Yesterday when I got up, as a part of my regular morning routine, I said,
“Alexa, what’s new?”
Now I don’t remember too much of yesterday’s news highlights of regurgitated Covid-19 stats or President Trumps refusal to acknowledge his election loss to Joe Biden, but one thing did stick.
Warner Brothers, the world’s second largest film studio announced that in 2021, all movies will go to theatres and streaming on the days of their release. No longer will theatres have the head start they use to enjoy as the primary distributor of Warner Brother’s product.
As a result, Cinema chains saw stock prices fall by as much as 21% in a single day. Even companies that produce ads that are shown prior to a movie starting got hit by this shift
My first though was, “Wow, theaters are being clobbered by the pandemic, and now this. This is going to hurt the industry in a big way.”
Later in the day, it occurred to me, that it was an adaptation strategy by Warner Brothers. A way and means to pivot with the evolution of how we consume their product. As we grew from renting our movies each weekend from the corner video store, to Blockbuster, to streaming them on Netflix, Disney and Amazon Prime on demand.
The reality is, we are all staying at home, mandated by our governments to stay safe and healthy from our homes. Ticket sales from theatres plummeted as a result of not only lower attendance, but also due to restrictions on how crowded a theatre can be to keep patrons and staff reasonably safe.
In other words, Warner Brother’s customers were no longer going to the cinemas to consume their product. That revenue stream was reduced to a trickle. Warner Brothers had to adapt and pivot to this new reality.
That is when the true lesson struck me.
You have to go where your audience is. It does not matter what your product and service is, there is an audience of consumers that want to buy it. Your job as a business owner is to find out where your audience is hanging out and present them with a great offer.
That is essentially what Warner Brothers did. They saw that their audience was now streaming their movie consumption and not going to the theatres. So they came up with an irresistible offer to see a new release on release date as a part of your subscription to HBO Max. This allows them to capture their audience and keep them consuming their products.
Ask yourself this…
Who is my audience?
Where is my audience congregating?
How do I get in front of my audience?
And most importantly…
What do I need to do to stay in front of my audience?
Answering those questions are what every business owner needs to answer in order to adapt to the changing needs and demands of their audiences. If you keep doing things the way you have always done them, simply because that is the way you have always done them you may find yourself one of the many casualties of the mass extinction of business.
Stay In Front Of Your Audience.