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This week's news is dominated by multiple reports on Netflix, due to their stock gyrations and a bevy of press. But we learn of a new film fund, and new ways brands are using Instagram TV (IGTV). More original thoughts next week, when I'm not offsite with clients all week. Until then, here's the news:
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WHAT I’M READING: FILM
New money for film via The Eyeslicer Radical Film Fund: The folks at the Eyeslicer – a traveling, variety film show – raised some money on Kickstarter for their next season, and are giving a fair bit of it away to filmmakers. It’s not a ton of money, but they are commissioning short films for their site, and pay you for non-exclusive rights, so you can exploit it elsewhere. Read all of the rules on their blog and the easy – and free – application form.
Is Netflix Falling Off a Cliff? TechCrunch and almost everyone else seems to thinks so, since they missed their own subscriber growth estimates and Wall Street “shaved some $10 Billion off its market cap” this week. While the subscriber graph is scary, I say don’t bet against Reed Hastings, because he keeps on winning. Wait for 250M subs.
Netflix spends more on marketing than many rivals do on content – AdWeek Reports Netflix is spending at least $2Billion on marketing its projects this year. Compare that to Apple and Facebook’s $1B spend, and it’s almost as much as Discovery spends for content now. Colossus. That isn’t headed towards a cliff.
But they don’t care about Net Neutrality anymore – as TechDirt reports, Netflix is big enough to pay to get the speed it wants and doesn’t care about the Net Neutrality fight anymore, even if they know it’s important. Thanks guys. My take: they probably support its death because that means less chance of competition (though who the f-ck is that gonna be?).
Chinese Film Slams Drug Prices…and is winning. The WSJ (possible paywall) has a great article on how a low-budget, Chinese dark comedy film – Dying to Survive – is taking the box office in China by storm with a message against Novartis and drug prices. The film had brought in close to $374M USD (2.5 billion yuan) since just July 5th, and is already the 6th highest grossing movie in Chinese box-office history. It essentially slams Novartis for raising the price of a leukemia medication, making it harder for Chinese patients to get the medicine. It’s based on the true story of Lu Yong, who smuggled in cheap version from India to save lives. In a weird twist, the Chinese government is also fighting this issue, and is supportive of the film. Novartis is apparently none too happy. Sounds like a film that needs to be duplicated here.
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WHAT I’M READING: BRANDED CONTENT
IGTV is getting weird, and long: AdAge and Gartner report that brands are making super long videos for Instagram TV (IGTV) the vertical, long-format push from Instagram. Some of it’s weird shit like Netflix filming a Riverdale star eating a cheeseburger in close-up – for an hour - and getting over a million views. You can’t make this shit up.
But NatGeo is going all-in on episodes to some success. From the article: “National Geographic put a whole episode of One Strange Rock on IGTV, runtime 45 minutes, called "One Strange Rock," about the many wonders of planet earth. The same show is available on television show, but the network reedited it so it could be viewed in vertical form on Instagram. It had 360,000 views in the first 24 hours, and now tops 1.3 million views since being posted last month.”
My take: long, form’s time has come thanks to better mobile service and against all odds, vertical is winning audiences. Smart brands will move away from gimmicks soon, but they’ll work for awhile just like in the early days of YouTube. Expect more quality stuff like the NatGeo experiment to start dominating.
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