Yesterday, Andy Ihnatko had an interesting take on this cartoon.
He explains that the cartoon makes two points – one intentional and one unintentional. First, the intentional.
Consumers couldn’t make their desires any more clear. We’ve got money to spend on TV and movies, but now we’re looking for it on iTunes and Netflix and through all other kinds of network-connected devices. If a distributor shows up in any of those places with a product we want, we’ll buy it.
Added to clarify: and if they don’t show up in those places, they’re making torrenting that much more attractive. They’re just feeding the monster they’re trying to fight. That’s crystal-clear.
Then, he goes on to the unintentional point.
The single least-attractive attribute of many of the people who download content illegally is their smug sense of entitlement.
and
The world does not OWE you Season 1 of “Game Of Thrones” in the form you want it at the moment you want it at the price you want to pay for it. If it’s not available under 100% your terms, you have the free-and-clear option of not having it.
I sometimes wonder if this simple, grown-up fact gets ignored during all of these discussions about digital distribution.
Not surprisingly, this has polarized his readers – as evidenced in the comments from the post.
There are those people who say, “You go Andy! No one is entitled to anything other than what the distributors make available and anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot.”
Those comments are quickly followed with retorts like, “But, I can’t get it because of ‘X’ so I have to Torrent it!”
I fall somewhere in the middle of this argument – I think that not having something is an option and not having ready access to it in the format you want is not a right and shouldn’t be treated as such. I think that people can get selfish and feel entitled just because they can’t get what they want on their schedule.
But, I think there’s a broader point to this argument that wasn’t raised. Are the distributors making the right choice in handling this issue the way they are?
Regardless of the sense of entitlement that people feel, the content producers are missing the boat in *not giving people what they want.
One comment by “J.” on the post summed up my feelings pretty well.
The thing is, your next to last paragraph about something not being on our terms…It’s consumers pushing for our terms that helps drive innovation and forces companies into these new paradigms. What if we all set back and didn’t ask and push for digital music? We’d still be on CDs. The record companies didn’t want to move to digital. We forced them to.
Same thing here. We shouldn’t sit back and wait for companies to put their stuff out in a format we want to buy. I’m not saying it’s ok to pirate. But that is what’s pushing companies to move to a paradigm that we want to consume.
That’s the key.
Sure, these companies aren’t required to deliver content to us in the way we want, but they’re stupid not to.
I think if they spent less time and money in lawsuits and more in delivering content in the way people want, much of the piracy problem would be solved. Instead of forcing people to fit in your way of delivering your content, try to package your content in a way they want. We’ve shown we’re more than willing to pay if you give us to option to get what we want.
But, it’s not just about movies
This discussion shows how critical the “Place” part of the marketing mix is.
Take a look at your business. Are you forcing people into your way of doing things rather than adapting to (or at least considering) theirs? Sure, there will always be parts of doing business with a company that are dictated by the company, but it’s the organizations that work to deliver their products and services in a way the customer prefers that will succeed in the long run.
It worked for music, there’s no reason it can’t work for movies.
Sure, it’s wrong to take that sense of entitlement and use it as an excuse to steal content, but there’s something to be said for pushing distributors to re-think their traditional ways of operating. That’s how most innovation happens.
