pre-sold titles

Virtually the entire digital download audience is currently made up of people who already know what they want to watch. They may have been exposed to the theatrical marketing, or heard about a title on TV, online, or in a magazine. They may have missed the movie at the cinemas; or seen the movie at the cinemas and just want to catch it again, or share it with others.

If everybody in the marketplace was like this for every movie title, the job of promoting entertainment would be a hell of a lot simpler.

This is probably the least-needed category for infomos. However, for this "pre-sold" audience, infomos still work as a great reminder; delivering confirmation of choice; and a new angle to the marketing mix.

believe the hype?

Sometimes people just want to know what all the fuss is about before investing 90 minutes of their precious lives on a movie that could well turn out to be a stinker.

Many programmers hate to be reminded that a large portion of their inventory is considered (by real people) to suck. The fact is, these days, most people are more concerned about wasting their time than their money.

Rather than allowing customers to turn away to third party review sites, (Ebert, IMDb, Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes et al), and potentially to a competitor's movie service; infomos allow the viewers to discover if a movie is suitable for them and keep them at the point of sale.

haters gotta hate

Then there are those people at the other end of the scale, who might hear about a movie and think: "Thanks, but no thanks". Reasons for this are many, but they can usually be anticipated and managed.

I tend to aim my promotional efforts towards these people as a matter of course. Sure, you're never going to get somebody to watch a movie starring, say, I dunno, Hugh Jackman; if that person just so happens to hate Hugh Jackman. But there is a sizeable group of people toward the middle who can be convinced to make exceptions.

The infomo format does a great job of reaching these people, by addressing their perceived issue head on.

the new audience of niches

Of course, movies that have achieved popularity at the cinema will do well when they come to the digital window. But there's a far larger, untapped audience of people who know they want to watch something, they're just not sure what that something is. (These are the people who I call "middle viewers".)

The idea then, is to promote otherwise great movies that didn't have a huge marketing budget. Movies that have the potential to be a viewer's "next favourite movie they never knew existed".

The contemporary method of audience satisfaction in a digital download service is to target smaller groups that make up the whole of the audience. And for that task, the infomo format is supreme.

freedom of choice

The theatrical approach of selling every show as something that every person will find "totally amazing" just doesn't cut it at the digital download window.

Infomos deliberately take the "risky" move of recommending customers away from a given movie title from time to time... it's all about helping viewers make the right choice and feel good about that transaction.

As already mentioned, giving viewers the power to choose whatever they like [should] also mean allowing viewers to not choose whatever they like. In the nicest way possible, of course.

as weighty as you want

As stated, infomos are informational and editorial. The style of this editorial can be as weighty and as "writerly" as required. In many ways, infomos are part of the new journalism that is developing in online news services.

as light as you like

Infomos can also just be plain fun to watch.

breathing new life into pre-loved or forgotten work

Sometimes the audience has to understand the context of older movie titles to really get inspired to want to see them; or see them again. This applies to the largest section of any movie service, the so called "library titles" that sit on the digital shelves and gather virtual dust.

The infomo opens the possibility to go beyond lip service; to actual notions of discovery, recommendation and curation. Sometimes to put a title back in perspective; or sometimes to just have the final word.

localisation

Finally, the infomo format affords the opportunity to "localise" a movie for a target audience who wouldn't, at first, appear to be interested in a movie's subject matter and themes.

Many of the infomos above, you will have already recognised, were tailored for an Australian audience.
Here's two very specific examples:

the infomo department

Infomos require a rare mix of movie knowledge, editing skills and superior writing ability at a level well above your typical trailer. As the creator and developer of the format I have the unique experience and knowledge to implement an infomo department.

The format can be easily adapted for books, games, music; and anything else an online vendor may wish to distribute.

The investment in an in-house production department will give you an unfair advantage in the marketplace for equivalent overhead of a standard metropolitan TV promo department.