Box Office Smash - Easy to Predict in the Era of Big Data

The other day, I met with an acquaintance, a total personality and local mover and shaker - she was dressed in a Super Man Suit, and I said; "Hi Super Girl!" Her displacement and vibrant attitude made it all work, even as she conducted business throughout the city. I asked why she was wearing that suit, and she told me there was a new Superman Movie opening up that evening. Wow, that is pretty cool isn't it?

It turns out that the opening of that movie was successful, and I know why - the marketing and branding was up close and personal, not just online, not just commercials and YouTube video trailers - but real street level marketing. So, how can we know just how well a movie will do just prior to its release? Well, it turns out that we can track the internet traffic, likes, pluses, and chatter, and surprisingly enough get a pretty damn good idea how much that movie will make in the first weekend of its release. We can know if it will break even or break records - yes, and everything else in between.

In fact, there was an interesting piece in the LA Business Journal on June 7, 2013 titled "News marketers can use: Google searches predict box office 4 weeks out," by Annlee Ellingson. This isn't just a clever observation either, it was an article describing the actual findings of a real research paper with an abundance of empirical data. The article stated;

"According to a new white paper by the giant search engine, Google and YouTube search patterns a month before a film's release can predict opening-weekend ticket sales with 94 percent accuracy. The study looked at 2012's 99 biggest movies, taking into account variables like theater counts, franchise patterns and seasonality."

After considering all this, now I know why my acquaintance got into the local marketing of that grand opening of the Superman Movie. It turns out that these movie marketing gurus sure know their stuff and how to get people out in force for blockbuster movie releases. Better yet, they are getting extremely efficient with what works thanks to the computer scientists behind all of these latest movie marketing magical algorithms they've written.

All of these makes me wonder who the real super men are, is it the old style marketers or the new age of graduate student level computer scientists. I think I know, and that thought just blows me away. Please consider all this and think on it.

Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on Branding and Marketing. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net

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