Have you heard about the movie Snakes on a Plane yet? It stars Samuel L. Jackson and what happens is, well, snakes get loose on a plane. It sounds silly and far-fetched. So, I imagine, does the premise of this post: that this movie will end up changing the way you work. Well, I can’t make you see the movie, but I can try to convince you about my premise. 

Entertainment Weekly (everyone’s favorite IT rag) has a cover story this week about the Snakes phenomenon:

For nearly a year, SoaP obsessives have been chatting and blogging about the movie, not to mention producing their own T-shirts, posters, trailers, novelty songs, and parodies. As the movie has morphed from a semiprecious nugget of intellectual property into a virtual plaything for the ethertainment masses, Snakes and its cult are teasingly threatening to revolutionize the rules of marketing for the do-it-yourself digital era. ''Usually, we see this kind of energy being generated by a Star Wars, something with an established bond with the public,'' says David Waldon, author of Snakes on a Plane: The Guide to the Internet Ssssssensation. ''People knew nothing about this movie when they latched onto it, and we don't know much more even today.''

As it happens, this is a story I first started paying attention to a little over a month ago so let me share what I have learned with you all. The article describes how folks on the Internet latched on to the film’s ridiculous title and started making their own previews. Someone somewhere re-edited a clip of Jackson in Pulp Fiction so it sounded like he said, “'I've had it with the mother f---ing snakes on this mother f---ing plane!” and, as happens on the Internet, it just took off. When the studio execs heard it they thought it was so good that they actually re-shot part of the movie to include the line.

The Entertainment Weekly article gets a couple of good quotes from people involved with the picture about the new fan/producer relationship the Internet makes possible, and it is safe to say that not everyone is enthusiastic

Jackson:

"Films are a collaborative process, and this is the next step. If a film is vying for that mass teen dollar, then yes, they have every right to say: This is the kind of film we want to see. Films of social relevance — well, no."

Snakes costar Julianna Margulies:

"On one hand, it's fantastic, because it put our film on the map. But it's a slippery slope. If we have to rely on the public to tell us what great work is — I don't know if that's a great idea."

The other concern that the people associated with the movie have is that fans will go to the theater expecting a campy snake movie and find a straight forward thriller (or at least an attempt). And no one really has any idea if Internet fans translates to the box office.

Last month I talked with one person is banking on those fans ability to open movies, Jake Zim, VP of Online at Fox Atomic, a new studio aimed at the youth market. (Jake is also my cousin, which means that there will now be two people at family gatherings obsessed with how the Internet is changing society.) Jake’s job is to try to figure out how to use the Internet to build communities around movies – since so much of success in Hollywood is defined by first week box office, building an online fan-base that will rush out to your film the day it opens can only help, he says. Most of his ideas involve reaching out to potential audience members early in the creative process, and using the Internet to give them a chance to help shape the final product. One of his ideas is putting raw footage from a movie online and letting people at home submit their own edits. Right now he is running a promotion where users download a clip from the movie Revenge of the Nerds, edit themselves into it, and then upload it back to Fox Atomic. The person who submits the best job as judged by the website's visitors will get a role in the upcoming remake (critiquing the decision to remake Revenge of the Nerds is a task I will leave to others). “Everyone wants their 15 Megs of fame,” Jake told me.

Companies in the B2B space have been using the Internet to collaborate on design for a while now. But I haven’t heard about anyone doing it in the B2C space. Yes, people focus group their products, but no one seems willing to sacrifice control early in the design phase. Would Hasbro post specs of an idea for a toy and ask parents or kids to give them feedback? Would Banana Republic design a tool that lets users suggest pieces for or edits to part of its clothing line? My guess is that executives at these companies would respond with quotes like the ones from Jackson and Margulies above. Then they’d worry about how to protect their intellectual property.

My guess though is that it is just a matter of time until companies decide that they are willing to sacrifice some of the control that comes from developing products in secret – or at least not in close collaboration with a largely anonymous group of enthusiastic Internet users – in exchange for improved customer relationships, and a better sense of what customers actually want. Before it happens though CIOs will have to develop systems and methods that help foster this collaboration while protecting the company against risk, liability, viruses or any other bad things that can happen when you use the Internet to break down a barrier.

And all this because someone let some mother f---ing snakes out on a mother f---ing plane.

You do not have flash or javascript support.

Average (0 votes)

Reply
Digg this
Slashdot
Reddit
LinkedIn