Kosse: Embrace online for engagement

Reading the remarks made by David Kosse, president of Universal Pictures Interntion, at ShoWest my first instinct was to be glad someone in power was realizing studios should engage with their audience using online tools and platforms. But as I kept reading the Hollywood Reporter’s story on his comments it became clear that he still doesn’t quite get it.

Kosse mentions the MySpace site for Knocked Up and a YouTube clip of Rowan Atkinson for Mr. Bean’s Holiday as two ways the studio engaged in a “two-way dialogue” with the audience.

Except that those aren’t really conversational executions. You can tell because while the visitor and viewer can leave comments and “friend” the page or add the clip as a favorite, there’s no reciprocal communication. The studio talks to the audience, the audience has a mechanism to respond and the conversation ends.

That’s not an engaging conversation, that’s call-and-response.

True conversational marketing is where there’s a true, on-going back and forth between the marketer and the audience. It’s much harder because it requires constant monitoring, the need to sublimate all of a marketer’s worst instincts and the ability to really add value to a community.

I could say more but instead I’m just going to once again recommend you read Joe Jaffe’s Join the Conversation. You’ll be smarter for it.

And as for Kosse’s advice to exhibitors that they add more marketing material to their websites, that’s a fantastic idea. But those exhibitors have an opportunity, which they’ve largely squandered up to now, to become a voice in the online conversation.

So go ahead and add more trailers and such, that will will help people decide what movie to see. But also add employee blogs where they talk about what movies they’ve seen. I’m not talking about managers writing it but the line employees that close the doors and sweep up the theaters after a show. These are the people the audience can more closely relate to, especially the younger audience Hollywood craves so badly.