What’s that?  You want to see it now?  We got you super excited now and you probably won’t remember it or be as excited in 5 months?  Well too bad because ITS COMING!

How many times have you been in a movie theatre and a movie trailer like this comes crashing onto the screen?  The “hurry up and wait” approach has been the movie industry’s #1 marketing gimmick for 30 years.  The “wait” portion can vary, sometimes 2 months, sometimes 12 months.  This strategy has been successful, which is why they continue to use it.

However, it is NOT a strategy that should be applied to any and every form of  entertainment and media.  In fact, I will argue it actually hinders sales.

Take music.

You hear a song on the radio for the first time.  You like this song.  You think to yourself  “this song is fantastic – I want to own it now so I can listen to it multiple times.”  You venture online and fire up iTunes only to find its not there.  You go over to Amazon and find its not their either.  After hours of searching you learn the single was just released to radio and won’t be available to buy for at least 3 more weeks.

Almost 100% of people faced with this situation choose one of two options: A. They go to the PirateBay or use g2p.org and find the song for free, or B. give up, move on and when the song actually does come out, don’t buy it.

In both instances, the consumer is NOT PURCHASING THE PRODUCT!  Why in God’s name wouldn’t the record label or artist have new music immediately ready to consume?  Answer – because they think the movie promo strategy is cool and that it can apply to any industry.  Clearly it can’t.  This is why almost every album is leaked before an official “release date.”

People simply don’t have the time anymore.  They don’t have the patience to be teased and baited and forced to wait.  If your content isn’t ready to consume the moment its first promoted or talked about, then you might as well give up.  You’re purposely leaving money on the table and have no business being IN business.

How about TV?

Same story.  If an episode of a TV show airs, then it should be immediately available to buy the very SECOND it has finished airing.  This goes for domestic and international TV.

Here’s a personal case in point.  I love the new series of Doctor Who.  I don’t live in the UK so I can’t see episodes when they originally air.  Because the BBC has the business sense of a goldfish, they don’t make these episodes available to buy OR to stream after they air.  So I, as a loyal fan, fire up the Pirate Bay and choose from among the many seeded torrents containing the newest episode – download it for free and enjoy it the same day everyone in London does.  I would GLADLY pay $1.oo – $3.00 an episode if I could get them immediately after they air.  I repeat, I WOULD GLADLY PAY!  Why is this option not available to me!?!  It’s so bewildering that I’m almost speachless.

People are no longer going to wait for  a lame-ass strategy of “baiting and waiting.”  There is simply too much competition.  The MOMENT your product is being talked about, it should be ready for purchase.  Not 3 weeks later.  Not 6 months later.  Make the release date the start of your marketing campaign, not the end.

You don’t get a second chance in the new economy.

While it likely won’t go down in any history books of authority, and many will laugh at even the thought of it, today something monumental happened. MTV has canceled it’s long running program Total Request Live, better known as TRL.

Immediately, you ask “why is this important?” TRL represented the height of late 90s “old media promotion strategy” where a hip, youth-oriented program is created and quickly deployed to reach critical viewer mass. That program is then exploited by any major entertainment player to promote their latest release, and kids flock to the store or theater that week to buy it. Advertisers fill in the gaps by pumping their teen products into the commercial breaks and PRESTO!…everyone makes money. It was all too easy…so much so that copycat programs popped up everywhere, stealing the same format and production values.

Every entertainment “big shot” took those millions of young eyeballs for granted – assumed they would always be there, all focused on the same singular promotional vehicle. No longer.

As we mark the fall of the last remnant of this once mighty strategy, it is truly fascinating to consider how much has changed. The 12-25 demographic has since become a group forged in the fires of abundant choice and daily technological evolutions. Instead of “one network to rule them all,” they are “all with networks from which to rule.” In order to market to this group, you have to go to them. They will not come to you. Let me repeat that, they will NOT COME TO YOU. There isn’t a network sticky enough to re-acquire the ratings TRL once boasted. However, should you reach them, there’s little guarantee your message will even matter. Simply being “mainstream” or “#1 on the charts” or a “fresh new brand” doesn’t have the pull it once had.

This is the business world we now live in, and as today’s teens become tomorrow’s baby boomer – their consumer habits WON’T go away. Brand strategists and marketers HAVE to pick up their game in order to compete. This means having a profile on every social network in existence, ceating campaigns that are experiences – not messages, and conducting focus groups on a weekly basis to see what kids find important and interesting. It means actively using the sames tools they use, to understand their world through THEIR eyes. Armed with this information you stand a fighting chance.

So celebrate the fall of TRL, but take a moment to truly appreciate what has taken its place. The world is now a LOT more complicated.