當(dāng)好萊塢遇見大數(shù)據(jù)

當(dāng)好萊塢遇見大數(shù)據(jù)

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Hollywood has long relied on consumer surveys to answer a question about soon-to-arrive movies: To what degree have marketing materials made a film a must-see?

加利福尼亞州貝弗利山——長(zhǎng)期以來(lái)，好萊塢都是依靠消費(fèi)者調(diào)查來(lái)解答一個(gè)關(guān)于即將上映影片的問(wèn)題：市場(chǎng)宣傳要做到什么程度，才可以讓一部影片成為觀眾的必看片?

It used to be easy for studios to use that data, provided roughly a month before release, to improve ticket sales for a film’s opening — a creative tweak to an ad, for instance, or more male-focused TV spots. But movie campaigns have grown considerably longer and more complex. Now, by the time the old tracking system kicks in, studios say they can do little more than brace for impact: Consumers have already made up their minds.

過(guò)去，電影公司在影片發(fā)行前大約一個(gè)月就可以拿到消費(fèi)者調(diào)查數(shù)據(jù)，并輕松應(yīng)用這個(gè)數(shù)據(jù)來(lái)提高影片的開畫票房——對(duì)廣告稍作創(chuàng)意性微調(diào)，或者投放更多針對(duì)男性觀眾的電視廣告。但是電影宣傳活動(dòng)變得日益漫長(zhǎng)而復(fù)雜。如今，老式消費(fèi)者跟蹤系統(tǒng)已經(jīng)完蛋了，制片公司稱，消費(fèi)者在電影上映之前早已經(jīng)下定決心，它們所能做的僅僅是被動(dòng)應(yīng)付由此帶來(lái)的結(jié)果。

To help studio marketers get back ahead of their customers, United Talent Agency and Rentrak, an entertainment data company, are introducing a service called PreAct. It joins an array of Hollywood upstarts peddling “social listening,” a growing field that uses algorithms to slice and dice chatter on social media.

為了幫助電影公司的市場(chǎng)宣傳人員領(lǐng)先于消費(fèi)者，聯(lián)合人才經(jīng)紀(jì)公司(United Talent Agency)與娛樂(lè)數(shù)據(jù)公司Rentrak聯(lián)合推出一種名為PreAct的服務(wù)。它同一大批好萊塢新貴一道，推銷“傾聽社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)”——這是一個(gè)正在發(fā)展的領(lǐng)域，使用算法詳細(xì)分析社交媒體上的閑聊。

PreAct begins unusually early. It closely monitors marketing efforts at least a year before opening weekend. At any moment, studios using the service can log in to a portal and receive various charts that detail how consumers are responding to promotional efforts.

PreAct的啟動(dòng)非常之早。它從電影上映的那個(gè)周末之前一年，就開始密切監(jiān)視市場(chǎng)活動(dòng)。任何時(shí)候，使用該項(xiàng)服務(wù)電影片公司都可以從一個(gè)入口登陸，獲取各種表格，上面詳細(xì)列出客戶對(duì)宣傳活動(dòng)的反應(yīng)。

“Every studio wants actionable information, and that is what we are providing,” said David Herrin, the head of research at United Talent, which developed PreAct at its headquarters here before teaming up with Rentrak to bring it to market.

“每個(gè)電影公司都想要可以幫他們采取相應(yīng)行動(dòng)的信息，我們提供的正是這樣的信息，”聯(lián)合人才研究部門的負(fù)責(zé)人大衛(wèi)·赫林(David Herrin)說(shuō)，他在該公司總部開發(fā)了PreAct項(xiàng)目，之后又與Rentrak聯(lián)合，將之推向市場(chǎng)。

The rise of social media has created a data boom in almost every major industry, and motion pictures are no exception. Among the new studio-focused services: Fizziology, a five-year-old Indianapolis company that offers reports assembled by human analysts and not just by algorithms; Moviepilot, which studies social data and box-office trends; and ListenFirst Media, founded in 2012 and now a large supplier of “fan engagement” information to television networks.

社交媒體的崛起為幾乎所有重要行業(yè)都帶來(lái)了數(shù)據(jù)的暴增，電影業(yè)也絕非例外。以電影公司為對(duì)象的新服務(wù)有很多，比如，擁有五年歷史的印第安納波利斯公司Fizziology提供分析師人工編纂的報(bào)告，而不僅僅是基于算法;電影試播公司(Moviepilot)專門研究社交媒體數(shù)據(jù)和票房趨勢(shì);2012 年創(chuàng)立的先聽媒體公司(ListenFirst Media)擅長(zhǎng)為電視網(wǎng)絡(luò)提供“影迷興趣”信息。

Other newcomers include Piedmont Media Research, which provides demographic data and looks at films when they are still just concepts, and C4, a firm led by the experienced Hollywood researcher Vincent Bruzzese.

其他新來(lái)者還包括皮德蒙特媒體研究公司(Piedmont Media Research)，它提供人口統(tǒng)計(jì)數(shù)據(jù)，在電影處于概念階段就開始對(duì)其進(jìn)行研究;此外還有C4公司，由經(jīng)驗(yàn)豐富的好萊塢研究者文森特·布拉奇茲(Vincent Bruzzese)領(lǐng)導(dǎo)。

For studio marketing executives, the result can be an alphabet soup of competing analyses. Most studios, hoping to cover all bases, subscribe to a variety of these reports and try to make decisions by extrapolating from them. But that strategy can be expensive, with some services — PreAct among them — charging the biggest studios hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

對(duì)于電影公司的市場(chǎng)高管來(lái)說(shuō)，這些研究結(jié)果可能是一大堆互相矛盾的大雜燴。大多數(shù)電影公司希望面面俱到，他們會(huì)訂閱各種類似報(bào)告，試圖按這些數(shù)據(jù)來(lái)推算決策。但這種策略花費(fèi)不菲，訂閱這些服務(wù)(PreAct也在其中)每年要花費(fèi)數(shù)十萬(wàn)美元。

Since its introduction in January, PreAct has signed up studios that control roughly 40 percent of the North American box office. Clients include 20th Century Fox — currently the No. 1 movie operation in Hollywood, as measured by domestic box-office market share — and Sony Pictures Entertainment.

自今年一月成立以來(lái)，PreAct簽下了控制著大約40%北美票房的電影公司，其中包括20世紀(jì)?？怂构?以國(guó)內(nèi)票房市場(chǎng)份額計(jì)算，目前它是好萊塢最大的電影公司)和索尼影業(yè)。

“It’s not a perfect tool, but it allows us to be really long-lead, and it provides information in close to real time, both of which are extremely helpful,” said Dwight Caines, Sony’s president for domestic marketing. Mr. Caines credited PreAct in particular with helping inform promotional decisions for this fall’s hit movie “The Equalizer,” including how best to use an Eminem soundtrack song, “Guts Over Fear,” to generate interest among young men.

“它并不是完美的工具，但能讓我們從長(zhǎng)遠(yuǎn)的角度看問(wèn)題，并且提供接近實(shí)時(shí)的信息，這兩點(diǎn)都非常有幫助，”索尼影業(yè)的國(guó)內(nèi)市場(chǎng)總監(jiān)德懷特·凱恩斯 (Dwight Caines)說(shuō)。他還表示，在索尼為今年秋天的熱門電影《伸冤人》(The Equalizer)做宣傳決策時(shí)，PreAct提供的數(shù)據(jù)極有幫助，比如怎樣好好利用埃米納姆(Eminem)為電影創(chuàng)作的原聲歌曲《超越恐懼的勇氣》 (Guts Over Fear)，令年輕觀眾對(duì)電影產(chǎn)生興趣。

When studios began to widely use tracking data in the 1980s, a single company provided it — the National Research Group, which relied on telephone polling. Back then, studio marketers followed a standard playbook: Trailers played in theaters, and TV commercials, print ads and billboards arrived a few weeks before release.

電影公司廣泛應(yīng)用觀眾追蹤數(shù)據(jù)始于20世紀(jì)80年代，當(dāng)時(shí)只有一家公司提供這種服務(wù)，那就是全國(guó)調(diào)查集團(tuán)(National Research Group)。那會(huì)兒的調(diào)查手段主要依靠電話采訪。后來(lái)，電影公司的市場(chǎng)宣傳人員有了一套標(biāo)準(zhǔn)的程序：電影上映前幾星期在影院和電視廣告里播放預(yù)告片、發(fā)布平面廣告、推出公告牌。

Now that kind of campaign would get a marketer fired. A promotional campaign often starts more than a year in advance, as soon as actors are cast, and can reach high gear six months before release. It is not unusual for a studio to release three trailers for a big movie and multiple online “featurettes.”

現(xiàn)在的市場(chǎng)宣傳人員如果還恪守這種程序，可能就會(huì)被炒魷魚了。如今的宣傳攻勢(shì)通常是從影片上映一年多以前，也就是選角的階段就開始了，并在影片上映6個(gè)月之前達(dá)到高潮。電影公司為一部大片制作三部預(yù)告片，以及在網(wǎng)上投放多部“片花”也不是什么新鮮事。

PreAct started in 2011 as a way for United Talent to arm its celebrity clients — including Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie and Channing Tatum — with better data about their films. PreAct’s vast array of social-media information is collected by one of United Talent’s corporate clients, Crimson Hexagon, a Boston analytics firm that uses monitoring technology invented at Harvard.

PreAct公司于2011年創(chuàng)立，為聯(lián)合人才經(jīng)紀(jì)公司的名人客戶服務(wù)，其中包括約翰尼·德普(Johnny Depp)、安吉麗娜·朱莉(Angelina Jolie)和查寧·塔圖姆(Channing Tatum)，向這些明星們提供他們所主演電影的更有價(jià)值的數(shù)據(jù)。PreAct掌握的巨量社交媒體信息是由聯(lián)合人才經(jīng)紀(jì)公司的另一個(gè)公司合作者“深紅六邊形”(Crimson Hexagon)提供，這家位于波士頓的數(shù)據(jù)分析公司使用哈佛大學(xué)研制的監(jiān)控技術(shù)進(jìn)行工作。

“My jaw dropped when I saw this product,” said Steve Buck, Rentrak’s senior vice president for business relations.

“這個(gè)產(chǎn)品讓我大吃一驚，”Rentrak公司負(fù)責(zé)公司關(guān)系的資深副總裁斯蒂夫·巴克(Steve Buck)說(shuō)。

PreAct essentially takes information that is culled continuously from Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, movie blogs and other sites and provides coming movies with scores in various categories. The system, for instance, looks at the size of the online conversation and how much of it is positive or negative. It also tracks how much activity is organic and how much is the result of specific studio efforts.

事實(shí)上，PreAct公司使用從Twitter、YouTube、Tumblr、Facebook、Instagram、電影博客以及其他網(wǎng)站上持續(xù)不斷提取的信息，為即將上映的電影按各種項(xiàng)目打分。舉個(gè)例子來(lái)說(shuō)，這個(gè)系統(tǒng)可以評(píng)估網(wǎng)上議論的規(guī)模，這些議論是正面還是負(fù)面。它還可以追蹤什么樣的活動(dòng)是重要的，以及制片公司的特定活動(dòng)是否有效。

Because PreAct has already collected this information for roughly 500 movies, it generates scores for new films by making comparisons against existing ones. Moreover, PreAct subscribers have access to scores for any movie headed toward theaters, meaning studios now have the ability to understand the health of competing releases.

PreAct已經(jīng)為大約500部電影收集了類似信息，用已經(jīng)掌握的數(shù)據(jù)為參照，為新上映的電影打分。PreAct的訂閱者可以拿到所有即將上映的新片的分?jǐn)?shù)，也就是說(shuō)，制片公司可以了解競(jìng)爭(zhēng)的健康程度。

“We’re going to continue to use it,” said Mr. Caines of Sony. “I love that all of the studios could be speaking in one language.”

“我們會(huì)繼續(xù)使用它，”索尼公司的凱恩斯說(shuō)。“所有制片公司可以使用一種語(yǔ)言交流，我喜歡這樣。”

Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Studios, the two biggest studios that are not yet on board, declined to comment.

華納兄弟與迪士尼這兩家大公司目前還沒(méi)有使用這個(gè)系統(tǒng)，也拒絕對(duì)此作出評(píng)論。