the next marketing revolution is here… now! - iDVD interactive digital video disks software - Statistical Data Included

Brandweek, April 16, 2001 by Steven Dworman

Four months ago, I completed a lifelong dream by writing, directing and acting in a feature film with a cast of 60 and an incredible cinematographer named Isidore Mankofsky who also shot the memorable film Somewhere in Time. The film I produced is called Divorce: the Musical.

The film was shot entirely in Hi-Definition Video and then transferred to 35mm film. It was one of the first films ever shot in this manner and certainly the first musical.

I became more of a pioneer than I could have possibly realized. The format is now being used by several television shows in place of film, and George Lucas is using it to shoot the new Star Wars film. The process of filmmaking is going through the most profound revolution since the advent of talking pictures.

The reason I bring this up is simple. With the recent announcement by Apple that their new high-performance G4 Macintosh will be bundled with Pioneer's new SuperDrive and Apple's iDVD software, we are on the verge of a marketing revolution even more powerful than desktop publishing was 20 years ago.

In case you haven't yet heard about this dramatic breakthrough, let me briefly explain it to you. Pioneer developed a SuperDrive that can not only read and write to CDs, but also read and write to DVDs in a format that can be played on standard set-top consumer DVD players. To fully maximize the potential of this SuperDrive, Apple has created iDVD, a software package that's bundled with the new G4 Macintosh and makes the process of authoring a DVD easy enough for a ten year old to master. The authoring process (burning a DVD), is literally point and click, with no instruction manual required. To be fair, Compaq is also bundling the SuperDrive with one of their machines, but without the innovative Apple iDVD software. Instead they bundle it with authoring tools that only a professional film editor would find useful. Apple took a two-prong approach by releasing iDVD for general use and a higher-end package called DVD Pro that serves the professional filmmaking community.

Two secrets you need to know to understand the significance of this.

In 1993, I sponsored a conference at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City that demonstrated to advertising agencies and major consumer brands the significance and power of direct response television.

Marvin Traub, the ex-Chairman of Bloomingdales and a marketing legend, got on stage and stated this simple fact, "In my entire marketing history nothing has moved product in such huge numbers at retail like a successful infomercial."

What prompted him to make such a remark? Bloomingdales had two products sitting on their shelves gathering dust. Suddenly, out of nowhere, those two products started flying off their shelves faster than they could keep them in stock Those two products were juice machines and clothing steamers. Why did this happen? Because two very successful infomercials had just hit the air for The Juiceman juicer and the Sassan clothing steamer. But here's what's truly amazing--those two infomercials didn't just generate retail sales for their own brands. They generated sales for the entire product category. Bloomingdales couldn't keep any brand of juicer or steamer in stock

A little over a year later, Philips Electronics developed a new game system that retailed for several hundred dollars. They spent a small fortune building kiosks and putting them in retail stores across the country. Retail salespeople reported that the demonstration time to sell a potential customer was 20 minutes long. Very few units were sold. Philips then produced an infomercial that demonstrated the machine. Within the first 30 days on the air, they sold more units than they did in the entire previous year. As an added bonus, because the units were so effectively demonstrated on television, the sales time at retail was reduced to only 5 minutes.

The problems with infomercials.

No one can dispute the effectiveness of a successful infomercial, but they have two major problems. First, you can't target market the audience. Media time is purchased based on price and effectiveness of results, not demographics. Second, the cost of television media time has skyrocketed over the past ten years and the number of viewers watching any given channel has significantly diminished.

The most powerful sales tool is a disc.

Show a person how they benefit from a new product or a service, demonstrate it thoroughly and completely so they are not intimidated by it, and then emotionally make them feel the excitement of how much better their life will be by using it and you have a sales tool that can change the world.

With a DVD you can do that better than with any other method. First, it's portable. It's easy and inexpensive to distribute. A customer doesn't have to look at it in their office--they can watch it from the comfort of their living room where they'll experience a beautiful digital image that's sharper than their standard television picture. And they can hear it in full stereo sound...even Dolby surround sound if you want. The Internet can't compare with this--their tiny, poor quality video images stutter in comparison.