CASE STUDY: BLOCKBUSTER
Problem: Losing customers to Netflix, and facing a hazy future once we all get movies via broadband.

Agency: Amalgamated
The Pitch: Up against Netflix, Blockbuster has been trumpeting the impulse-friendliness of its retail stores. (You may want Dr. Zhivago today, but by the time it arrives, you’d really rather see Dr. Giggles, and a trip to the store beats a three-day mail turnaround.) This is a tactical campaign blowing out Blockbuster’s current work. It begins with this mailer (1), and continues on Regretflix.com (2), with trailers for those DVDs (3) you don’t want but somehow chose anyway.

Agency: Deep Focus
The Pitch: Everyone, even hipsters, loves to hate hipsters. Even worse is a “Netflixter,” a movie nerd defined by his Netflix queue. With interviews filmed in front of Blockbuster stores, we’ll call attention to those who sacrifice sense for a cool façade. (“I rent a lot of Godard. His films look great projected on the walls at my loft parties.”) YouTubers will be encouraged to record their own.

Agency: Tribal DDB
The Pitch: The “movie widget.” Offered as a downloadable freebie for MySpace or Facebook pages, it allows groups of friends to vote on their evening’s rental. Also, customers will be asked to create and upload videos about how they and their friends decide what movie to watch. The best video wins a year of free rentals; the whole campaign costs less than $20,000 and can be done in three weeks.

Related:

• Archive: “Features”
• Table of Contents: Jul 16, 2007 issue of New York | Subscribe!