Gaming Snakes?

I've resisted the temptation to weigh in on the already over-subscribed debate on the Snakes on a Plane (SOAP) aftermath.  And then last night my colleague Max Kalehoff forwarded me a piece written by Freakonomics author Steven Leavitt entitled Snakes on the Internet, Too that hit the strike zone of my concerns about all the hullabaloo around the movie.  To the question of why Snakes fell short at the box office, Levitt asks: 

"One reasonable answer to that question may be that when the buzz is faked/manufactured, commercial success will not follow.Was the buzz around “Snakes on a Plane” artificially manipulated by people involved with the movie?"

He proceeds to cite San Antonio College Economist Cyril Morong, who's assembled some provocative data suggesting that there may have been a significant amount of "gaming" of the system around the movie.

Of course, this is the paradox of buzz building and customer evangelism.  In our zeal to promote the things we love, do we create artificial "lifts" that betray reality?  In the case of "Snakes on a Plane" there were so many of us in the marketing community hyper-enthusiastic about the fact that a movie studio actually invited consumers to "participate" in key decisions around the movie that we may have prematurely over-hyped the movie as a reapplicable case study...even before the snakes got loose at the box office.  More importantly, are marketing bloggers the right proxy for a general movie going audience?  Were movie-goers truly listening to our commentary, or were we just listening to ourselves?  There was undeniable spillover into search engine results, which clearly drove "new" impressions with potential movie goers, but the core message delivered wasn't necessarily "this movie rocks."  It was more akin to "this marketing process or technique rocks."  Different messages, and they matter at the box office.

As for the issue of  "artificial lifts," I do think there was plenty or organic and real online excitement around this movie, but there's always the risk of manipulation.  I can't speak for the professor's findings, but there's no question grades or ratings or reviews frequently succumb to manipulation or inflation, although some of this might be likened to a well-orchestrated "Get out the Vote" campaigns.  (This is why traditional research still counts.)  Part of what we learn in buzz marketing -- for better or worse -- is to drive and build momentum, and at the personal level I certainly partake in some level of that through e-mails I might periodically send to Jackie Huba, Jim Nail, Laurent Florez, Gary Stein or other WOM/CGM experts to "expand my conversation." Enrolling others in the conversation is a rather benign exercise, provided we don't treat that conversation as a proxy for how everyone else things.  In the case of SOAP, perhaps we over-projected our own feelings and excitement to the broader marketplace.

And we got bit in the process - ouch!

Comments

[michael wiley]

Pete,

Thanks for the analysis, I agree with you.

mw

[Cyril Morong]

I posted some comments over at Freakonomics in response to other comments. What I have below is something I tried to post but does not seem to be appearing.

I found out how much each movie had earned at the box office then divided that by the number of votes it had gotten at IMDB. "Snakes" by far had the lowest rate. My guess is that it means that the people who saw it felt very intensely about it or people voted who did not see it. Maybe this does not mean anything, but it seems interesting. Here are the dollar per vote totals

Barnyard $129,386
Ice Age $78,220
Over the Hedge $56,816
Cars $42,329
Step Up $36,369
The Devil Wears Prada $29,416
Click $28,528
Invincible $27,712
Accepted $21,431
Talladega Nights $21,345
Pirates of the Caribbean $19,993
Mission: Impossible $17,127
Da Vinci Code $16,976
World Trade Center $16,970
Idlewild $16,435
Xmen $14,102
Superman Returns $10,113
Beerfest $7,767
Little Miss Sunshine $4,833
Snakes on a Plane $2,149

I used "The Numbers" site to get the dollar amount, as of yesterday. This could be a little bit of a problem since I took the number of votes from today. As soon as "The Numbers" posts data through today, I will do this again. Also, I only used US data for both votes and dollar amounts.