Did you see this week’s Spit & Polish in The Sunday Times? In it, Barry Ronge eloquently lamented the subversive power of bloggers on Box Office takings – often to the detriment of great films.
He mentions an interview with the Mike Nichols, Director of The Golden Compass, a film which suffered, and failed, at the hands of fundamentalist Christian bloggers who denounced it as a “gospel for Atheists”:
Nichols [speculated] about how the Internet has become a determining factor in Hollywood’s choice of the movies they make and also the style in which they are made, because producers now have to please the blogosphere or fail.
Nichols expressed it precisely. “It’s a whole new critical world out there. I am all for everyone having a voice,†he said. “I just don’t think everyone has earned the microphone. And that’s what the Internet has done. It has given everyone the microphone, saying ‘Get a load off your chest’. Inevitably, the angriest or most outrageous voices get the attention.
Sadly, it’s not usually the most erudite arguments that get the most Attention online, it’s those that are most sensational and easiest to spread.
The challenge to South African marketers will be to engage and form relationships with the influential bloggers here, and to build relationships so that their story can be represented objectively ahead of the eminent flood of opinion that is going to be unleashed on them soon.
For bloggers, it’s important to acknowledge the responsibility that comes with an audience.
We can’t regulate the blogosphere, but we can be a more intelligent community by embracing fundamental journalistic principles.
Interesting post. There has always been word of mouth promotion of everything – now that word is just a lot bigger. You needed to be selective about the opinions you listened to – so too with blogging critique. At the same time, reaction, good or bad, is better than no reaction. So let’s not get too paranoid about blogger opinion. Eventually it comes down to the choices I as an individual make.
Thanks for your comment Alan. It’s very true that we need to be more discerning, but not many people are – so the bloggers that appeal to the broadbase can really inform the decisions that their readers make.
It is interesting to see on Forbes list of Web Celebs that a Hollywood blogger, Perez Hilton is number one… and number two is a gadget blogger Engadget, really Ryan Block who, inadvertently managed to knock about $4 billion off Apple’s market capitalisation when he posted a “leaked” report that the Iphone and the Leopard OS would be delayed…
Oh my hat! J, what a great case study that would make!