Anita Elberse
Anita Elberse
Anita Elberse is a Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. She is a leading expert on the entertainment, media and sports sectors. She has published her research in top academic and practitioner journals in the fields of marketing, economics, and management. According to the Wall Street Journal, " takes the same statistically rigorous approach to entertainment and cultural industries that sabermetricians do to baseball."...
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If you are the record label who owns Lady Gaga, and you have a new artist coming up, you can say, 'Let's have the artist play just before Gaga.' Now you've exposed the huge Gaga audience to the new artist. It's similar to showing a trailer before a movie. The hit creates a hit.
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Think about trailers you see in theaters. If you're seeing a Warner Bros film, the studio might have three of the five trailers. So having a hit helps you create the next hit.
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With so much money invested in their most promising projects, Hollywood executives will understandably do everything in their power to make their products a success in the marketplace. Therefore, the most expensive films often also get the highest marketing budgets, and are slotted into the most favorable opening weekends.
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Media companies' hit-focused marketing did not emerge in a vacuum. It reflects how consumers make choices. The truth is that consumers prefer blockbusters.
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One problem with relying on existing concepts is that it could stifle innovation, weakening the film sector over time.
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No one disputes that online businesses offer much more variety than their analog counterparts.
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Because they are inherently social, people find value in reading the same books and watching the same movies that others do.
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Jay Z is building a range of businesses just on the strength of his brand. Lady Gaga has formed really interesting partnerships. Justin Bieber and his manager Scooter Braun are investing in a number of different companies and also promoting them in many ways.
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If anything, the impact of digital technology is creating bigger brands and bigger superstars.
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What you get when you put all your resources behind a product, is you get everyone to join in.
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Most large media firms make outsized investments to acquire and market a small number of titles with strong hit potential, and bank on their sales to make up for middling performance in the rest of their catalogs.
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Most of my colleagues have research awards on the shelf. I have party invites.
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When a publisher spends an inordinate amount on an acquisition, it will do everything in its power to make that project a market success.
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In investing, we intuitively think we should make a number of small bets. A blockbuster strategy is the opposite. It means making fewer huge investments. But it turns out to be safer.