I was doing my daily Boing Boing scan yesterday and was reminded of my last visit to a Starbucks, where I saw the film Akeelah and the Bee displayed for sale. (I’m sure many of you have looked at this display once or more a day as you get caffeinated, but for me, Starbucks, like Wendy’s, is something I reserve for travel.)
Anyway. I’ve been intrigued for a while by how the coffee giant has gotten themselves so involved in the music industry, in terms of marketing, distribution, and–let’s face it–two-way brand building. Now they’ve branched out with their first foray into film, with Akeelah and the Bee. Apparently they co-financed the making of the film, in addition to all their marketing and distribution efforts.
Here’s some of what the September 11 Boing Boing entry had to say:
The interesting thing here is the retail opportunity presented by a Starbucks partnership for DVD distribution. In bookselling, research has it that more than half of the people who might buy a book if they spotted it will never set foot in a bookstore or place an online order. In the golden age of pharmacy and grocery-store spinner-racks, more than half the books sold were sold outside of stores. Big-box stores and online stores can put together a much deeper, long-tail-compliant catalog than neighborhood stores or pharmacies ever could, but they can only sell those books to the kind of people who are willing to patronize bookstores.
The thing about selling a movie or a CD or a book in a Starbucks or other popular retail establishment is that it’s entirely positive for the sales of the media: the bookstore people will buy it in a bookstore, or maybe pick it up at Starbucks. The non-bookstore people who have an interest in that kind of movie/book/CD will pick up the title without cannibalizing sales that might have been generated elsewhere. It’s a wholly positive development.
Starbucks has already turned itself into a quiet powerhouse for CD sales for discs that it also owns a stake in — I’m fascinated to see if they manage to do this with movies, too.
I agree with most of this, but I get nervous when I hear things like “It’s a wholly positive development.” At this point, with this film (which is supposed to be pretty good), I can’t see anything wrong with it. But when corporations start tying themselves that publicly to films, and begin branding themselves through those films, how will that affect the art? Does it begin to smack of “special interests?” Will we be co-opted by not-so-great films? I guess my point is that it’s not just about making good films available for purchase at a wider range of places. It’s a more complex issue.
