Drew Von Bergen’s Post

More on Fallout, I’ve been watching the series and the buzz around it is positive with a lot of people tuning in, so it looks like Amazon has a hit on their hands. This, Invincible, The Boys…they are building a nice little portfolio of adult targeted action dramas. If you’re wondering, these deals weren’t signed yesterday, many are signed a year to 6 months ago, essentially gambling that this property will be a hit. These licensees designed and produced products hoping for a hit property, and if you look at the usual track record for live action adaptations, the record is not great (Even Avatar: The Last Airbender, a solid property and massive fanbase is lukewarm on its second LA attempt.) Usually after release there will be a PR push announcing licensees and you can bet more people are asking for the license now. It’s an interesting property, it’s got good visuals, and a friendly 50’s/yet post-apocalyptic aesthetic that is familiar and inviting to audiences. It’s also interesting that Amazon MGM secured the merchandise rights, maybe through negotiation, or maybe Bethesda didn’t want to bother with merchandising anymore (they had some bad deals in the past). The weirdest thing to me is why Microsoft doesn’t create a merchandising division for all the IP it owns (Mojang, Activision/Blizzard/Bethesda, I can’t even list them all). https://lnkd.in/eBndBQ3p

No more rentals? Ok, ok so maybe this isn’t about real estate but here’s an interesting loop back to it all. If you’ve never known this, then let me be the first to tell you that McDonald’s is not a fast food company but instead a real estate business. Here’s why is its simplest form: McDonald’s restaurants are always built on busy, easy to access streets and usually on a corner lot. They are built on prime real estate which is where they make their money. Sure, burgers and fries and whatever their nuggets are made out of are what drive folks to their place of business, but it’s not what drives their underlying revenue. Phantom income and increasingly high values in the worth of their business are driven primarily from commercial property owned. Ok so why the pic of blockbuster? Well, did you know that Redbox was originally founded by McDonald’s as part of the fast food chains expansion plan back in 2002? Smart right. At time when streaming wasn’t what it is today we could quite literally self serve our own entertainment (DVDs) instead of waiting in huge weekend lines at their biggest competitor… Blockbuster. So while Redbox almost seems to be out, the nostalgia still rings clear for a lot of us 90’s kids. Do you remember renting movies and games from blockbuster back in the day? #realestate #investing #news #wickedholdings

What does this say to the future of physical media? Best Buy exiting the DVD & Blu-ray will leave Walmart, Target, and Amazon as top retailers to purchase this form of media. Best Buy says this move will allow the stores to bring innovative technology for customers to explore. Perhaps because I lived through Y2K and "2012", I still enjoy having physical copies of my favorite TV shows and movies just in case the internet goes down. I wonder which retailer will be next to ditch physical media and if Amazon will be the final option. #bestbuy #physicalmedia #consumerbehavior #consumergoods #retailmanagement #strategicplanning #dvd #bluray #Y2K

Insightful commentary from John Fithian below...

DVD Killer Nope, not @netflix, but the OG of killing DVDs was Redbox Entertainment Inc., although the "flix" gets all the credit, c'est la vie. Now, still limping along, Redbox has been relegated to telling people "yes, we still exist" in a Blockbuster type bizarro world way. Sitting out front of tens of thousands of retail locations, including #bigbox retailers like Walmart and Target, Redbox was great at liberating a dollar out of customers for a brand new movie (home entertainment window) instead of having to walk to the back of the store and paying $15 for ownership. It was the original battle royale and while no-one was really looking, Netflix was hovering up #dumpbin　style content for pennies and charging pennies, ($7.99) for a buffet of films without having to drive to store. Redbox had millions of customer accounts (credit card numbers and emails) and tried to pivot to digital, too little too late. The company becoming "the next The Walt Disney Company, well that was never going to happen was it". Now shrinking by nearly ten thousand locations in the last year or so, they are facing issues all fronts. Perhaps the movie they should be promoting now is "Dead Man Walking" Lowpass #dvd #streamingwars #toolittletoolate #kiosk https://lnkd.in/gHRkQFJz

This generation will never know the stress of rushing to return a tape at 11:59 pm to the store and realizing once you get there it isn't rewound. In fact, many have no idea what "rewound" is. In retrospect, I should have created a business where I had a food truck outside the store from 11:00 to 11:59 pm that sold snacks while you waited for me to rewind your tape for free. What is your innovative business idea to alleviate the pain of your clients QUICKLY at their time of need? Share below!

In a world of streaming and downloading, why is there still demand for media products and packaging? https://shorturl.at/aeklp #media #packaging #promotionalproducts #limitededition #launch #unboxingexperience #boxes

It's September 2000, Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph are attempting to sell their struggling company, Netflix, to the CEO of Blockbuster. The pair had bet on what they thought was a revolutionary model for video rentals. Customers could log in to a website, order DVDs and receive and return them through the post. But while they’d poured everything they had into the company, they were hemorrhaging cash. They had over a hundred employees, but only 3,000 paying customers. And they were on track to lose $57 million before the year was through. They wanted out. So after months of calling and emailing, they finally secured a meeting with Blockbuster’s boss, John F. Antioco, at the company’s headquarters in Dallas. It was a big opportunity: a $6 billion publicly traded company with over 9,000 stores worldwide, Blockbuster dominated the American video market. But the meeting went dramatically off the rails. At first, Antioco and his general counsel, Ed Stead, were friendly and polite. They listened carefully as Hastings and Randolph explained why Blockbuster should buy Netflix: a new type of video rental for an online world. But then, Antioco asked the big question: ‘How much?’ ‘50 million.’ There was a moment’s silence. And then Antioco burst out laughing. Fast-forward ten years and Blockbuster Video had filed for bankruptcy: unable to keep up with the pace of the transition to online video, the company had gradually closed the majority of its stores before finally going bust. Fast-forward another ten years and Netflix–by then an online streaming service–was valued at a market cap of $300 billion and universally hailed as one of the world’s most innovative companies. The transformation of Netflix from a company that was literally laughed out of the room by Blockbuster’s CEO to one of the most valuable businesses on earth seemed unlikely. How did they do it? [CONTINUE IN COMMENTS👇] — excerpt of the newly published book "Feel-Good Productivity" by Ali Abdaal

Amazon's deal with Mr. Beast to make his own show, "Beast Games" is further vindication of the unique and powerful model he's running. Specifically, Mr. Beast is a modern example of the power of reinvesting in your business. Here's a simple flywheel explaining it: Mr. Beast uses the sponsorship money he earn to invest in crazier and crazier videos, increasing viewership, and producing larger sponsorship contracts...which he reinvests again. Most creators would be happy to take profits in this case, but Mr. Beast has found a way to generate escalating ROI. In recent years, he's added to that playbook, leveraging his audience to build standalone businesses like his CPG brand, Feastables. That's created a new and more predictable source of revenue for him to bank on. For more about Mr. Beast's playbook and the relationship between audience and wealth creation: https://lnkd.in/dTAagCc

📘 Built to Fail: The Inside Story of Blockbuster's Inevitable Bust Author: Alan Payne Category: Brand Management Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing   How does an iconic brand die❓   For more than two decades, Blockbuster was America’s favorite way to watch movies.   Millions of customers visited more than eight thousand stores around the globe every week, providing more data about movie audiences than anyone in history had ever owned.   If any company should have predicted the disruptive forces coming down the pike, it was Blockbuster.   But as new threats emerged, none of its five CEOs had answers, and the company collapsed long before its time.   Built to Fail tells the complete inside story of Blockbuster’s meteoric rise and catastrophic fall.   Beneath the surface of explosive growth lay a shaky foundation of financial difficulty, tunnel vision, and missed opportunities.   Written by Alan Payne, the man who built the longest-lasting Blockbuster franchise chain in the country, Built to Fail is a cautionary tale for today’s disruptive marketplace, explaining why Blockbuster was a broken company long before Netflix ever streamed a single movie.       📚📔📕📙📓📒📗📘 Lance Scoular 🔹️ The Savvy Navigator 🧭🌐 #amazoninfluencer #book #ad #amazonbooks #fromtheauthorsmouth #blockbuster #brandmanagement #rental #vhs #dvd #video #movies #netflix #streaming   https://lnkd.in/ge2zX6rB