Strategy in Global Workplace Topic 5

Winter Quarter, 2019

Saturday, 2-5pm.

Francis Searle Building, Room2-370

Instructor: Dilip Gaonkar

Email: [email protected]

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Topic 5: New Dynamics of Circulation & Marketing: Long Tail vs. Blockbuster

Economics of survival to abundance

What is required for reproduction of life?

Needs and Wants

Economy centered on:

Production:

Agriculture

Industry

Consumption and circulation

Products and Services

Knowledge based

Culturally coded

Dematerialized

Income and Consumption

New Cultural Economy

Affluent Society (John Kenneth Galbraith, 1958)

Economics of Abundance (Chris Anderson, 2006)

Income:

Discretionary Income

Difference between the Poor and the Rich countries and people

Percentage of income spent on Necessities

New Cultural Economy

Changing Shape of Consumer Culture

Mass Culture: Keeping up with Jones;

Man in Gray Flannel Suit (Sloan Wilson, 1955)

Niche Culture:

Do your own thing

The Digital World

What made the digital world possible?

NEW information & communication technologies

Dematerialization

Data storage

Virtual delivery

Amazon and Netflix

This why Amazon started with selling of books, CDs & DVDs

This is why Netflix began with mailing movies and later streaming them

Limits of dematerialization

What is or can be dematerialized?

Cultural impact of digital word;

what happened to letter and letter writing?

Main Characteristics

Digital products and services

Production and Replication

Up-front costs are high (of first copy)

Replication costs are very low

De-materialization

Costs are not high

Storage

Costs are low

Compression technology

Distribution and delivery

Costs are low for physical delivery

Costs are very low for virtual delivery

Instantaneous delivery

New Streaming technologies

Chris Anderson, The Long Tail (2006)

Subtitle:

Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More

Made possible by combining technology and design

Two Rules:

80/20 percent Rule (brick-and-mortar retailing)

98 Percent Rule (online retailing

Two types of marketing:

Hit culture marketing

Niche culture marketing

Long Tail Companies

Amazon, Netflix, and Rhapsody

More books, more DVDS, more tracks

How much more?

No real limit

Impact of Long Tail companies:

Two of Anderson’s comparative measures have already disappeared: Borders and Blockbuster

Growing income from Long Tail

Fat Head vs. Long Tail Revenue

The Case of Digital Music Business:

Walmart carries less than 60,000 tracks of music

Rhapsody streams 60,000 tracks at least once each month

Rhapsody can go adding track to a million to ten million

Rhapsody is an old story; now it is Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music

Still 98% rule holds

Thus, long tail continues to generates revenue

In the future, will long tail generate more revenue than fat head?

New Generation of Consumers

New generation:

Grown up with broadband, smart phones, MPs, TiVo, on-line shopping

Broadcast to Internet

Accessing a seamless continuum of content

High culture, low culture, & popular culture

Commercial and amateur content

Target Audience

Males age 18 to 34, most coveted by advertisers

What are they watching and listening?

New Economics of Entertainment

Economics of abundance

Long Tail Marketing

Word of mouth:

consumers as promoters

Story of two books on mountain-climbing

Joe Simpson’s book, Touching the Void (1988)

Docudrama (2013)

Jon Krakauer’s book, Into Thin Air (1997)

Everest (movie, 2015)

What are the cultural implications of long tail?

Blockbusters

Anita Elberse’s Blockbusters: Hit-Making, Risk Taking, and the Big Business of Entertainment (2013)

Thesis: “Blockbuster Strategy” works and is crucial for success

Anderson vs. Elberse

Long Tail vs. Blockbusters

Tale of Two CEOs

Warner Bros:

1999: Alan Horn becomes president.

NBC Universal:

2007: Jeff Zucker becomes president

Two Different Strategies:

Horn embarks on “blockbuster strategy”(BS)

Zucker’s strategy: “managing for margins instead of ratings”(MM)

Practical Implications

Horn’s Blockbuster Strategy:

Place 4 or 5 Big bets on the so-called “event films” each year

Also known as “four-quadrant movies” in terms of audience

Warner Bros. produced 22 films in 2010 spending $1.5 billion in production costs and about 700 million in marketing and promotion

1/3 that budget went to producing 3 films: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows (part 1), Inception & Clash of the Titans

Practical Implicaions

Zucker’s “managing for margins” strategy:

Increase profits by reducing risks

Betting less on expensive dramatic content

Acquire intellectual property and formats at reasonable prices

Rely less on A-list actors

Cut back on pilots

Results

BS at Warner Bros. did spectacularly well:

Under Horn surpassed 1 billion at domestic box office for 11 years in a row.

Horn was hired as Chair of Walt Disney in 2012

MM strategy at NBC Universal failed miserably

In broadcasting it fell behind ABC, CBS, & Fox to 4th place

Zucker was fired in 2010

NBC Universal Reverts to BS

NBC reverts to BS under Jeff Gaspin:

An Example:

Taking cue from FOX and its hit American Idol, produced The Voice spending $2 million per episode

Marketed it by placing immediately after 2012 Super Bowl

Feb. 2012 The Voice displaced American Idol as the top-rated TV series

Reach of Blockbuster Strategy

Not confined films, but also

TV

Publishing

Music labels

Video game publishers

Sports

Elberse thesis

Blockbusters rule show/entertainment business:

“Although tail is very interesting,….the vast majority of revenue remains in the head”

Despite risk of huge failure as with Disney’s 250 million John Carter (2012)

Counter-intuitive claim:

“It’s probable that the Internet will lead to larger blockbusters, more concentration of brands”

Examples

Three extended examples in Ch.1

Warner Bros. film production under Horn

Further elaborated on what is already in Prologue

Grand Central Publishing

Big bet on Vicki Myron’s Dewey: The Small Town Library Cat Who Touched the World

Paid $1.25 million advance for 45 page proposal

Marvel Entertainment monetizing its comic books archive

superheroes like Spider-Man, The Avengers etc.

Sold to Disney for $4 billion in 2009

Reasons for Taking Big Risk

General Strategy:

Economics of attention: stand out from competition

Specific tactics and objectives:

To remain in the market for promising new projects from agents

Keep the creative talent committed

To get best effort from marketing and sales staff

To maintain leverage with distributors and exhibitors

80/20 Rule Holds

80/20 rule holds in showbiz production

Case of Grand Central Publishing

See detailed analysis on pp. 41-44

Case of Marvel Entertainments

See detailed account on pp. 48-55

Hybrid Strategy in Entertainment Industry (EI)

If 80/20 holds in EI, why waste time and money placing “smaller bets”?

Discover the next big-hit franchise

Discover mega stars who can “carry a film”

“Fill the pipeline” to maintain a steady relationship with exhibitors, distributors, retailers etc.

“broad portfolio” of properties makes it easier to attract financing and provides flexibility in dealing with industry partners

Opportunity to develop and maintain “critical reputation” as devoted to cultivating “fine arts”

Spread out the fixed costs of production and distribution infrastructures

Alternative Strategies

Pixar strategy:

“Rifle-shot” approach

One movie a year, literally hand-crafted, painstakingly detail oriented, and highly self-critical

Highly successful

Starting with Toy Story to Finding Nemo, to A Bug’s Life

New Blockbuster Strategy in Digital World

Features of new BS:

Make a big splash amidst small ripples

“Break the clutter” of ever growing internet content

Exploit American fascination with the celebrities: from sports, music, and movies

Netflix and Amazon, canonical LT companies resorting to BS

Why did Netflix decide to produce “House of Cards” and other expensive series

Amazon is also producing expensive mini-series

Both Netflix and Amazon are imitating HBO

Is Anderson Wrong?

What exactly is Anderson’s thesis?

He did not predict the demise of blockbusters, but its massive dominance, and

Possible slow decline in the future

End “water cooler era”

End of common culture?

Anderson: End of “water cooler era”

Elberse: Social media is the new water cooler

Being “hip” vs. being “sociable”

A New Hybrid Strategy?

What accounts for revived strength of BS?

Copyright protections, revised in 1998, partly sustain the blockbuster risk-taking

Is new BS mostly a defensive strategy?

Is there a new hybrid strategy emerging?

Fate of Mid-Level Artists

What happens to the “mid-level artist” in this battle between LT and BS?

Question: Does success of blockbusters mean “the winner-take-all” dynamics?

Negotiating power of stars: from Tom Cruise with MGM to LeBron James establishing his own firm

Anderson’s Egalitarian thesis valid?

For consumers but not necessarily for mid-level producers and small retailers

4

Business Start-Up Budget Challenge

Business Start-Up Budget Challenge

Business Start-Up Budget Challenge

For all entrepreneurs, establishing a start-up budget for a business can be complex, but it is essential to the success of a business. To efficiently manage a business it is important to develop a budget process or a budget system. Start-up businesses utilize budgeting to recognize the beginning stages while companies that are already established continue working on the operation budget for profit. This report will discuss the important factors of a budget that are essential to any type of business.

The Importance of the Elements of Budgeting

A budget is a financial plan that includes projected sales and revenue for a business. Budgeting creates many advantages for new and established companies. Budgeting is a strategy for a company to use to help provide insight on to get a new company established for their future. Generally, budgets contain indirect and direct costs. Budgets contain various elements like capital, fixed and variable costs, and working capital.

Capital can be loan or an investment that is contributed to begin a new business. It is imperative to obtain capital to buy equipment and to fund the required materials needed to operate. It is important to remember that any invested money has to be paid back and includes interest. Any loans or investments used as contribution to the new business should be considered as costs and determined essential for the business.

Working capital is a calculation of a business’s operating liquidity and is also calculated by subtracting current liabilities from current assets. In order to buy materials or reinvest a business needs money and with the help of working capital, a business can be analyzed to determine if it is making a profit during that cycle.

An additional element to a budget are the expenses. Fixed and variable cost are two portions of expenses in a budget. Any expense associated to output that are normally different due to irregular increasing and decreasing of capital and labor. A examples of variable costs are materials for production, utilities, and wages.

Expenses that are free of output are known as fixed costs. No matter what a business’s funds look like fixed costs must be paid and they do not increase or decrease with sales. A few examples of fixed costs are buildings, equipment, loan interests, and rent. If there are no expenses a business will not be able to comprehend expenses and the responsibilities of payments.

Budgeting for New & Established Businesses

New businesses are not the only types of companies that benefit from budgeting. Established companies can reap the same benefits as start-up businesses. Instead of utilizing a start-up budgeting plan, an established company uses an operation budget.

Carefully observing a budget is a useful method that can help guide a business for some time. The money needed to successfully operate a business regularly is an operation budget. The budget consists of incoming and outgoing money in regards to expenses and production. The following report includes income statements, fixed costs, variable costs, and additional expenses.

The start-up budget is a bit more complex than the operation budgets. A new business needs a start-up budget when trying to get an investor or a bank loan. Like an operation budget, a start-up budget contains similar elements compared to an operation budget. A few elements are fixed and variable costs, advertising expenses, opening inventory, working capital and additional expenses.

A start-up budget has a few one time fees that are incorporated in the capital, operative inventory and start up costs. Added costs for materials and inventory productions are to be paid upfront prior to opening a location. Other than inventory, other expenses include property, equipment, and utilities. A budget may need to be altered when unplanned expenses occur. Money should be put aside to take care of unplanned circumstances that can happen during the beginning stages of operation. Even though budgets are difficult, they have their advantages and during the business process, a budget can change to adapt to any new alterations and expenses in the business.

Tips for Entrepreneurs

As mentioned before, a start-up budget is hard to complete. New business entrepreneurs must complete a thorough research when creating a budget. First, develop a budget plan to go over any assets the business may already possess. Examine any available asses, collateral, cash, potential investors and then figure out the entire cost for starting a new business. This can be quite a process, but it is important to determine how much cash is needed.

Businesses need cash for leasing deposits on a location, as well as for utilities and rent. For any unplanned expenses, figure out if any renovations are needed or if additional money iss needed to operate as smooth as possible. The last and final step would be to develop the budget after collecting necessary information on a spreadsheet. Using a spreadsheet to develop a budget lets a business adjust their budget as needed during daily operations.

Conclusion

No matter if one is attempting to start a new business or operating an established business the success of that business needs money a top factor. All companies should carefully inspect each part of a budget to comprehend the business’s needs and preparing for the future. A business that does not have a budget can miscalculate their finances and lost money quickly.

References

Berry, T. (2018). Business Plan Financials: Starting Cost. Retrieved from https://timberry.bplans.com/business-plan-financials-starting-costs/

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