Risky (online) Business

By Chris Kerns | 0 Comments | Posted in in Analytics | Permalink

A few months ago, something very weird happened. Tom Cruise decided that he needed to rebrand himself via a website. In one swoop, he moved from Tom Cruise to TomCruise™ by putting out a self-congratulatory web presence and PR tour. All in order to change our perception of him. Yes, because we’re that stupid.

And, since everyone knows you never launch a new product in August, he went big in May to much fanfair with an appearance on Oprah and the aforementioned website. It was obvious that in the wake of this media blitz, the world’s opinion of TomCruise™ had instantly changed back to “I think he’s just kind of weird in a Hollywood way, I guess.”

As it turns out, TomCruise™ has had a rough time of it the past few decades. Here’s a graph to demonstrate his popularity:

The layman might guess check out this graph that he’s only going up, up, up. Unfortunately, this is a graph demonstrating a ranking of the Top 100 Box Office Stars in each decade based on total receipts, so he’s actually climbing his way out of the money. See the bottom right corner?  TomCruise™ wants to be down there, but it’s already occupied by that good looking Orlando Bloom fellow. So Tom’s watching the trend, and trying to put a stop to it.

So was the site launch a success? Well, that depends on what his goals were. What should his goals have been? If we, the experts at ZAAZ, had met with him in the site planning process, I’m guessing the dialog would have been a little…something…like...this….

ZAAZ: so, TomCruise™, what are the business goals of what you’re trying to achieve online?

TomCruise™ (for some reason I’m picturing him in sunglasses): I’m thinking that people want to hear the truth about me, my loyal fans. And some of the new web 2.0 stuff. Maybe a social network. Did you happen to see the blockbuster “Minority Report”? Steven and I worked tirelessly on that to really capture the visceral essence…

ZAAZ: How about something a little smarter, like getting people to sign up for site updates, news, and other notifications? That way you can continue to tell them how crazy you’re not, and control the conversation. Also, let's talk about targets for demographics. Hispanics have continued to rise as a major force in the moviegoing public (attending 11 movies per year vs. the average 8.5 across all demographics), so how about working to attract a new audience to your films? Or attracting more young moviegoers (12-24 age range), who are making up an increasing piece of the audience wallet (38% of movie admissions in 2007 according to the MPAA)? Or maybe just getting a site out there with great SEO so that “tomcruiseisnuts.com” (currently #3) doesn’t appear before your official site (currently #5) in the Google organic rankings for “Tom Cruise”?

TomCruise™ : did you know I played an uncredited role as “Cowboy” in Young Guns? A lot of people don’t know that.

So, I checked out some data to see how the site is doing with the mock goals I lay out above. The site traffic grew throughout May, seeing the main peak the week of May 24th, and is now on a downhill trajectory. So the word got out – but 95% of the visits are being classified as “passers-by” vs. regulars or addicts. Maybe that’s because there’s not really anything to do on the site. Who can expect people to return when all that’s available is information about 10-year-old films that TomCruise™ has appeared in? Would it kill the guy to write a blog? Give us something to come back for. When it comes to the mock target demographics, we’re not doing so well, either. According to our friends over at QuantCast, almost 50% of the site traffic is from “old people” – over 35. Only 7% of the audience is Hispanic.

So it’s easy to launch a site, get some press, and claim a victory. It's not as easy when you set goals and build a site/campaign around those goals, but it's much more productive. Anyone in Hollywood should appreaciate that when you design a site around goals, your analytics can tell you a story. You set up the situation, you deal with the conflicts that exist, and end up at a resolution. Analytics without goals is like Top Gun without Iceman, Days of Thunder without Rowdy Burns, The Firm without...The Firm. Be honest about what your goals are, follow through with actionable analysis, and you'll be able to tell your own story someday.

* side note: please appreciate the constraint I used in this blog entry, not mentioning any of the following low hanging fruit:

• any reference to "Site traffic: Mission Impossible”
• nothing on “monetization: show me the money!”
• no jokes about conversion.