Fans
The week’s big news from WarnerMedia, that it would be making its entire slate of 2021 Warner Bros. films available in theaters and on its HBO Max streaming service on the same day hit like a lightning bolt. Reactions ranged from it being a strategic masterstroke that would make HBO Max a “must have” service in a fiercely competitive market, to predictions the company was effectively killing the theatrical film business with one Thursday afternoon Medium post.
It’s impossible to predict in this moment what the ultimate impact of this clearly fan-focused (and pandemic-driven) action will be, but it reminded me of an old Chuck Dolan story that used to get told around Cablevision. In the late 1970s, Dolan wanted to put the games of local professional sports teams on his newly built cable systems, but the team owners were afraid that if the games were on television, fans wouldn’t actually come see them in person. Chuck’s response was that not only would they continue to come, the increased exposure and visibility on television would make the games even more popular and valuable as live events, and he offered to buy up all the seats that went unsold as a result of his cable exhibition to get the deals done. In the end, he never had to.
That vision and those early agreements created the regional sports business, brought professional games into homes across the country, altered the shape of entertainment and fandom and helped build multiple industries. Obviously, there are supply and demand considerations that make professional sporting events and theatrical movies not a perfect analogy, not to mention the decades that separate these business moves, but the orientation around the fan and using new technology to deliver experiences that transform expectations are common elements.
The reality today for any company providing entertainment and services to fans is you had better make them the center of everything you do, and every decision you make, because if you don’t, someone else will.
Spotify has grown and reached critical mass as a beloved brand and essential part of audio-lovers’ lives around the world, but it operates in an incredibly competitive market, up against behemoths like Apple and Amazon, satellite and terrestrial radio and nimble upstarts you’ve never heard of being dreamt up in a garage somewhere. They also did something this week that is right out of the Steve Jobs playbook of giving customers (and fans) something they want before they even know it. Spotify released its annual “Wrapped” report on how its users listened in 2020, all the way down to customized (and highly sharable) reports on the top songs, podcasts and trends for every individual. If you ever wanted to probe the perfect affinity, engagement, social amplification initiative, look no further than Spotify Wrapped. The information hit, looked beautiful, delighted users and was instantly everywhere — shining a light on the company and brand, the service it provides, the artists and content that drive its business and, at the center, the actions and preferences of the fans who have chosen Spotify for their “Audio-First” needs over any other provider. Extraordinary.
WarnerMedia took a lot of incoming on the move it announced and its potential impact on the theatrical film business. Who knows what will ultimately happen when people can go back to theaters in large numbers, post-pandemic, and whether consumer behavior will inexorably shift to in-home consumption of movies. That is clearly not what happened with sports, once the option of watching games at home was introduced. There are fans today who buy season tickets and go to every home game of a favorite team, or go a handful of times a year, or don’t go at all. The experience of being in an arena or stadium is not the same as watching at home. You could say the same about taking in a blockbuster film on a 65” Samsung hanging over the fireplace as opposed to in a movie theater on a screen the size of a billboard with booming audio that shakes the new faux-leather recliners. If anything, our recent shared experience of watching sports being played out on TV against a backdrop of empty seats has elicited an even stronger desire for the world to get back to the way it was and for dunks, touchdowns and home runs to be accompanied by cheering fans who are there to see them.
Whether it’s WarnerMedia putting big theatrical releases into homes the same day they hit theaters, Spotify putting the time and effort into getting every one of its hundreds of millions of users a customized Wrapped report, Sonos letting people throw music around the house with a touch of a button on a smartphone screen or even Apple putting its own state-of-the-art chips into Macs and opening up a world of performance possibilities still to be imagined, the overriding dynamic and motivation is the same. If you are in business today and keep delighting customers and fans as your North Star, there’s a very good chance you will never get lost.
