Reversing The Long Tail
I was thinking this morning that if one asks 100 people which is their favorite Beatles song, one would probably have 50 different answers. (Which probably does not happen with Frank Sinatra or AC/DC.) And I bet one can find more of this kind of information. Or writers. And just like that, wandering from thought to thought I got to Confucius’ words, “In matters of essence, all people are alike. In matters of behavior, all people are different.” It’s like: we want the same things, but for different reasons. (The fuddy-duddy could even say that the reverse is possible: we want different things, but for the same reasons.)
But I shall just abridge: the classical pattern of sale is the Pareto distribution – 20% of the clients bringing 80% of sales. That also because the information costs are high and then one prefers to focus on the 20%. In the Internet era, however, things change: that 80% that were not the best clients (because they wanted all kind of weird things that did not exist) get to generate more than 80% revenues. But the theory still says one needs some mainstream / best-seller products to move the tail. To make the people explore the niches of your shop.
I was thinking today that the reverse also works for brands that are already established. (The long-tail is the favorite start-ups’ theory, we know it.) What about using your old achievements to push the public towards the thing you want them to do at a time being.
Let’s look for instance at televisions and online video. Let’s say I am a television post that has all the rights for a certain show (call it a reality show) that has been filmed in the last 5 years. And it’s still going. If I place the entire archive on the Internet, free of charge, I may convince my potential public to watch the next episode and not the concurrence’s show. So better ratings for a show. Plus promos for shows in the same category if I feel so. Plus advertising. Plus cross-selling – the ones that want to buy DVDs (superior quality + bonuses).
Cannibalism? I do not think so. I was reading last year that the favorite before the Oscars was Spielberg’s Munich. Disney – the producer – took so many protections when making the DVD for the ones that voted that, over 25% of the persons that got the DVD were not able to open it on their players. DRM problems, encrypting etc. And Crash won, sending the DVDs unprotected, without excessive control of the lists etc. On the long term, who lost the money? Anyway the both movies were already on the file-sharing.
Let’s look on the other side also: South Park. Its longevity is based on the fact that it spread the viral way. And on the long way this means good and cheap marketing, so bigger profits.
Put in a sentence it goes like this: placing old content, that either brings little revenues, either none, as a trailer to the present content seems to me a very good way for the big content owners.