Stephen Dann

Movies have such inflated budgets that they NEED to break a billion in the box office just to make back what they cost. Anything less than a blockbuster smash is turned into a tax write-off.

a single triple A video game can destroy an entire studio if it doesn't meet expectations, which are already lofty enough as it is.

and everything has to appeal to the widest demographic possible, which can mean sterilizing anything creative about the work so it becomes as palatable as possible.

Marketing likes niche products, and we're pissed off those idiots down the hall are running it all by assuming everything has to be for everyone.

Plus! And aldso! and EXCLAMATION FUCKING MARKS, dropkick a vullture capitalist into a data analysist and put both through the woodchipper today!

Back in the day, there was a business rule of thumb around a 1-9-90 idea - the idea is an approximation, not a gold standard with scienctific proof. You ran 100 projects for the express purpose of doing stuff. 100 projects, of which, if the stars aligned, 1 paid off the entire 100 investment pool. IF the stars were out of alignment, 9 paid breakeven over the 90, and the remaining 90 lost money, broke even and did cool stuff for the purpose of cool stuff existing, and finding out which of that cool stuff*

Then came the data analysts who said "What if we could predict which one of the 100 was going to be in the 9? Then we wouldn't need to do that 90 other things that existed for a given value of doing things for people at market sizes that weren't big enough to pay for everything else. And then the accountants said "Yes, what if we just had the successes of 1 and 9 without the expense of the 90?

The numbers people deliberately overlooked the point of the 90 was to do stuff that could break even, small profit or just be awesome in and off itself.

Then it came down to "Release 10 things, 1 Mega Things and 9 Very Big Things". A stockbroker somewhere said "What if we didn't have the costs of the 9 Very Big Things and just had the revenue of the 1 Mega Thing?" and people forgot that the point of a business to make stuff for audiences, not to move numbers in excel spreadsheets for very rich people to get sniffy at their peers.

Line Go Up! is a situation that accounting and economics caused, and we need to start holding their feet to the shredders to explain to them that 100 projects that do things for audiences is the purpose of everything, not the profit from the 1 that captures the oversized share of the money.

It frustrates me as a marketing academic, and a maker of things and stuff, that the world knows that the 1000 pots approach makes for 1000 people having various pots they like, and the emphasis has been on the accountant's misunderstanding of "Yes, but think of how much clay we saved by not making 999 pots and just having the 1 pot at the end".

More things, more audiences, smaller returns over larger areas, more opportunities to do stuff that reaches more people who then have more cakes for choice.