20 years of content - for free?!
September 17th, 2007 by Allen VoivodBy way of introduction…
Gene and I knew those old shows would be worth saving, but for a long time nobody agreed with us. In the years before home video, it seemed like a waste of expensive video tape to preserve hundreds of episodes of “Opening Soon at a Theater Near You,” “Sneak Previews” or “At the Movies.” After all, the movies we were reviewing weren’t going to be opening again, and who’d want to watch a show of old movie reviews? Right?
That’s Roger Ebert, movie critic with the Chicago Sun-Times, writing the Introduction to the Balcony Archive on the At the Movies website. And as he continues, you realize how lucky and prescient they were.
Siskel and Ebert (now Ebert and Roeper) are arguably the most famous movie critics in history, and their commitment to never giving a thumb sideways - not to mention their obvious passion for the art of moviemaking - resulted in a catalog of reviews to die for.
And now they’re making all the reviews they have available online. For free.
They throw a 15-20-second ad up before the review plays, and they sell banner ads on the site as well, so they’re certainly not sharing their content out of charity. What they are doing is reinforcing their brand even further, as they add new reviews and content, to do for the web what they did on TV - become the go-to powerhouse for online movie opinion-making.
And considering their core audience, who’ve aged with the show and are increasing in numbers, demand, buying power and confidence online, this is one of the smartest content moves I’ve seen all year.
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again - if you’ve got a lot of content about your business, your hobbies, your passion, or however you think about that area of life where you excel, PLEASE, get it out there and grow your reputation as THE source of knowledge and education in your field.
Build your brand with solid, reliable, relevant content. Siskel, Ebert, and Roeper seem to think it’s a good idea. If you trust them for movie-viewing advice, would you trust them with the marketing example they set, too?
