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<\/p>\nLegendary Pictures, an American film production company based California, was founded in 2000 and was the first major movie production company backed by Wall Street investors, and as a result, distinguished itself in terms of operations and strategy from other Hollywood studios. A notable differentiator is its focus on data analytics and employment of innovative online technology. More specifically, Legendary emphasizes the use of data analytics to create more effective and efficient digital marketing through a process that identify, understand, reach, and persuade online consumers to purchase its movie tickets.<\/p>\n
Legendary began its data analytics group with the acquisition of software company StratBridge, founded by Matt Marolda. Marolda then assembled the team from a variety of talents to include a 性视界 astrophysicist and experts in dynamic pricing of the airline industry. The group is further divided into 3 teams. First, the \u201cQuant\u201d team, consisted of mostly PhD\u2019s in physics and mathematical sciences, are the ones who harvest and analyze the data using advanced algorithms. They Quant team developed an array of algorithms such as text analysis and user preference indicators, and then apply them to the native data acquired from source providers such as Google, Twitter, or Facebook.<\/p>\n
Next, the \u201cDev\u201d team, are the software developers that create easy to understand API\u2019s for the outputs from the Quant team. As a result, someone without the knowledge of the advance mathematics used in the Quant team could use the interface and find out whether certain Facebook user will like the upcoming horror movie made by Legendary. Finally, the \u201cStrategy\/Marketing\u201d team, using the API designed by the Dev team, constantly monitors the data inflow and allocate marketing budget continuously based on change in that data; they are sometimes described as a \u201cday-trader\u201d of marketing capital.<\/p>\n
The primary means of Legendary analytics\u2019\u2019 value creation lies in its improved effectiveness on movie marketing. \u00a0The traditional Hollywood marketing approach segments consumers into just four types: men or women; 25 years or younger\/older. Within each of these segments, the traditional Hollywood firms spends large amounts of marketing spending that attempts to identify a specific group and then cover everyone within that group. The result is tens of millions of dollars being spent on marketing in a \u201cspray-and-pray\u201d fashion; for the big blockbusters, the marketing budget could account to nearly half of the entire production cost.<\/p>\n
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Legendary, on the other hand, breaks down the four groups of millions of people into millions of groups of mini customer segments and analyze each groups\u2019 decision making process in regards to their movie consumption habits. The results are then applied in a more targeted and systematic manner, forgoing spending on the hardcore fans (they will see the movie regardless) or those that will never go see a certain movie, and instead focusing on those who are still on the fence to incrementally increase marketing spending on these users. The result is a more efficient allocation of marketing budget to convince the right kinds of customers, enabling Legendry\u2019s shareholders to capture more value in terms of cost reduction. For example, for the 2014 blockbuster \u201cGodzilla\u201d, Legendary was able to spend almost $30 million less domestically to achieve similar levels of box-office sales compared to traditional Hollywood comparables.<\/p>\n
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