SoaP, the Internet and the Implications for Investment
Have any of you been following the happening that is known on the Internet as “SoaP” - Snakes on a Plane, the new Samuel L. Jackson movie that just hit theaters? In the initial aftermath of its Midnight Thursday release, it seems clear to me that this is the most recent example of an elightened company’s use of the Internet to create buzz, create brand, create community, and pre-ordain success, all while keeping costs down. As an investment guy, my first thoughts turn towards two key quesitons: “How can this approach be used to do business better?”; and “What are the implications for Wall Street?” It seems to me that the answers are straight-forward and the implications truly staggering.
Background
The buzz around this movie has been truly insane. Per Technorati, there have been nearly 60,000 blog posts leading up to SoaP. According to BlogPulse statistics, approximately 2.25% of current internet chatter is related to, yes, this movie. This puts hot topics such as Microsoft and Apple in the dust. Further, this traffic is highly dispersed, being spread over literally thousands of different blogs. An excellent overview of the SoaP phenomenon can be found here. The movie’s studio, New Line Cinema, even re-shot parts of the movie in response to the desires of its raging online community. And, according to this article, New Line did even more:
New Line even ran a contest through the social networking Web site TagWorld for bands to write a theme song for the movie. The Los Angeles-based electropop duo Captain Ahab beat out over 500 other submissions with their throbbing dance track “Snakes on a Brian.”
So, just how much buzz can an interactive marketing campaign drum up?
According to the latest report from market research firm Wordtracker, which monitors data from a variety of Web search engines, “Snakes on a Plane” is the No. 166 most popular query (with the somewhat futile adult content filter turned on). That’s slightly below searches for “tattoos” (No. 149), “Pam Anderson” (No. 162) and “jobs” (No. 163), and just above “love” (No. 185), Kelly Clarkson (No. 197) and “FOX News” (No. 204).
Truly staggering.
Implications
Doing business better: It is pretty easy to see how companies can use this approach to gauge the market before a costly launch, and how identifying key influencers and connectors, a la Malcolm Gladwell, can drive awareness and, subsequently, demand. Rather than taking an adversarial approach to those referencing company assets, New Line took a decidedly different approach that clearly inured to their ultimate benefit:
Even top brass at New Line were logging on (to Finkelstein’s SoaP blog) regularly. But instead of setting loose a crate of lawsuit-happy lawyers, the studio decided to ride the wave of free publicity.
“Whenever I call New Line, the first thing I always ask is ‘Are you going to sue me?’ And they always say ‘no’ and we laugh,” Finkelstein said.
“New Line hasn’t threatened to sue anybody, and they’ve been generally genial toward their fans and it’s worked hugely to their benefit. I can only hope that other studios take note.”
Exactly right. Given the publicity New Line has received for this brilliant and cost effective PR and marketing approach (spending only 7% out of a $30 million marketing budget), I am sure other studios (and businesses of all types) will take note.
Implications for Wall Street: As online marketing of the sort done by New Line with SoaP takes hold, how can Wall Street and institutional investors benefit from this wave? Quite simply, Wall Street and and investment community are going to need to get a lot more savvy in the ways they monitor Internet activity as it relates to specific investments and themes across their portfolios. Current techniques for monitoring Internet buzz, in real-time, are largely used by those in the intelligence community for tracking unusual patters within terrorist chatter and online fraud.
While there is a growing business in studying online chatter within verticals such as pharmaceuticals, telecommunications and autos, this is a largely services-oriented consulting business that is effectively used by PR and brand managers to better understand their audience. While the technology for interrogating specific sites and being notified of when changes occur is more evolved, what of the ability to monitor thousands of sites simulteneously, in real-time, in a way that helps someone access and analyze the information without being overloaded? My belief is that this is the next frontier of technology development, and represents a bridge between the ever-growing and influential online community and a Wall Street and investment community starved for unique insights and information that can be monetized.
The day is almost here. Stay tuned.
