The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words – Hippocrates

Pop quiz, readers. Re-calibrate your synapses, set your faces to stunned and prepare for linguistic splashdown. Feast your eyes on this smorgasbord of gibberish and pick out the runt of the litter:

“Building a conversation strategy will allow us to visually see our complete marketing ecosystem and bake in our communication throughout all touch points.”

“First, by socializing all media, the engagement experience is cyclical and ongoing. Second, by identifying conversation groups (social graphs) and tapping directly into them and then connecting them together, the long tail of niche market segments become your mass or ‘mainstream’ media play.”

“Develop a multi-faceted communication program utilizing both traditional media and truly interactive social media channels, where listening and acting upon your human being’s wants is KING”

“A multimedia mix framed to spark conversations requires a compelling message concept that can work across a multimedia platform.”

“…Package the compelling message (internal marketing, external marketing and social network marketing) into an organized dashboard that exponentially expands website real estate, then push the content in real time to all product/service distribution points…”

Which of these abominations were written with a straight face, by real people with working brains? And which is the fraudulent imposter, demanding to be bound in the back of a transit van, driven to a remote woodland clearing and shot at close range through the back of the head? Well, are you sitting down? Because, remarkably, they are all genuine. And to someone somewhere they really do mean something.  To those displaying the characteristics of sentient and evolved human beings, however – upright, opposable thumbs, a rational mistrust of Scientology and men with winter tans – they are nothing more than a dreadful noise. A low, humming dreadful noise. And as someone who sat through much of the Guantanamo Bay-inspired torture purporting to be cutting-edge insight, from the industry’s “leading thinkers” at this year’s Cannes Festival, like a latter day, hairier Martha Gellhorn I can report from the frontline that this sort of smoke-and-mirrors propaganda is not restricted to the written word. People actually say this stuff, too. And other people clap. Loudly. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Or, to put it less succinctly, the Danish vertical has become unsynergised from the positive engagement factor of the mainstream virtual/emotional experience vector.

Children, children….

And herein lies much of the problem, folks. Language has become a barrier to understanding. As 2009 hauls its broken carcass across the finish line there is a definite funk in the air. The funk of hostility. Peace, or whatever there was of it, has been ripped asunder and the emergence of gauche upstart “digital” as a major player has caused much irritation among the “traditional” set. There is a very obvious rift and it seems to have morphed into the media equivalent of an East End turf war, but without the samurai swords and Rottweilers.

Superficially the debate has always been, and remains, an “either/or contest”. Unlike Michael Jackson’s skin pigmentation or Tom Cruise’s sexuality, you are one or the other. Or in the words of that great twenty-first century Kierkegaard, George Walker Bush, “You are with us or you’re against us.” We seem pathologically incapable of approaching the discussion in anything other than purely Manichean terms. Traditional is, depending on your heritage, either prehistoric and profligate or awe-inspiring, while digital is either the emperor’s new clothes or revolutionary. In this world the two are mutually exclusive. The reality, of course, is far more complicated and any attempt to delineate them is redundant. So, in an effort at clarity, I contend that the crux of this spiteful little mess is not really about real value or superiority, but rather one about perceptions of value and how it is communicated.

It Ain’t Always Wot We Do, It’s Sometimes Wot We Say

Whatever your opinions on the merits or otherwise of digital, one thing that its advocates must admit to is an horrendous and unforgivable butchering of language. It‘s painful to witness and, sadly, has only served to keep digital alienated from the realities of popular marketing and communication. We have become so saturated in a kind of meta-language, a simulacrum of sense that we have made it almost impossible to understand. Marketing has been awash with jargon for many years, and it would be disingenuous to suggest otherwise, but why has digital assumed the role of chief flag-waver for bullshit? It’s impossible to see who gains from it.

It might be sacrilegious to suggest, but could it be because just sometimes the numbers don’t add up? That when it comes to emotion, persuasiveness and good old-fashioned storytelling, nothing comes close to a well-made TV ad or a beautiful, epic cinema spot? Could it be that in falling short of the sheer scale, reach and romance of TV, digital apostles have created an amphetamine-fuelled demi-language that gives the illusion of grandeur? Could all this talk of “multi-media migration” and “cross-vertical communication utilisation” be a subconscious attempt to cloud this issue? This is not to disparage digital in anyway. There is some remarkable digital work by some wonderful minds. What some brands have achieved through digital is extraordinary and certainly can’t be matched by our offline cousins. Digital does utility better than any other medium. It enables people to act. But what it can’t do, or has failed to find a way of achieving so far, is a deeper emotion.

Emotion v Utility

Two examples: this 1998 TV and cinema spot is still talked about, by industry and non-industry people alike, in revered tones; and this much awarded 2007 digital strategy and execution is stunning in its scope and its capacity to involve people. The first is entirely emotion-led, the second entirely practical. Both have immense, possibly equal value to each of the brands. The former is admired by people and builds affinity through impression; the latter valued and builds affinity through efficacy. Yet comparing the two is entirely superfluous. So why do we try? Why does digital insist on attempting to muscle in on a brand of advertising that it cannot match? And why do traditional campaigners insist on belittling digital in such a vehemently supercilious manner? As long as the debate around “traditional v digital” continues along such entrenched battle lines then it will be impossible for digital to look traditional in the eyes and for traditional to be anything other than a swaggering distant relative.

One way to abandon this divide and to de-clutter the “media landscape” must be to call a moratorium on the debasement of a language that has functioned perfectly well without being manipulated into something entirely lacking credibility and authenticity. Any joker can trot out spurious and mercilessly banal media-speak, half-truths and bogus insight. The very best people don’t need to. So let’s demystify what we do and engender a little simplicity; strip back the language that clogs up presentations and blogs; demonstrate a little humility and honesty. Let’s call a halt to comparisons and competition and childish things. Let’s establish a reasonable, logical and intelligible foundation – digital can’t do what traditional can do and traditional can’t do what digital can – and move on from there. Let’s abandon any pretence and antagonism and understand that in their own ways each medium has a huge amount to offer, can work separately or, perhaps more importantly, can work together. Suddenly it all becomes a little clearer.

Beauty in Simplicity

Let’s move the focus away from the medium and back to the brand. It’s so much more simple. So, forget about vertical communication synergisation; and conversational media integration; and consumer deforestation; and interplanetary bespoke cross-platform noise generation. There is only one brand. Nike, Guinness, Levis, Burger King….there is no separate brand for online and another for offline. The same basic principles, and the integrity that your actions demand, apply wherever it exists. And wherever that might be there should be only four basic questions that need asking: Does the work created communicate the brand message? Does it impart relevant information and/or provide a utility? Is it brilliantly executed? Is it interesting?

Anything more is superfluous and obfuscation. Keeping things simple, keeping things honest and having the rigorous self-discipline to avoid distraction is far harder to achieve than creating self-justifying diversions to cloud shortcomings. It’s why the very best in the industry, irrespective of whether they are from “digital” or “traditional” backgrounds, do simply great work and those that purport to be the best merely end up talking about it.

(A special thank you to the ever wonderful The Ad Contrarian for holding his nose and sifting through the bullsh*t…so we don’t have to)

Comply or Die by Profero Global

There are, inevitably, both pros and cons to reaching maturity at a time when economies around the world are collapsing, a time when even the assumed recession-proof financial superpowers in the Middle East are bellowing smoke signals for help.

Social marketing has, ostensibly, helped many brands bridge the chasm that can separate consumer confidence and corporate promises; it has added value to products and corporations where value was previously lacking. We have seen relatively run-of-the-mill companies, such as Coffee Grounds and Zappos, leverage social media in ways that have transformed their marketing strategies, revitalised their customer service policies and even enhanced their core business models, turning them into local and global superstars.

With the maturation of the social super brands i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Bebo etc there is an inevitability that this is due to the aging and maturing taste of the consumer. The recent explosion of social media and the seemingly endless list of ‘innovative’ social platforms has been well documented, one only needs to go as far as the Conversation Prism and the changes made on a weekly basis to Brian Solis’s work of art to gasp at the accelerated pace of evolution. However, this torrent of social network offerings has recently begun to slow, with the projected plateau being reached early 2012. It seems that consumers’ digital taste buds are beginning to have satisfied their curiosity for all things social and have settled on fewer platforms. Yet the time spent on these, fewer, sites has increased dramatically i.e. the average user visits 5 main sites each day with Facebook holding the longest engagement statistics with people spending on average of 55 minutes each day on the site.

So, what does this change in social media consumption mean to marketers? Is the growth of Facebook and Twitter the motive for the increase in digital advertising spends? It is, surly, one of the reasons. But one only has to watch an “Awesome Social Media Guru” parody to understand the clichés that have begun to attach themselves to this segment of the industry. Has the work of Facebook, conveniently segregating consumer interests and psychographics, made marketers lazy? Some, of course. However, for social marketing strategists who aim to create memorable and lasting experiences these social superpowers have created a small problem.

The growth and influence of Facebook, in particular, has seen the platform take on the role of teacher, entertainer, retailer, communicator, organiser and, in some cases, employer. Users might now struggle to find a reason to leave this space. The age-old casino trick of offering players free sandwiches and beverages has the audience in a very favourable position. Parallels can be drawn with the introduction supermarkets in the UK: for the consumer it’s convenient, for the independent retailer a nightmare.

There is a divide in opinion about the growth of social media and the power of the new Tesco’s of the web. There are those who think it’s a quick win, a holy grail in the form of a strategy that can now satisfy client needs for ROI figures; and there are those who believe it stems creativity and that its popularity has made it a beacon to naïve clients and lazy marketers, ultimately devaluing it. I am drawn between both. I agree that the platform is great in that it offers a space for brands to listen and create relationships, but on the other hand I feel that the consumer has been spoiled. They want to have their cake and eat it (this includes myself to an extent) at a time that suits them and in a space of their choice. And that is Facebook.

So, sure this creates a conundrum when the brief comes in, for the weaker of the marketers, the ‘Awesome Social Media Gurus’ and the like, simply creating a plan centralizing around a Facebook strategy that a nodding client can sign-off, regardless of the lack of innovation and creativity required, is a good days work (shudder). For the stronger agencies, creating digital spaces the client can own, that bear roots from a creative idea is the real challenge. To create ideas that are not restricted in offering value to the consumer but current and potential business and customer service models, is even more so.

The future is looking bright, however. Facebook seems to have become conscious of the changes in quality to the user experience that social marketing has had and this can be seen in stringent regulations now in place for marketers to adhere to. For the main part, innovative, engaging campaigns that offer real value i.e. Virgin ‘Frienemies’, Audi crowd sourcing for the future etc., the crux of these ideas will remain unaffected.

The changes include a banning of pushed notifications, pushed ‘share’ boxes and the removal of Facebook ‘boxes’ from the user control panel, among others. Although the seeding for these ideas may now alter slightly, the ideas at their heart are the true drivers of their success, not the blanketing of messaging across the target market, praying that the low click-through-rates (0.3 on a good day) will come good. And the result? The more generic/traditional/disappointing advertising approaches used by the idle industry advertisers, those that result in merely seeding Facebook contextual ads, spamming news streams whilst begging you to ‘share’ boring content and so on, is to be abolished in the new year.

It can be assumed (dangerous but tempting) that Facebook has finally monopolised this segment of social networks, similar to YouTube, and can now strip back the growing clutter to concentrate on a purer consumer experience. This is certainly not a case of leaving us marketers outside in the cold, salivating at the abundance of consumer insights and information of yester-year, but now throws down the gauntlet to advertisers who relish the Darwinian challenge that only the deserving, most innovative ideas will prevail on this evolving landscape.
So, it seems that while the monoliths may be growing in stature, signaled by the lack of threat from new entrants, with power comes responsibility. With the reforming of rules within Facebook advertising, ethics and value for the customer remain integral to the new plan; and it is a change welcomed by those ready for the challenge in the new year….so only the strong need apply.

The Sound of the Marching Boot by Profero Global

Over the last couple of months the angry mob have been hard to escape. Pitchforks have been sharpened and the gates are rattling. Of course, if you read the Daily Mail then this sort of behaviour is de rigueur, but more recently a new breed of righteous Puritanism has emerged, a more dangerous sort. And it is born entirely from the Internet.

It is human nature to get (over) excited by crowd behaviour, to be swept along in the intoxicating fug of mass fury and indignation, while complaining is something of a national sport in the England. Nothing stiffens Albion’s collective backbone in quite the same way a good old grumble. Of course, we never take it quite as far as the French, that would be unconscionable, but there is little compared to the sound of a dreary Englishman with a sense of moral superiority.

Our nation’s history of rebellion is not quickly forgotten! However, where once a steady stream of letters or a well-organised protest would be a sound and legitimate representation of the number of people who felt genuinely aggrieved or insulted enough to take action against a perceived offence, the net has unleashed a worrying and, frankly, dangerous strain of fury. This is an anger predicated not on reasoned thought or deliberate organisation but on kneejerk reaction and the sheer unrelenting power of digital to sweep up all before it.

Protest groups can be set up, and swell, within minutes on sites such as Facebook; trending topics on Twitter provide the spark needed to inflame demagogic passions in an instant; even websites can be targeted and abused by an unregulated horde of superficially aggrieved firebrands, unchecked and within moments of an alleged offence.

Profero London’s copywriting brainiac, Alastair Mills, wanted to get from City Thameslink to Angel tube station in London. By Train. His first port of call? Transport for London, naturally. Their advice? Don’t bother, mate. Walk.

If nothing else, you’ve got to admire their honesty…..

     

tube journey by Profero Global

#FacebookFail by Profero Global

Having recently written a post on the success of the Facebook Connect API (see “Facebook Finally Connects”) there is some irony in that the unstoppable, social media blue machine have wrongly second-guessed the needs of their audience with the introduction of their new “Reconnect” feature. And let’s face it, they rarely get things wrong.

The feature itself helps individuals to reconnect with past links they may have lost contact with, similar to the current “suggest a friend” tool. On the surface this new feature looks like one more innovative addition to the Facebook platform, however they failed to recognise and/or predict that lost connections are not simply accidental phenomena but can be rational decisions. Given the current convenience and ease of contacting people on the current (perfectly fine) platform, it seems strange for the Facebook team, with all their genius and expertise, to commit such a schoolboy error.

The manner in which the criticism is being documented only adds to the sense of irony, having not only been widely covered by various high profile blogs such as Mashable and co. but also the networks main rival and the public’s popular weapon of choice, Twitter. With the inevitable “#fail” pitchforks having surfaced alongside Twiterers spreading rumour that the “Reconnect” feature is merely a piece of Halloween PR, this is adding insult to injury.

Examples (See below) of the calamity include both Facebook users and Tweople complaining about being reconnected with: ex-partners/friends/close ones whom have passed away and various other rather painful connections that, on balance, should remain dormant.

Reconnect by Profero Global

Although this is a lesson learned for Facebook, it might possibly end up being an even greater one for Twitter engineers, given the absence of a friend/fan suggestion tool on their own platform. One of the easiest ways to alienate people, if the trending topics are to be believed, is for social networks to attempt to control or influence relationships. To do so seems to be to self-destruct. People flock to spaces in which they feel comfortable, with so why change it? The beauty of both Facebook and Twitter is their simplicity, most notably on the latter, while the fundamental attraction of the social networking landscape is, broadly, having the power to control relationships independently. If Twitter can learn from Facebook’s mistakes then they will only go from strength to strength, especially on the back of their recent Google/Bing collaboration success.

The idea of never losing a connection again is a nice one, in theory, but in reality we can’t be friends with everybody forever, even if Facebook say we can…

The People’s History of the Internet by Profero Global

Today’s Guardian Newspaper has this very simple but interesting graphic on The People’s History of the Internet. From the first “digital connection” in 1969 to Twitter and the Trafigura scandal only a last week. Check it out here.

Chinese Firewall

Our Chinese team often sit in front of a web browser reading an all too familiar sentence: “The connection has timed out”, or similarly, “The connection was reset”. Is this the Ghost In The Machine? A galloping Trojan Horse? No, it’s the ever-expanding Chinese Firewall!

In the run-up to China’s illustrious 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic, Chris Yew, complete with virtual ladder, scales the Great Fire Wall of China in an attempt to get on top of government web-blocking and its implications for digital marketing.

Read the full post here. Below is the list of content:

- Hitting The Wall: Firewall Workings
- Feeling The Burn: Netizens’ Feelings
- National Events & Censorship
- Firewall Focus: Google & Baidu
- Firewall Focus: Facebook And Renren
- China Differences Beyond Firewall
- Comply Or Die

You can follow ongoing thoughts from our team in China at Digitrends.

Chinese (Fire)Wall

My Sky Status

Profero New York has just launched a new travel tool for Lufthansa: MySkyStatus™. Free and easy to set up, MySkyStatus sends precise departure, altitude, location and arrival updates automatically to the traveler’s

Facebook and Twitter pages while they’re in the air. MySkyStatus is able to track all flights so travelers of all airlines can keep their global networks updated as they travel the globe. So, not just take off and landing but precisely where you’re flying over and the altitude which you are flying at. Sit back and relax during your long, or short flights knowing that your friends, family, and coworkers are kept in the know. Gone are the times of boring out of office emails!

We hope you enjoy MySkyStatus, and happy travels to you.

Art made on an iPhone

The ultimate potential of the revolutionary iPhone was not realised when admirers first lauded its aesthetic appeal. Nor was it appreciated when they praised the power of the hardware that was housed within this sleek exterior. Only now, when looking at the ever-expanding choice of iPhone apps available, enabling the smart phone to become a device that rotates around the user, taking on the function of what the user desires, as a truly customisable phone that can become anything you want it to be, can we appreciate its true capability.

iPhone

The most successful apps are those that use the phones inbuilt software and hardware features effectively i.e. Accelerometer, GPS, Compass, Camera, Touch-screen etc. However, the most successful branded applications are those that seek out the part of the brand that provides an engaging mobile user experience. Carling’s iPint entertained pub-goers with a simple yet fun visualisation that could be pulled out at your local for some banter, whilst Oakley uses the GPS function to create an app that surfers could use as a utility for checking wave height and location, adding to the brand’s product truths of functionality and reliability relevant to the sport.

With the total number of “Active Apps” shooting past the 85,000 mark(and counting) there are a fair share of brands that have dipped into the world of Apps, some offering engaging mini-brand experiences, others offering not so engaging branded experiences. In order to take a snapshot of the state of the branded iPhone app segment, a modestly-sized document with some examples of the latest brands trying their luck at mobile is available here, including our ten pence on just what we think of their efforts.

For a more detailed list, including more on this and other information, head over to Johnny Makkar’s blog at Attention Digital and take a look at his extensive spreadsheet. If you know of any applications he may be missing then help the gentlemen out with some good old-fashioned crowd sourcing.

Social Media

Having been in the process of writing a conclusive (And slightly overdue) piece to summarise the social media film review, I stumbled upon an article written by Andrew Hampp of AdAge that evaluates the phenomenon in a respectable fashion. The article takes a mature and well balanced stance on exploring the relationships and variables involved. Hampp also uses the studies that were featured earlier on The Hive Blog social media film review, adding to the relevance of the inclusion of this piece, so without further adieu, view the article after the break. All credit is due to the author and publisher.

Forget Ebert: How Twitter Makes or Breaks Movie Marketing Today

by Andrew Hampp
Published: October 05, 2009
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NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Can the so-called Twitter effect boost a movie’s box-office performance faster than any traditional form of word-of-mouth? Not yet, say many top movie marketers and researchers, but the social networking platform’s impact on a studio’s media mix and campaign management has already taken shape.

Witness Sony Pictures, one of the first studios to create branded Twitter pages for its films, which saw releases such as “District 9,” “Julie & Julia” and “The Ugly Truth” open strong and maintain momentum by keeping the branded conversation around each film active and updating the films’ followers on the microblogging site with exclusive content in the following weeks. The results? Grosses of $113 million, $90 million and $88 million, respectively, and counting.

But the idea behind a Twitter effect gained traction this summer after the Hollywood press and the blogosphere blamed Twitterers for shortening the box-office life of films such as Universal’s “Bruno,” which opened to a strong $30 million but quickly sputtered to a $12 million second weekend based on poor word-of-mouth and a high volume of negative tweets. Could moviegoers with nothing but a cellphone and a Twitter account really be undermining the millions of dollars poured into a movie’s marketing?

Market research firm 360i recently tested the Twitter effect by comparing Twitter traffic for “Bruno” during its first weekend at the box office with three other summer films, and found “Bruno” to have the highest percentage of drop-off in second-day box-office grosses (-39%) and negative tweets (21%).

But making a direct correlation between the two is far from scientific and hardly one-size-fits-all for all films, said Sarah Hofstetter, 360i’s senior VP-emerging media and client strategy. “A movie like ‘Bruno’ is exceptionally polarizing — either everyone wants to see Sacha Baron Cohen naked or they don’t,” she said. “You have to differentiate in the content and context of a film — if you give too much credence to Twitter marketing and you say, ‘Our efforts contributed to a 10% lift in ticket sales,’ no one’s going to agree on what caused that.”

Little impact
And Twitter, as well as other social media, has yet to directly affect the methodology behind the metrics supplied by box-office forecasters to the studios to gauge all-important first-weekend ticket sales weeks in advance. One major movie forecaster said active Twitter and Facebook users have yet to be included in the sample size because it “needs to be reflective of how the studios spend their money. To chase Twitter or social networks would be a disservice to that population.”

In fact, Twitter has helped forecasters such as Marketcast and Nielsen NRG steadfastly hold on to their role in manufacturing hype around those all-important first three days. In the case of “Bruno,” analysts correctly predicted the $30 million opening weekend, but stayed away from managing post-debut expectations. “Our job stops after opening day. The rest is up to the universe,” said one forecaster.

Nor has Twitter had a measurable impact on studios’ marketing budgets, even as they add dedicated staffers to manage and measure social-networking activity around their slates. “While Twitter is important as social media, it is a very small sliver of our marketing campaign,” said a Sony executive. “I think it is more effective as a gauge of how effectively your materials are working and it allows marketers to take a real-time pulse on consumer attitudes towards your brand or property.”

Instead, Twitter has become the campaign-management tool of choice, one that studios and other marketers can harness faster and to a greater extent as more case studies crop up on a weekly basis. “The name of the game for the studios is to take full advantage of all early signals,” said Pete Blackshaw, exec VP-Nielsen Online’s digital strategic services. “The downside for them is a movie can be damaged really quickly — the flow of information on these platforms, and degree to which influencers are tapping into those signals is quite profound.”

But one former marketer at a major studio suggested that Sony has harnessed Twitter more effectively for a $30 million movie such as “District 9″ than other surprise blockbusters such as Warner Bros.’ “The Hangover” or Disney’s “The Proposal.”

“Sony did a very good job at continuing engagement with consumers. The film got such positive buzz from consumers that they started talking about it through [Sony's] real-time stream,” the executive said. “I don’t think those other studios knew what they had on their hands at the time.”

Sony’s fall-movie forecast
If early numbers are any indication, Sony Pictures’ fall forecast is less “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” and more “Sunny With a Chance of Blockbusters.”

EARLY HIT: ‘Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs’
EARLY HIT: ‘Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs’
The studio is taking big bets on summer-level success with a slate that got off to a strong start with the 3-D animated “Meatballs” ($60 million grossed in its first two weekends) and is off to more ambitious heights with the Roland Emmerich apocalypse flick “2012″ and the highly anticipated Michael Jackson concert film “This Is It,” each slated for the coming months. Even last weekend’s “Zombieland” was expected to top the box office with a $25 million haul, which, leading up to the Oct. 28 release of “This Is It” could give Sony a No. 1 film for at least four of the season’s first seven weeks.

“They’re positioned really perfectly,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box office at Hollywood.com. “The other studios have some good stuff going on, but it’s not like in past years where we had a ‘Lord of the Rings’ movie or a ‘Harry Potter’ to dominate the season.”

“It’s really anyone’s game, and the momentum they’re going to glean from ‘This Is It’ is really going to help them,” added a former marketing chief for a rival studio.

The concert film has already sold out more than 200 showings based on advanced ticket sales on Fandango.com, breaking the site’s records for highest-ever Sunday sales. Although scheduled for a limited two-week release, the film could be extended much in the way Disney’s “Hannah Montana” concert film was in 2008 should ticket sales soar. “If the demand’s there they’ll keep it out there,” said the former marketing chief.

“2012″ is also poised to be a summer-sized blockbuster when it opens Nov. 13, preceded by what was believed to be the largest-ever simultaneous media roadblock on Oct. 1, with two minutes of new footage from the film airing on 92 TV networks, reaching 90% of TV households and an estimated 110 million viewers.

“If you look a couple years back to ‘I Am Legend,’ there will always be a place for a movie like that in the fall,” Mr. Dergarabedian said.

And while boutique arm Sony Pictures Classics rolls out Oscar bait in November and December (”An Education,” Pedro Almodovar’s “Broken Embraces”), the main branch seems to have gotten its Academy-courting out of the way in the summer with Meryl Streep in “Julie & Julia” and the critically praised “District 9.” Instead, it’s prepping popcorn fare such as the action flick “Armored” and the romantic comedy “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” for the final weeks of the year. “It’s not about chasing Oscar, it’s about chasing the audience,” said Mr. Dergarabedian.

adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=139444