a successful film depend both on a strong opening as well as positive feedback from the early viewers.

In this article, James Surowiecki analyzes the marketing scheme of big Hollywood films like Jaws. In doing so, he looks at how blockbusters have been marketed since Jaws first opened in 1975. Among the factors discussed, the opening weekend and the behavior of the moviegoers are the most important.

In 1975, Stephen Farber, a movie critic, wrote that the success of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws was due to an “aggressive media blitz” that utilized prime-time television advertising along with an unusual national opening weekend at over 400 theaters across the country. Farber believed that audience members were manipulated into seeing the film and that the studio executives controlled what they wanted people to see.

As Surowiecki writes, Hollywood wanted to believe that the success of Jaws could be imitated by employing the same marketing strategies because there were huge profit opportunities. The studios believed that by giving certain films “a big enough push out of the gate” that enough people would go see it without regard for the actual quality of the movie’s content. This is called a “non-informative information cascade” in which the actions of the later moviegoers are based on the early moviegoers, who were persuaded to see the film due to the massive advertising campaign. Unfortunately, there have been many blockbusters that bring in large profits early on, followed by mediocre numbers in the following weeks (i.e. The Matrix: Reloaded).

However, as De Vany and Walls state in their in-depth study of what makes a blockbuster, they find that a big budget and expensive advertising campaign may make it possible for a big opening; its success truly depends on how the audience rates the film. This strategy has garnered some media criticism, but Surowicki argues Hollywood is sensible because this method increases revenues in a shorter time so that they can remove the film from theaters in order to keep a larger percentage of the profits.

This article has to do with video games that are based on movies and the profitability of these games. In particular, many video game companies are looking to acquire licenses for older, successful movies. The reason behind this is that the companies, like Electronic Arts and Buena Vista Games, see a huge potential market in selling video games based on popular films because they can market the games to the people who loved the movie.

However, as P.J. McNealy, video game analyst at American Technology Research, states, it is sometimes a difficult decision whether or not to make a game based on a new Hollywood movie or an established “Hollywood intellectual property” with a built-in audience. Games such as “Bruce Lee: Quest of the Dragon” had minimal success because the audience that appreciated the movie did not necessarily want to play the game.

The movie Jaws is a good example of an older movie that had huge success, thus Majesco decided to produce a game based on the film. Additionally, the release date was timed with the release of the 30^th anniversary edition of Jaws. By combining these two products, the company hoped to see interest in one market lead to interest in the other (i.e. video games and DVD).

The Vice President of Majesco stated in the article that “By adding the Jaws license, one of the best-known movies of all time, we instantly gave our game a better chance to reach the mass-market gamer, while allowing us to delve more into character and story.” Players will be able to control the man-eating shark as well as experience a different story line based on the blockbuster hit. The video game market adds another reason to the lengthy list of why Jaws and other popular action movies are able to have such lasting impacts on audiences because the games offer more action and information to the fans of the original films.

This article discusses the ways in which record companies are compensating for their losses through marketing.  After the Sony/BMG merge, Columbia Record Executive Charlie Walk, leads the way.  He asserts his belief that for the majors to stay in on the game they need to legitimize the online music downloading space and create alliances with consumer-goods companies to make a profit where it is being lost. Thus downloading has changed artist marketing too.