SMEs: Lessons Learned From Hollywood’s Disappointing Summer 2017

I was secretly looking forward to Baywatch this summer. I follow the Rock on Instagram and he was really hyping it up to be a winner. Men all over the world loved the original television show for its buxom beauties in bikinis rescuing people week to week. However, the Internet didn’t exist then, so cheap visual thrills were tougher to come by.

Now, not even the likes of stacked gorgeous Hollywood babes like Alexandra Daddario and Kelly Rohrbach can pull viewers in to watch them bounce around the beach for 90 minutes — not if there’s no plot involved — not even if Rock and the ripped and shredded Zac Efron are co-headlining to give the ladies some eye candy!

This and other silly nostalgic remake attempts are just one thing Hollywood’s doing wrong. They’re money-hungry, like any business should be. However, they’re making mistakes that would halt the growth of any new or established business. And, much like the failing cable television industry, they don’t seem to terribly concerned about the competition out there — competition that I feel is set to crush the entire traditional movie industry in the next few years.

Freelancer in a movie production

Lack of innovation to reach new markets.

I don’t know whether this has been said yet or not, but the fact Hollywood is so bent on remaking EVERY pre-2000 movie and television hit tells me they don’t feel confident they can pull Generation Z to the theatres. Do these consumers care about Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Wonder Woman (which I’ve actually heard was good, but alas)? And by the way, how many Spiderman remakes can the public watch? Basically, they can’t innovate, so they remake stuff that died along time ago, though with lots of fan-fare, and they keep drudging up all there more modern blockbuster hits trying to see if they can get a half-billion or so people to bite and head out to the theatre.

Takeaway for SMEs:

Business owners should avoid making the same mistake. Eventually, the market you serve will dry up in one way or another.

If you don’t innovate, most businesses are running on borrowed time:

  1. People will get older and lose interest in your product.
  2. A competitor will improve upon your design, service, and marketing (drawing current customers away from your brand).
  3. They’ll die (not trying to be negative, just saying).

Relying on “pretty bows” over value.

Have any of you ever seen those Instagram ads for “free designer watches” if  you agree to pay a small shipping fee? For around $10 shipping, you can finally have the watch of your dreams and everyone you see will be jealous and none-the-wiser of how much you paid. In reality, these watches look pretty, but can be bought on Ebay or Alibaba for $3 from the same place these online boutiques buy them from. They’re also cheaply made — even though they look really sexy from a distance.

hat do cheap watches have to do with the over-hyped, over-priced, big-budget, low-profit Hollywood movies of late? They look pretty, but they don’t keep time well and fall apart soon after you put them on. Same as the movies look great in the trailers and are visually spectacular all-round — but make people lose interest the minute the actors star talking. The dialogue is dead and the majority of viewers can only look past so many plot holes and poor lines of dialogue. Compare that to Netflix originals like Small Crimes or War Machine with Brad Pitt — there’s no comparison.

Hollywood is trapped into the dogma of CGI-ing the heck out of everything and thinking the movie-going public will always marvel at the amazing things that can be done with animation, and never stop to actually examine the plot. Same as a lot of businesses get trapped into trends like Acai berries, which are cheap to manufacture  and promise untold value, but eventually fizzle out and get replaced with something else.

Takeaway for SMEs:

You can only pull the wool over a consumer’s eyes for so long. Quality at a reasonable price has never been more of a reality than it is today — and what’s popular and trendy today likely won’t be tomorrow.

Putting a pretty bow on something and slapping a high price on it doesn’t work in the digital-fuelled world we all live and breathe in:

  1. Current customers may stay loyal for a while, but they can only overlook so many flaws in your offering.
  2. Word gets around on social media (etc.,) leading to a poor reputation, increased acquisition costs, and eventual death of your brand.
  3. Competition will find ways to fix your quality offering, giving  customers the value they want, and profiting from your short-comings.

What’s your take?

Do you think the points I’ve made actually translate to small business?

Is Hollywood doomed in light of what streamers like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu are doing with their original programming?