Moshe Engelberg On Everything Marketing

Paranormal Activity, a horror movie about a young couple's house haunted by a demonic presence, cost about $15,000 to produce, and brought in $7.9 million last weekend. Paramount Pictures worked with Eventful in San Diego to create a social media buzz, instead of more traditional movie marketing approaches. Eventful's "Demand It" lets us "demand" that performers, movies, or events we want to see come to our town. Enough demand can make it happen.

That's how Paramount decided which cities to show Paranormal Activity in - it was based on demand level generated through social media. Then when they got 1 million demands, they decided to roll out the movie nationwide. From their press release: “From the very beginning, we put this film in the hands of the fans and we trusted them to tell us where and when it should be seen. We couldn’t be more thrilled by their overwhelming support and we are happy to release the film in every town - big and small,” said Rob Moore, Vice Chairman of Paramount Pictures.

I see this as an incredible Web 2.0 resource. It gives a powerful voice to the public and enables companies to respond to what the market wants. And framing it as "Demand It" may lead people to feel more empowered than something like "Request It."

As we shouted and sang in the '60s, "Power to the People!" Who knew the many ways that the internet would deliver on that promise.

Wikipedia, one of the top 10 websites worldwide with over 60 million monthly hits in the U.S. alone, is clearly at the forefront of our Web 2.0 world. Periodically, the open source encyclopedia has altered its "anyone can edit anything" policy to deal with hoaxes and high-profile vandalism that has marred some pages.  

A recent New York Times article reports that Wikipedia will now add a layer of editorial review called "flagged revisions" to entries about living people, just as they have been "protecting" pages about Obama, Britney Spears (really), and others. The fundamental challenge is balancing the need for credibility with the desire for openness that is the essence of Wikipedia's DNA. This is a major concern for many organizations that are expected to be harbingers of "Truth" (with a capital T); like CDC, National Library of Medicine, etc. 

I see Web 2.0 evolving to where standard practice for knowledge or "Truth" organizations will be a balance between some protected content and mostly open content that is subject to review either formally or informally. Imagine it was your life story on Wikipedia (and maybe it is!). What balance would you want?