I had an email from one of our regular readers today about a water cooler conversation that he had recently about DVDs that I thought was interesting…

Here is the gist of it:

We have all seen the messages at the beginning of DVD's that admonish us all not to steal, with the edgy music and visuals. Ok, so we all get that….

But the truth of the matter is that if you are watching a movie on a DVD, you have probably either rented it (legally) or purchased it (legally). So why the Big Brother message. You are a normal, law abiding citizen.

Surely what the content companies should be saying in their messaging is: “Hello, customer. You are one of the people who we want to thank. Because you are one of the people that enable us at the studio to continue to have big expense accounts, travel first class to Cannes for the film festival (even though we don't actually do any work while we are there), and generally live life in a way that is totally out of step with reality. So please keep on doing what you are doing….”

Seriously, shouldn't we all, as law abiding citizens, be seriously offended by the monstering ads that they put onto the DVDs?

For a lot of people, I have no doubt, messaging of this kind produces similar emotions as those that are exhibited by people in the UK when they hear of the latest expenses rort undertaken by their politicians, or the announcement that the employees of a bank (that just had to be bailed out by a government) were the recipients of millions of dollars in bonuses….

Do you think that if the content companies actually tried to be the customers' friend they might actually get somewhere?

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Posted in Main Page by Chris Gilbey No Comments Yet