Once it's quite difficult to understand where is the value,
and how the exchange way you can appeal in site,
we have the question, the main question,
how finally cultural industries could function.
How finally they could produce a particular products.
How finally they're able to sell such products to customers.
Here, we should do a reference to
the particular marketing which we call the marketing of demand,
instead of marketing of supply.
What is the marketing of supply?
Marketing of supply means that before doing each product,
you have to assess the market,
to find the niche in this market,
to obtain the particular needs module for a particular product.
And then after that,
try to produce the good or the product which will match this niche and match this demand.
As we said already,
it's quite difficult to do in field of cultural industries,
and in field of somebody's goods in general.
In this case, the next question,
how finally we can cope this risk?
Because if aesthetic needs and taste are so
volatile and are based on so complex model of needs,
and the classic marketing is unable to propose valid tools to predict them,
how finally we can solve the problem of risk?
It's a risky business.
It means that the cultural industry
and the theory of culture industry respond to this question,
and the manner that marketing of supply and other doesn't work in this field.
It could be work partly,
the limited efficiency of marketing of supply could be present but limited, very limited.
Because these limited efficiency
is based on the idea of constant feedback from customers,
adaptation of marketing strategy to real customers' needs et cetera.
But it could be performant in the very limited extent in field of cultural industries.
Why? The response is very simple because if we will take a look on the tools which
marketing researchers are using in order
to predict a particular demand for particular goods,
we will find that all of them are insufficient for media not so efficient for media.
It will take the gaze of measurement of media exposure,
to the measurement of the audiences.
Of course, media exposure doesn't provide information about the attitude to the content.
It provides just the information about the case of viewing,
watching, or not watching,
a case of listening, or not listening.
It doesn't provide any information if the information
which is inside the content has been well understood et cetera.
And especially doesn't provide any information
about what kind of needs such information co-opt,
or deals with inside the audiences.
So, the second tool is
based on some kind of qualitative methods such as interviews,
focus groups et cetera.
It's quite good method, we know it.
But, this method is based on the idea of reflexivity of the customer,
based on the idea that customer is able to make reflections about what he's watching,
what he's thinking about et cetera.
But the media practices and cultural product practices,
it's something about which the ordinary people are not reflexing,
whether I'm thinking about it,
we're coming just to the film and there we are liking or not liking.
We cannot even understand sometimes why.
We can do some conclusions about the film,
about its plot et cetera.
But it's not sure that such conclusions will
provide some necessary information for those who make the film.
If we take the quantitative surveys which are usually used in marketing,
we will find that they make sense for reflection
about content narrower than it is because,
quantitative surveys try to limit the number of
responses or number of variables et cetera.
So, any reflection about the content is much more complex than any questionnaire.
And from this point of view,
it's quite difficult and absolutely unimaginable to do
a quantitative survey before making
the film according to the result of such quantitative survey.
How finally the media industry respond to this problem?
How finally media producers and cultural industry producers act?
Here, this is a citation from the book, The Disney War,
which is the documentary book published at the end of 90s,
and which is about the both Disney Company and the all Disney Company of war.
And here you can find a dialogue between the producer,
and they will say company which ordered the film.
And you can see here that this producer say
that he wouldn't like to go to this film if he's a customer.
So, you can find that all his reflection about the content,
he would like to produce or in which he would like to invest, is absolutely personal.
It's not based on a marketing research.
It's based on his personal idea.
It will work or it will not.
And of course here,
we can find such a dialogue and such dialogue
is about finally the launching of the new film,
film which has been a great success in not only in the United States,
but also in the world,
The Pirates of Caribbean.
And you can see that such can big film which attracted a lot of customers,
and which attracted the big box office.
Finally, the general idea of this film,
what has been, we'll say, elaborate it.
Has been produced not according to particular marketing principle.
That has been produced by personal idea,
personal thinking of a particular producer who said,
"I think it will work."
And it's only like this,
cultural products are produced.
So, instead doing a marketing of supply,
instead doing a particular assessment of the particular niche market et cetera,
we are just doing a thing and just trying to sell it out.
Just trying to force the people to consume,
because they're very appealing after the consumption not before.
So, instead of ongoing market research
and adaptation or constant adaptation of the product to market needs,
cultural industries are using the marketing of demand.
Marketing of demand aims to stimulate customer to consume.
To stimulate customer to permanently watch the films,
to permanently go to the movie theaters,
to permanently watch the TV,
to permanently buy the tracks in iTunes.
So, marketing of demand creates the demand for products
before any value appearance
because the value of the particular product will be after it's consumption.
So, one needs constantly produce and
offer new products in order to experiment with the collective tastes.
If you would like to be a good and profitable producer of any kind of cultural content,
you should do a permanent experiment with a collective taste,
collective forms et cetera.
And if one is sure that the majority of
the products won't attract the customers and won't generate the revenue,
you should at the same time,
should be sure that probably just one product for a dozen will be a real success.
And this is what we call the hit driving industry.
The industry of hits.
Iliya KiriaProfessor
