Robert Marich's handbook on Movie Marketing is comprehensive, complex and at the same time riveting.
The analysis he presents is tremendously thorough, detailed and informative and clearly reveals the author as both an astute insider and a fan of the movies. Marich provides a unique glimpse into the enormous complexity of movie marketing with tremendous detail at the many layers and levels played by economics, psychology, technology and plain old `dumb luck'. The movie industry, we are reminded, is a tremendous locomotive that pulls a trillion dollar train from television and radio advertising, to merchandising and music, home video and DVD sales.
The book is written for both industry experts, film students, and professionals who can extract the lessons of Hollywood marketing for their own markets and corporate needs. Marich's painstaking research shows in the amount of raw data he provides to introduce the many facets of movie marketing. Marich opens up a fascinating, behind-the-scenes world that not only permeates and creates American culture and Pop culture, but is the leading export of American ideas and trends worldwide.
"Marketing to Moviegoers" is not simply about the movies, but provide insights into the dramatic forces that have changed American culture for the past 30 years. In many ways Marich has provided his own Future Shock by demonstrating demographic shifts, the growing importance of the Internet, the fragmentation of television viewing, the social implications of increased cell phone use, viral marketing patterns via e-mail, and the emergence of electronic cinema. The book is written as a primer and is a useful text book. It only misses a forward looking conclusion, for Marich has told us where the industry has been and demonstrates with tremendous knowledge where it is now, but has only teased of what this means for the future.