What we can learn from the top 10 grossing films...

I was taking a look at the list of the Top 10 Highest Grossing movies in the World for 2007, and a few things struck me about them.

Before I comment here is the top 10:

1 Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End Buena Vista (Disney) $961.0m
2 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Warner Bros (Time Warner) $938.5m
3 Spider-Man 3 Sony $890.9m
4 Shrek the Third Paramount/DreamWorks (Viacom) $796.0m
5 Transformers Paramount/Dreamworks (Viacom) $706.3m
6 Ratatouille Buena Vista (Disney) $615.4m
7 The Simpsons Movie 20th Century Fox (News Corp) $525.6m 8 300 Warner Bros (Time Warner) $456.1m
9 The Bourne Ultimatum Universal (NBC Universal) $441.2m
10 Live Free or Die Hard 20th Century Fox (News Corp) $382.1m

Looking at the list there are a few things that really stood out for me:

(1) BOX OFFICE RECEIPTS

The box office sales in the USA increased from $9.2 billion in 2006 to $9.31 billion - but all of the growth was due to price increases and so it mean that despite the many offerings the cinema market is flat. This may be in part to the trend into new forms of entertainment, but also suggests that the product on offering has not expanded tha market with more users or repeat sales. Something any marketer should be worried about if the only growth is coming from price. Of course, the receipts do not tell us what the sales from merchandising and other related sales are. Probably these days these new revenue streams are even more important. But growing the core is also key to longer term success..

(2) BRANDS ARE THE NORM NOT THE EXCEPTION

Looking at the list of the top 10 grossing films, most of those are "big established film brands" (or what the film industry calls "franchises" but are brands) like Pirates/ Harry Potter/ Spiderman/ Shrek/ Bourne/ Die Hard or they are brand extensions from other medium (like the Simpsons from TV and Transformers from the toys). In fact the only really "new" product or original idea in all the 10 is the animated film called Ratatouille.

This shows the power of brands in their ability to get loyalty and repeat sales though updating and giving your target user something new that moves the brand on. All too often in the non-media world we tend to not keep the brand moving and telling new related stories.

(3) BUT WHAT ABOUT THE INNOVATION?

As in the last note....what about the new and different innovation though? Is the film industry doing what has happened too much, in my view, in other industries where marketers see innovation as doing what others have done and has worked but just sightly differently. It can work, as we saw the ticket sales were basically flat, but there was nothing new to get more trial, more repeat and so no growth.... this is the biggest risk of all...