We Hear from Our Customers…
Our current FDOD offerings in one handy poster!
After a few months of operation renting fulldome shows to customers around the world through FULLDOME OnDemand we’ve noticed a paradigm shift in people’s thinking about fulldome content. In some cases, it’s not quite what we anticipated, but it’s all still good!
For example, we’re hearing from customers who travel around with portable systems, saying, “We provide our clients a list of our programs that we have for them to choose from, so we would like to add all of your programs available through FULLDOME OnDemand service to our program list. Do we have the ability to use the promotional images on our marketing materials?”
Others are being quite audacious; they’re already putting show posters on their Web sites, even before they rent the movies. This has caused raised eyebrows from at least one concerned producer, who contacted us wondering “How can they be advertising shows they have not bought?”
Well, what used to be a “gotcha” method to help us discover who had actually purchased long-term licenses now has a different meaning. When a theater is using FULLDOME OnDemand, that’s not a bug — it’s a feature! People can now tell their audiences what they can show them, and when a group selects a show, the theater operator has only to rent the show they chose to see. It’s actually quite elegant.
When you stop and think about it, what we’re doing is really no different from what Amazon or Netflix (or Google) does. Now for all practical purposes, every FULLDOME OnDemand customer can ballyhoo the fact they have 50+ shows on tap. And it’s true — as long as their Internet connection and credit card balance holds up. The posters they create simply indicate what movies are available to show, not that they’ve actually bought traditional licenses and are running them all. At one customer’s request, we created a poster for the purpose (which you can download here). If you’re a user who wants to tout what you can rent from us, here you go. Just be sure to check the latest show additions and changes.
We checked in with one producer about this practice of advertising what’s available. He told us: “Frankly, I would encourage a user of FULLDOME OnDemand to advertise all of the shows as being available. I would think that it would be good marketing practice, and not at all deceiving, to do so.”
So, yet another paradigm shift comes to light with the use of FULLDOME OnDemand. Theaters have never had this kind of capability before. It really is kind of humbling and exciting to think that we’ve enabled them with new models and possibilities. It makes our day when we get a comment like this one: “I would love to be able to advertise all your shows to give the customers a selection. I have to say that this is a GREAT opportunity for us and one that will allow us to build an even greater relationship in working with LNP.”
Thanks to the Producers!
Our producers deserve a GREAT deal of thanks for their faith in this service, despite the many questions we all have about how well it works and where it fits into the hierarchy of licensing structures. It is a whole NEW way of thinking about content and how to get it to new audiences — and that has required us all to make a leap of faith. We are incredibly grateful to all the producers who are on the service — and the new ones who contact us with their content to license. We intend to add more shows, and welcome discussions with producers looking for ways to get their content “out there”. That second income stream is beckoning!