Is the customer always right OR you can only please some of the people all of the time?
September 15, 2011300 not out – Content isn’t king…..Conversation is king
September 26, 2011The Shawshank Redemption the most viral product and best example of word of mouth marketing ever?
I was thinking about viral products and word of mouth marketing the other day and what it takes to create something that will go ‘viral‘ or whose sales will be driven by word of mouth.
Then I thought about ‘The Shawshank Redemption‘, one of my favourite folks of all time. Indulge me a little and I’ll give you some background.
Released in 1994 and despite receiving great reviews from critics it didn’t make a great impact with audiences at the box-office and only just covered it’s costs from US box office sales.
According to the British Video Association, the film achieved gross ticket sales of £2.6m at UK cinemas.
However, as of December 2008, The Shawshank Redemption had achieved 5 million sales of videos, DVDs, Blu-ray discs etc according to the BVA (British Video Association).
That equated to 1 in 5 households in the UK owning a copy of the film.
Even now the film continues to sell well. The chart below shows that last year the film was still selling between 25 and 40 thousand copies a week.
And, the film is now 17 years old.
Back in 2004, Mark Kermode, a well-known UK film critic, said in The Guardian:
“Like most who reviewed The Shawshank Redemption when it was first released in 1994, I was impressed, but I had no idea just how important the film would become to some audiences. Certainly, I couldn’t predict that in a few years’ time it would be voted Best Film of the Nineties and Fourth Best Film of all time by the readers of Empire magazine; that it would rival The Godfather and Star Wars for the top spot of the Internet Movie Database subscribers’ poll.”
Kermode goes on to comment on the films extraordinary success outside the box office:
“Against all industry expectations, a film which had, in effect, been rejected by audiences in cinemas was rapidly shaping up as a home-viewing hit with both men and women. So what was happening? Ask any video dealer and they’ll tell you that the key factor in Shawshank ‘s unexpected success on tape was simply word of mouth. Renters who had given the film a wide berth in cinemas were now taking The Shawshank Redemption home on the recommendation of friends and family, increasing numbers of whom were having profound, even life-changing, experiences with the movie. Repeat viewing was a big factor, too, with fans coming back to rent the same film time and time again, developing an intense personal relationship with the themes and characters in the comfort of their own home.”
So, what can other businesses learn about viral and word of mouth marketing from The Shawshank Redemption:
- Just because critics or experts say what you have is good does not mean that customers will believe it, get it or respond to them;
- Slow growth is often better, more sustainable and impactful than fast growth;
- Sometimes customers find their own meanings in things and that is the thing that they share; and
- Products or services do not necessarily have to be ‘in fashion’ or of the ‘zeitgeist‘ to be successful.
That’s all that I can think of right now but I am sure there are more. Can you think of other lessons?
13 Comments
Well, that’s an interesting tale Adrian.
My takeway is that WOM is more credible than all else. And if a certain critical mass is achieved then it can sustain revenues way beyond exepctations. The larger question though is whether such genuine WOMs can be in any way developed. Or is it just luck of the draw?
Martin
Hi Martin,
Thanks for your comment. That’s an interesting question. I would say that what we can control or, at least, influence is how much effort we put into creating something that is great for our customers, how it is promoted and, to some extent, who reviews it.
However, as The Shawshank Redemption example shows time and luck have a lot to do with determining whether something is successful or not.
Adrian
For me the added insight is how the long tail (particularly for this tale) can outweigh the early blast of attention. Customer experience of service often has a long tail of its own, as we remember it long after the primary service has been consumed.
Hi Marc,
That’s a great added insight and so true. Thank you for that.
There is complete truth in the saying from Maya Angelou that goes “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Adrian
Hello Adrian
I put the following twists on it:
1) What fails in one context, one medium, one set of customers can be incredibly successful in another context, medium and customer set.
2) Perhaps the Shawshank Redemption was unlucky in the cinema – the people that first went to see it were not the kinds of people that should have gone to see it. Maybe they expected something different. Net result – the film did not take off. I have read about the work of Duncan Watts where they set up the same songs in different worlds. And in these different worlds different songs came out on top. A song that was at the top of the league in one world (in terms of downloads/plays) was towards the bottom in another world.
3) We strive to predict the future and yet the future is fundamentally predictable. And so we should be open to being surprised. Furthermore, we should plant seeds in various soils/gardens/markets/worlds to give these seeds the best chance of flourishing.
4) A particular management philosophy, method, technique, best practice may work brilliantly in one context and fail totally in another. Hence there are no generic success formulas. And no best or even good practices. Think puzzle – the key is fit between the parts to created the desired whole.
5) Timing and the time horizon matters. What is a failure in the short term can turn out to be a success in the longer term. This is a particularly important issue for business. In the business world, if the Shawshank Redemption was a management approach, programme or initiative it would have been killed when it failed at the pilot stage (cinema) and would never had a chance to flourish slowly and became a great success eventually.
Enough for today.
Maz
Hi Maz,
Thanks for your points. You always add to my thinking.
I think you make a great point about business culture and horizons (point 5) where short term thinking can mitigate against letting something be a ‘slow burn’. However, when resources are at a premium the management of quick wins and slow burns can often prove tricky and short term targets and horizons can mean that slow burns are often cut.
Gauging ongoing potential is a tricky business. I guess that changing management and investor expectations and setting appropriate targets could help in the short run. What do you think business could do to stop them ‘throwing the baby out with the bath water’?
Adrian
Hello! I just would like to give a huge thumbs up for the great info you have here on this post. I will be coming back to your blog for more soon.