Thinking Differently

Isn’t that what it’s all about?

Doesn’t it amaze you how having a simple lunch (or coffee) with a very smart individual gets you thinking differently about the world?

Just yesterday, I grabbed a coffee with Sebastien Provencher (one of the guys behind Praized and one of my favourite Bloggers at The Praized Blog), and we got to talking about the difference between people using feeds, RSS and subscriptions versus the power and serendipity behind mass media (that, in and of itself, is a worthy Blog posting for another day). We then started talking about the troubled music industry and how all industries really need to pay attention to trending, the Web and how their business is shifting.

I look forward to the day when a major motion picture is released simultaneously on the big screen, DVD and pay-per-view. I know this is not a huge idea and it has been done before, but I’m talking about a real blockbuster – like The Dark Knight or Star Wars big.

Thinking differently, I bet on all three platforms it would outsell and out-perform versus the traditional cycle of going to theatres, then pay-per-view and staggered DVD release dates. Why not release them all simultaneously? What is the movie industry afraid of?

In this day and age of one thousand dollar fifty-inch plasma screens and home theatres, isn’t there a bigger opportunity, more chance for word of mouth and much more money to be made by making it available to more people, in the format they desire it most?

Seb says that he would be willing to pay double the price of the movie ticket admission to see it in the comfort of his own home on opening night.

I said I would be willing to pay more.

I’ve never been a fan of the saying, "that’s the way it’s always been done," and I think our new media world calls for more radical thinking. I believe that the pay-per-view version would have a longer shelf-life (as would the DVD) and if the movie is that much of an epic, some (like me) might even make the pilgrimage to the movie theater after watching it in the comfort of our homes just to get another kind of experience.

Thinking differently sometimes reads like babble and blather, but for others it is a lucid moment of opportunity.

Great Marketing needs to start thinking differently too.