Latest / Brighter Path: Data, Marketing, Entertainment, and Storytelling / Backrooms: The Opening Weekend Hollywood Didn’t See Coming

Transcript

Backrooms: The Opening Weekend Hollywood Didn’t See Coming · Brighter Path: Data, Marketing, Entertainment, and Storytelling

• 0:00
  Welcome back to Behind the Curtain.
• 0:02
  This is our deep dive where we, you know, we really try to
• 0:05
  unpack that wild intersection of data marketing and the
• 0:08
  entertainment industry. Yeah, the place where the
• 0:10
  numbers supposedly tell us exactly what humans are going to
• 0:13
  do. Right, supposedly being the
• 0:14
  keyword there, because today we are looking at a situation where
• 0:18
  the numbers completely, I mean spectacularly failed to predict
• 0:23
  reality. Oh, it's a massive fail, Like a
• 0:25
  total system breakdown. Exactly.
• 0:27
  So to start us off, I want you, the listener, to just imagine
• 0:30
  something for a second. Imagine you are.
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  You're looking at the Weather Radar app on your phone.
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  OK, the standard morning routine.
• 0:38
  Yeah, exactly. You check it right before you
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  leave the house and the screen is just completely clear.
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  I mean, no green blobs, no red storm warnings.
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  It's just this calm, perfectly blank map.
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  So you're thinking, great, it's a beautiful day.
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  Right. You step outside, no umbrella,
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  no raincoat, totally confident because I mean, the data just
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  told you it's clear. And the absolute second you step
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  off your porch, you were just immediately hit by like a
• 1:02
  Category 5 hurricane. Oh man, just instantly drenched.
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  Just soaked and that right there, that feeling, that is the
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  ultimate failure of instrumentation.
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  Yeah, because the storm is objectively real, right?
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  Like you are standing in it. It is happening to you.
• 1:17
  Exactly. But the tools that were
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  specifically built to warn you about it are actively insisting
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  you know they're basically screaming at you that the sky is
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  blue. Right.
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  And it creates this profound cognitive dissonance.
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  You start questioning, wait do I even understand how to read this
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  radar anymore? Like is the app broken?
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  Am I broken it? Forces you to rethink everything
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  you know about the tools you rely on.
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  And that massive disconnect, that weird cognitive dissonance
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  between what the multi $1,000,000 tracking instruments
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  say and the actual physical reality on the ground, that's
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  what we're unpacking today. It's such a fascinating case
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  study. It really is.
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  We are exploring an event that is currently tracking to be this
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  massive record-breaking hit is making huge ways.
• 2:01
  The money is literally piling up.
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  But pretty much every single traditional piece of tracking
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  data, I said. Nobody was paying attention to
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  it. Yeah, it's like a ghost just
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  suddenly manifested on opening weekend and completely took over
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  the box office. Which is crazy.
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  How does a ghost take over the box office?
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  So to figure this out, we are leaning heavily into some
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  amazing insights from Chris Colombo over the consultancy
• 2:23
  company Brighter Path. Yeah, they do incredible work
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  analyzing these kinds of market anomalies.
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  They really do. The source material we're
• 2:30
  looking at today is this super revealing excerpt of theirs,
• 2:33
  titled Unseen Momentum. The Backroom's Box Office surge.
• 2:37
  Such a great title. Honestly, Unseen Momentum
• 2:40
  perfectly captures it. Right, so let's lay out the
• 2:43
  basic facts for you. Just to set the stage for this
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  frankly seemingly impossible scenario, we are looking at the
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  film adaptation of Backrooms. Which is opening today, right?
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  Opening today, yeah. And it is getting a really
• 2:56
  massive release. We're talking over 3000
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  theaters. Wow, OK, over 3000 theaters,
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  that's a huge footprint. It's massive and the tracking
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  for this movie, it started with a midpoint projection of around
• 3:09
  $22 million plus. Which is already a really solid
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  number for an opening weekend. It is, but here's the crazy
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  part. It didn't just hold steady at
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  that 22 million mark. The momentum actually pushed it
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  much, much closer to the very high end of that 22 million plus
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  projection as this week went on. Yeah.
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  And pushing toward the high end of a projection that size,
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  especially when you're dealing with over 3000 theaters, I mean,
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  that signifies A tremendous cultural footprint.
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  Right, it's not a fluke. Exactly.
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  It shows very real financial velocity.
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  I mean, as Chris Colombo's piece notes, this is officially quote
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  another amazing win for a 24. Another win for a 24 and you
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  know you do not hit the high end of a $22 million projection by
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  accident. Or like, by sheer luck.
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  No, absolutely not. You can't fake that kind of box
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  office. It physically requires bodies in
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  seats. Yes, you need real physical
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  human beings actually leaving their houses, pulling out their
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  credit cards and buying tickets. The financial reality of this
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  opening is just undeniable. Right, the money is real.
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  The money is very real, and the fundamental assumption of all
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  market tracking in the entertainment industry is cause
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  and effect. If the money is real, the data
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  that predicts the money should also be real.
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  That's the bedrock of our whole industry.
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  We operate on this core assumption that revenue is
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  really just the final lagging indicator of, you know, a long,
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  highly predictable chain of measurable public interest.
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  Right. But here's where it gets really
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  interesting. And this is the core
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  contradiction of this whole deep dive, the awareness numbers
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  heading into this weekend. They absolutely do not explain
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  this box office search. Not even a little bit.
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  Not at all. The brighter path source makes
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  this crystal clear. Heading into the weekend,
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  Backrooms was actually below average on pretty much every
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  single standard funnel metric. Which I mean, being below
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  average in the context of a record-breaking opening surge,
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  that shouldn't just be considered like an unlikely
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  statistical anomaly. Oh, it should be impossible.
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  Yeah, according to the traditional models that
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  Hollywood and honestly most major marketing industries rely
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  on, it should be mathematically impossible to hit those revenue
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  numbers with below average awareness.
• 5:19
  OK, let's unpack this for the listener.
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  Let's assume you're familiar with a standard marketing
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  funnel, right? The classic journey.
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  Right top to bottom. Yeah, you start with broad
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  awareness at the very top, then you move down to interest, and
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  finally at the very bottom you get down to the actual intent to
• 5:34
  purchase the. Standard, tried and true funnel.
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  Right. I always compare these funnel
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  metrics to like throwing a wide net into the ocean.
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  The industry assumption is that to catch a lot of fish, meaning
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  to get a high grossing opening weekend, you need an absolutely
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  massive net. Because you're going to lose
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  most of your catch. Exactly.
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  You need gargantuan general awareness at the top of that
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  funnel because most of those fish are just going to swim
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  right through the holes. You lose a massive percentage of
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  people at every single subsequent step of the funnel.
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  Right. What's fascinating here is that
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  the standard metrics assume a record opener must have a very
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  specific, undeniable data profile.
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  It has to look a certain way on paper.
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  Exactly. It has to look like a giant
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  pyramid. You need massive, overwhelming
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  awareness at the top, which trickles down into solid
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  interest, which eventually trickles down into measurable
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  intent. But the.
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  Algorithms that dictate these projections.
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  They're essentially just volume based attrition models, aren't
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  they? Yeah, they really are.
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  They look at the general population and they basically
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  just ask a binary question. Have you heard of this?
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  Yes or no? Right.
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  And if the total volume of yes answers is low, the algorithm
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  applies its standard historical drop off rate and it spits out a
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  projection that says, you know the final revenue is going to be
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  absolutely abysmal. Because it assumes the math
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  works the same for everything. Exactly.
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  It looks at the below average awareness for backrooms, assumes
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  almost everyone is going to drop out before actually buying a
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  ticket, and concludes that nobody is going to show up to
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  the theater. So the algorithm is essentially
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  looking at a tidal wave and calling it a puddle.
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  Yes, because it's asking the wrong question entirely.
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  It's solely asking how many people in the general population
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  know about this movie. Right.
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  And it is completely incapable of asking how fiercely do the
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  people who actually know about it want to engage with it.
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  OK, but hold on. I want to push back on this a
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  little bit. Yeah, because standard math
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  really doesn't support that kind of dismissal.
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  Know what I mean? Well, let's look at the sheer
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  numbers of this. If your awareness is genuinely
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  below average across the board, how do you physically generate
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  $22 million plus in a single weekend?
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  Right, the math problem. Yeah, like, you still need sheer
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  volume to hit those numbers, don't you?
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  Yeah, even if a small group of people really, really love the
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  idea of the movie, filling over 3000 theaters requires a massive
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  amount of physical foot traffic. It does.
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  So a small, passionate group shouldn't technically be able to
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  generate that much revenue that quickly, right?
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  How does a movie even mathematically hit the high end
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  of a projection like that without the broad numbers?
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  And that mathematical contradiction is the exact
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  Riddle that Chris Colombo and the Brighter Path data answers
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  for us. OK, break it down for us.
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  So the data we are looking at doesn't tell us this is a broad
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  audience converting at what we would call a normal rate.
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  Instead, the source explicitly tells us that this is a
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  concentrated audience moving with unusual urgency.
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  Oh wow. OK, concentrated audience and
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  unusual urgency. Exactly.
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  Those are the two key phrases. Let's really dive deep into the
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  mechanics of those two phrases, because I feel like they are the
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  actual engine driving this entire phenomenon.
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  They absolutely are. So let's look at the first part.
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  Concentrated audience. OK, Standard tracking models are
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  built from the ground up to measure a broad audience, and a
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  broad audience is just the general public.
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  Right, it's the people who see a billboard on their commute to
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  work. Or maybe they catch a 32nd spot
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  during a football game. Exactly.
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  It's very passive and a broad audience converts at what the
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  source calls a normal rate. Which is inherently slow, it's
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  casual, and it's highly prone to distraction.
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  Right, yes, very prone to distraction.
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  A casual moviegoer sees a trailer online and thinks, oh,
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  you know, that looks pretty good.
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  But then Friday night rolls around.
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  Right, Friday hits and they might decide I'm too tired to go
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  out or I'd rather just order a pizza and watch something on
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  streaming. Right.
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  And that is exactly why the industry relies on huge top of
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  tunnel awareness because you need like 100 million people to
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  see the ad just to get 2 million of them to actually put on shoes
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  and leave their houses. Exactly.
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  A broad audience's money trickles into the box office
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  over weeks and weeks, if it ever arrives at all.
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  OK, so that's a broad audience. Right now contrast that with a
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  concentrated audience. This is not the general public,
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  it is a highly specific hyper engaged community.
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  So they might be vastly smaller in total numbers compared to the
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  general public. Much smaller, which is exactly
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  why the overall awareness this metric looks completely below
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  average on a standard tracking survey.
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  The general public has a literally no idea what backrooms
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  is. You've never heard of it, but
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  the concentrated audience, they know every single detail about
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  it. Exactly.
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  So if the audience is smaller in total volume, but the revenue is
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  still hitting the high end of a $22 million projection, the only
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  variable left to explain that math is speed.
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  Speed, yes. They aren't waiting around to
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  buy tickets. They are moving with intense
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  urgency. Which brings us to that second
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  phrase from the brighter path text.
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  Unusual urgency. This alters the fundamental
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  physics of the conversion funnel.
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  It essentially bypasses the funnel entirely.
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  Doesn't. It pretty much.
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  It's less like a funnel and more like just a straight pipe.
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  There's almost zero drop off because the intent to buy is
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  baked in before they even reach the point of sale.
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  Right. The drop off rate plummets to
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  near 0. If this concentrated audience is
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  aware of the film, they're already interested in it, right?
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  And if they're interested in it, they absolutely intend to see
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  it, and they intend to see it immediately.
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  They aren't saying oh I'll see it eventually when it's on
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  streaming. No, they're coordinating in
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  Group chats, they are setting alarms on their phones for the
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  exact minute tickets drop online, and they are buying out
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  the earliest possible showtimes on Thursday night and Friday.
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  Wow so 100,000 people casually saying maybe on a standard
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  survey generates vastly less opening weekend revenue than say
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  10,000 people screaming take my money right now.
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  Exactly, the standard metrics are out there looking for a
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  shallow sprawling lake of awareness, but backrooms is a
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  highly pressurized fire hose. Oh, I love that analogy.
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  Right. The lake holds more total water,
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  meaning more total general awareness, but the fire hose has
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  the kinetic energy to literally knock down a wall.
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  And our standard funnel metrics just do not have a pressure
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  gauge for the fire hose. No, they don't.
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  They only measure the surface area of the lake.
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  Exactly, and that perfectly explains the total failure of
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  the tracking algorithms here. Because a standard $1,000,000
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  predictive algorithm basically flattens human emotion.
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  It completely flattens it. When a market research firm
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  sends out a survey, they basically just ask you to check
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  a box. Are you aware of this film?
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  Yes or no? Or are you interested scale of 1
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  to 5? Right, and the system assigns
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  the exact same statistical weight to a casual Yeah sure,
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  maybe I'll go as it does to a desperate visceral.
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  I have been waiting for this for years and I am bringing 4 of my
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  friends on opening night. It just strips away all
• 12:44
  localized velocity. The momentum of the backroom's
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  box office surge was entirely unseen by the broad metrics, but
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  it was intensely felt at the point of sale.
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  It's all about that velocity. I mean the fact that the
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  tracking moved from a midpoint of 22,000,000 plus all the way
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  to the high end during the actual week of release.
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  Right. That Leon game, Yeah.
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  That is the ultimate proof of this localized velocity.
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  Broad audiences simply do not shift tracking that dramatically
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  at the very last second. Because broad audiences don't
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  just wake up on a Wednesday and collectively decide to change
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  their weekend plans. Exactly that late stage, last
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  minute surge that is the pure, unfiltered signature of unusual
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  urgency. It's a concentrated community
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  activating all at once. And the Brighter Path source
• 13:33
  gives us just this brilliant synthesis of this exact problem,
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  Colombo states quote. Those are different things, and
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  they require a different read. A different read that is so
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  crucial. It really is.
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  If you try to read a concentrated urgent audience
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  using the standard tools meant for a broad, casual audience,
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  your data isn't just going to be slightly off, it is going to
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  actively, confidently lie to you.
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  It will lie to you and worse, it will cause you to make
• 14:00
  catastrophic business decisions. Oh absolutely.
• 14:02
  Because think about it, if you are an executive looking at
• 14:05
  standard funnel metrics for a project like this and you see
• 14:07
  below average awareness, you might pull the marketing
• 14:11
  funding. You might cancel the theatrical
• 14:12
  distribution altogether. Right.
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  You might write off a brilliant project as a complete failure
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  before it even opens, all because your instruments cannot
• 14:19
  detect the specific type of pressure that is building under
• 14:22
  the surface. It honestly makes you wonder how
• 14:25
  many incredible culture defining projects were just killed in
• 14:30
  their cribs because the data told the people in charge that
• 14:33
  there was no awareness. No.
• 14:35
  Probably more than we'll ever know, right?
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  In reality, there was probably a hyper concentrated audience
• 14:40
  ready to explode, but because they didn't show up as a blip on
• 14:44
  a broad population survey, the project was deemed worthless.
• 14:48
  And that's the danger, right? We rely so heavily on these
• 14:51
  legacy systems that call up a randomized sample of the
• 14:54
  population. Yeah.
• 14:55
  If 90 out of 100 people say they haven't heard of something, the
• 14:58
  system automatically logs a failure.
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  It completely fails to ask what those other ten people are
• 15:03
  doing. What if those 10 people are
• 15:05
  obsessive? Exactly what if their conversion
• 15:07
  rate is 100%? The industry has to update its
• 15:10
  entire philosophical approach to data.
• 15:12
  We can no longer just ask how many we really had to figure out
• 15:16
  how to measure how intensely. How intensely OK to pull all
• 15:20
  these threads together. Let's really synthesize the main
• 15:23
  take away here for you, the listener, because this is so
• 15:26
  applicable. It applies to almost everything.
• 15:28
  It does. The Backroom's box office surge
• 15:31
  is not just some interesting piece of trivia about a single
• 15:33
  movie opening in 3000 theaters. It is undeniable proof that in
• 15:38
  the entertainment industry and honestly in data tracking
• 15:41
  broadly across any sector, passion and urgency can
• 15:45
  dramatically out pinch general awareness.
• 15:47
  Every single time. 824 secured a massive win here not because
• 15:52
  they threw the widest net into the ocean, but because they
• 15:54
  capitalized on the intensity of a concentrated Group, A group
• 15:58
  that standard funnel metrics completely failed to measure.
• 16:02
  Because the shape of consumer demand is fundamentally
• 16:05
  changing. We are moving away from a
• 16:07
  monoculture, you know, where everyone knows a little bit
• 16:09
  about one big thing. And we're moving into this
• 16:11
  landscape of intense hypercultures where small,
• 16:14
  concentrated groups care deeply and urgently about very specific
• 16:18
  things. And yet, our primary measurement
• 16:20
  tools are still stuck firmly in the monoculture era.
• 16:24
  So why does this specific box office anomaly matter to you
• 16:27
  outside of Hollywood? Well, whether you are analyzing
• 16:29
  market trends for your own business or maybe you're looking
• 16:32
  at consumer data for a new product launch.
• 16:34
  Or even just observing Internet culture, right?
• 16:37
  Wondering why certain seemingly niche things suddenly just
• 16:41
  explode into the mainstream. Exactly.
• 16:44
  It is a vital reminder that how you read the data is just as
• 16:47
  important as the data itself. Absolutely.
• 16:51
  You absolutely must know whether you're looking for broad
• 16:53
  interest or concentrated urgency because like we said earlier, if
• 16:57
  you use a thermometer to measure wind speed, you are going to get
• 17:00
  caught in the storm. Yeah, the data will tell you
• 17:02
  it's a perfect and a pleasant 72° while the roof is literally
• 17:06
  being ripped off your house. It's terrifying, but it's true.
• 17:09
  It really requires a massive shift in how we approach
• 17:12
  analytics and human behavior as a whole.
• 17:14
  We have to stop trusting the blank radar screen implicitly.
• 17:18
  We really do. I mean, think about this.
• 17:20
  If standard data funnels completely missed the massive,
• 17:24
  urgent momentum of the backroom's audience, what other
• 17:28
  powerful, concentrated cultural movements are currently flying
• 17:31
  completely under the radar of our standard tracking metrics
• 17:34
  right now? Oh, that is a great question.
• 17:35
  Right, like what else is about to surge that the data
• 17:38
  confidently says doesn't even exist?
• 17:40
  It's a thrilling concept. The data doesn't know
• 17:43
  everything, and human urgency really does remain the most
• 17:46
  powerful disruptive force in the market.
• 17:49
  You just have to know what instruments to use to actually
• 17:51
  see it. Exactly.
• 17:52
  Well, thank you so much for joining us on this deep dive.
• 17:55
  The next time you look at the radar and it tells you the sky
• 17:58
  is perfectly clear, you might still want to grab an umbrella.
• 18:01
  Yeah, just in case. Just in case you were standing
• 18:04
  right in the path of unseen momentum.
• 18:06
  Take care everyone.