科技與現實 當好萊塢遇見大數據

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Hollywood has long relied on consumer surveys to answer a question about soon-to-arrive movies: To what degree have marketing materials made a film a must-see?

加利福尼亞州貝弗利山——長期以來，好萊塢都是依靠消費者調查來解答一個關於即將上映影片的問題：市場宣傳要做到什麼程度，纔可以讓一部影片成爲觀衆的必看片？

It used to be easy for studios to use that data, provided roughly a month before release, to improve ticket sales for a film’s opening — a creative tweak to an ad, for instance, or more male-focused TV spots. But movie campaigns have grown considerably longer and more complex. Now, by the time the old tracking system kicks in, studios say they can do little more than brace for impact: Consumers have already made up their minds.

過去，電影公司在影片發行前大約一個月就可以拿到消費者調查數據，並輕鬆應用這個數據來提高影片的開畫票房——對廣告稍作創意性微調，或者投放更多針對男性觀衆的電視廣告。但是電影宣傳活動變得日益漫長而複雜。如今，老式消費者跟蹤系統已經完蛋了，製片公司稱，消費者在電影上映之前早已經下定決心，它們所能做的僅僅是被動應付由此帶來的結果。

To help studio marketers get back ahead of their customers, United Talent Agency and Rentrak, an entertainment data company, are introducing a service called PreAct. It joins an array of Hollywood upstarts peddling “social listening,” a growing field that uses algorithms to slice and dice chatter on social media.

爲了幫助電影公司的市場宣傳人員領先於消費者，聯合人才經紀公司(United Talent Agency)與娛樂數據公司Rentrak聯合推出一種名爲PreAct的服務。它同一大批好萊塢新貴一道，推銷“傾聽社交網絡”——這是一個正在發展的領域，使用算法詳細分析社交媒體上的閒聊。

PreAct begins unusually early. It closely monitors marketing efforts at least a year before opening weekend. At any moment, studios using the service can log in to a portal and receive various charts that detail how consumers are responding to promotional efforts.

PreAct的啓動非常之早。它從電影上映的那個週末之前一年，就開始密切監視市場活動。任何時候，使用該項服務電影片公司都可以從一個入口登陸，獲取各種表格，上面詳細列出客戶對宣傳活動的反應。

“Every studio wants actionable information, and that is what we are providing,” said David Herrin, the head of research at United Talent, which developed PreAct at its headquarters here before teaming up with Rentrak to bring it to market.

“每個電影公司都想要可以幫他們採取相應行動的信息，我們提供的正是這樣的信息，”聯合人才研究部門的負責人大衛·赫林(David Herrin)說，他在該公司總部開發了PreAct項目，之後又與Rentrak聯合，將之推向市場。

The rise of social media has created a data boom in almost every major industry, and motion pictures are no exception. Among the new studio-focused services: Fizziology, a five-year-old Indianapolis company that offers reports assembled by human analysts and not just by algorithms; Moviepilot, which studies social data and box-office trends; and ListenFirst Media, founded in 2012 and now a large supplier of “fan engagement” information to television networks.

社交媒體的崛起爲幾乎所有重要行業都帶來了數據的暴增，電影業也絕非例外。以電影公司爲對象的新服務有很多，比如，擁有五年曆史的印第安納波利斯公司Fizziology提供分析師人工編纂的報告，而不僅僅是基於算法；電影試播公司(Moviepilot)專門研究社交媒體數據和票房趨勢；2012年創立的先聽媒體公司(ListenFirst Media)擅長爲電視網絡提供“影迷興趣”信息。

Other newcomers include Piedmont Media Research, which provides demographic data and looks at films when they are still just concepts, and C4, a firm led by the experienced Hollywood researcher Vincent Bruzzese.

其他新來者還包括皮德蒙特媒體研究公司(Piedmont Media Research)，它提供人口統計數據，在電影處於概念階段就開始對其進行研究；此外還有C4公司，由經驗豐富的好萊塢研究者文森特·布拉奇茲(Vincent Bruzzese)領導。

For studio marketing executives, the result can be an alphabet soup of competing analyses. Most studios, hoping to cover all bases, subscribe to a variety of these reports and try to make decisions by extrapolating from them. But that strategy can be expensive, with some services — PreAct among them — charging the biggest studios hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

對於電影公司的市場高管來說，這些研究結果可能是一大堆互相矛盾的大雜燴。大多數電影公司希望面面俱到，他們會訂閱各種類似報告，試圖按這些數據來推算決策。但這種策略花費不菲，訂閱這些服務（PreAct也在其中）每年要花費數十萬美元。

Since its introduction in January, PreAct has signed up studios that control roughly 40 percent of the North American box office. Clients include 20th Century Fox — currently the No. 1 movie operation in Hollywood, as measured by domestic box-office market share — and Sony Pictures Entertainment.

自今年一月成立以來，PreAct簽下了控制着大約40%北美票房的電影公司，其中包括20世紀福克斯公司（以國內票房市場份額計算，目前它是好萊塢最大的電影公司）和索尼影業。

“It’s not a perfect tool, but it allows us to be really long-lead, and it provides information in close to real time, both of which are extremely helpful,” said Dwight Caines, Sony’s president for domestic marketing. Mr. Caines credited PreAct in particular with helping inform promotional decisions for this fall’s hit movie “The Equalizer,” including how best to use an Eminem soundtrack song, “Guts Over Fear,” to generate interest among young men.

“它並不是完美的工具，但能讓我們從長遠的角度看問題，並且提供接近實時的信息，這兩點都非常有幫助，”索尼影業的國內市場總監德懷特·凱恩斯(Dwight Caines)說。他還表示，在索尼爲今年秋天的熱門電影《伸冤人》(The Equalizer)做宣傳決策時，PreAct提供的數據極有幫助，比如怎樣好好利用埃米納姆(Eminem)爲電影創作的原聲歌曲《超越恐懼的勇氣》(Guts Over Fear)，令年輕觀衆對電影產生興趣。

When studios began to widely use tracking data in the 1980s, a single company provided it — the National Research Group, which relied on telephone polling. Back then, studio marketers followed a standard playbook: Trailers played in theaters, and TV commercials, print ads and billboards arrived a few weeks before release.

電影公司廣泛應用觀衆追蹤數據始於20世紀80年代，當時只有一家公司提供這種服務，那就是全國調查集團(National Research Group)。那會兒的調查手段主要依靠電話採訪。後來，電影公司的市場宣傳人員有了一套標準的程序：電影上映前幾星期在影院和電視廣告裏播放預告片、發佈平面廣告、推出公告牌。

Now that kind of campaign would get a marketer fired. A promotional campaign often starts more than a year in advance, as soon as actors are cast, and can reach high gear six months before release. It is not unusual for a studio to release three trailers for a big movie and multiple online “featurettes.”

現在的市場宣傳人員如果還恪守這種程序，可能就會被炒魷魚了。如今的宣傳攻勢通常是從影片上映一年多以前，也就是選角的階段就開始了，並在影片上映6個月之前達到高潮。電影公司爲一部大片製作三部預告片，以及在網上投放多部“片花”也不是什麼新鮮事。

PreAct started in 2011 as a way for United Talent to arm its celebrity clients — including Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie and Channing Tatum — with better data about their films. PreAct’s vast array of social-media information is collected by one of United Talent’s corporate clients, Crimson Hexagon, a Boston analytics firm that uses monitoring technology invented at Harvard.

PreAct公司於2011年創立，爲聯合人才經紀公司的名人客戶服務，其中包括約翰尼·德普(Johnny Depp)、安吉麗娜·朱莉(Angelina Jolie)和查寧·塔圖姆(Channing Tatum)，向這些明星們提供他們所主演電影的更有價值的數據。PreAct掌握的巨量社交媒體信息是由聯合人才經紀公司的另一個公司合作者“深紅六邊形”(Crimson Hexagon)提供，這家位於波士頓的數據分析公司使用哈佛大學研製的監控技術進行工作。

“My jaw dropped when I saw this product,” said Steve Buck, Rentrak’s senior vice president for business relations.

“這個產品讓我大吃一驚，”Rentrak公司負責公司關係的資深副總裁斯蒂夫·巴克(Steve Buck)說。

PreAct essentially takes information that is culled continuously from Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, movie blogs and other sites and provides coming movies with scores in various categories. The system, for instance, looks at the size of the online conversation and how much of it is positive or negative. It also tracks how much activity is organic and how much is the result of specific studio efforts.

事實上，PreAct公司使用從Twitter、YouTube、Tumblr、Facebook、Instagram、電影博客以及其他網站上持續不斷提取的信息，爲即將上映的電影按各種項目打分。舉個例子來說，這個系統可以評估網上議論的規模，這些議論是正面還是負面。它還可以追蹤什麼樣的活動是重要的，以及製片公司的特定活動是否有效。

Because PreAct has already collected this information for roughly 500 movies, it generates scores for new films by making comparisons against existing ones. Moreover, PreAct subscribers have access to scores for any movie headed toward theaters, meaning studios now have the ability to understand the health of competing releases.

PreAct已經爲大約500部電影收集了類似信息，用已經掌握的數據爲參照，爲新上映的電影打分。PreAct的訂閱者可以拿到所有即將上映的新片的分數，也就是說，製片公司可以瞭解競爭的健康程度。

“We’re going to continue to use it,” said Mr. Caines of Sony. “I love that all of the studios could be speaking in one language.”

“我們會繼續使用它，”索尼公司的凱恩斯說。“所有制片公司可以使用一種語言交流，我喜歡這樣。”

Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Studios, the two biggest studios that are not yet on board, declined to comment.

華納兄弟與迪士尼這兩家大公司目前還沒有使用這個系統，也拒絕對此作出評論。

Traditional tracking companies like the National Research Group, which is now owned by Nielsen and still sells “competitive positioning” reports to every major studio, are aggressively defending their turf.

國家研究集團如今已經隸屬尼爾森公司(Nielsen)，這樣的傳統觀衆追蹤公司還在向各大公司出售“競爭定位”報告，它們堅決捍衛自己的領地。

“Our tracking remains very sensitive to moviegoer intent,” said Tina Wilson, general manager of Nielsen Content, which includes National Research and Nielsen’s social-media-monitoring services. “We are thoughtful, and we have a real vigor, which allows our clients to make multimillion-dollar decisions based on our data.”

“我們的觀衆追蹤系統仍然能夠敏銳地捕捉觀影者的意圖，”尼爾遜內容公司的總經理蒂娜·威爾遜(Tina Wilson)說，該公司旗下包括國家研究和尼爾遜自己的各種社交媒體監控服務。“我們深思熟慮，有真正的效力，客戶可以根據我們的數據做出價值千萬美元的決策。”