Cargo Cults, and Kevin Smith http://tinyurl.com/5tevudm
One of the inevitable human tendencies is to want certainty. We “know” how the traditional film and television businesses operate, or at least the way they have operated. Now with changing distribution there are no certainties and yet that’s what we naturally crave.
This leads to situations where a producer/musician/filmmaker observes how others have built an audience and then follows through with the same actions, even though the specific actions are not truly building a real connection with fans, and that’s the important starting point for obtaining a monetary return for your work.
This form of “going through the motion” has been named a “cargo cult” and the history of that term is explained in the article.
But if you just look at this as a paint-by-numbers answer to “what is the business model,” you’re going to fail. And that includes even some of our favorite tactics, such as using “free” as part of your strategy. As we’ve said time and time again, give it away and pray is no business model. Nor is just setting up “tiered” offerings. Those can work amazingly well also… but, again, without the connecting, who’s going to buy. Taking a movie on tour is great… but without the fans clamoring to see it, then that’s useless as well.
Instead of a paint-by-numbers approach we have to truly connect with fans before they have any reason to buy anything from us.