A Real Blockbuster Story

By Richard Laermer, Guest Author

We threw Blockbuster into the collective dustbin years ago, along with The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Contempo Casuals. The glory days of Blockbuster are long gone … long, long, long gone. Once upon a time it was actually cool to have a Blockbuster card. That Cookie Monster Blue and Big Bird Yellow … oh, the good old days. Nobody bought movies back then, we rented them. And most of the time we rented them from Blockbuster. (Unless we wanted one of those movies … then we forked it over.) Want a relaxing night at home? You went to Blockbuster. It was a Blockbuster night, ahh.

Now RETURNING the video, that was the hard part. Who could do it on time? And the late fees! More people were in collections over those fees in the 90s than for missed car payments. (Or maybe not, but doesn’t it feel true?)

Of course that was a different time. Today, orphaned by its corporate parent Viacom, those fat late fees a distant dream, Blockbuster has become passé. Want a relaxing night at home? Now you pick up the latest DVD at Target. Or on demand from the cable company. Or if you’re cool (and you know we are), you get it from Netflix.

On one hand, the company caught up. They’ve worked hard, and invested millions, in staying relevant. Their online rental business is arguably better than Netflix’s. They’ve dabbled in digital downloads and streams. But on the other hand… Blockbuster is boring. Over. U-N-C-O-O-L. A Van Damme in a Gyllenhaal world. (Awww, poor Jake. What? Too soon …)

While Netflix is on its way to becoming a verb (the holy grail of branding!), Blockbuster is fading away. How many consumers know the significant strides the company has made? And worse, do they care?

Then it happened. This week during Bravo’s Project Runway, the little engine that could, did. Mr. Tim Gunn took the designers on one of his wildly entertaining and slightly over the top field trips to SPANDEX WORLD. During the field trip, the designers were introduced to the Divas of the WWE. (By “Divas” they mean incredibly terrifying women who could easily take all of Britney’s bodyguards.) Gunn informed the designers that their challenge was to create outfits for the wonderful women of the WWE – every designer’s dream.

In order to get a feel for the Diva’s “style” the designers ordered old WWE clips from Blockbuster! Not only was the Blockbuster envelope on the table (glorious blue and yellow ablaze), but the designers even dropped verbal Blockbuster plugs. Go Blockbuster! Blockbuster has a real chance to shed its stagnant image, to move beyond tired commercials (“Rent Over the Hedge on DVD!” Woohoo?), and make an honest connection with their present and past customers.

Blockbuster isn’t a dinosaur struggling to stay alive! Blockbuster gets it now, and gets it better than anyone they’re competing with. Let’s keep it going, buddy! Product placement is all the rage these days, but it is only one step in the giant and winding staircase Blockbuster needs to walk up.

To misquote The Graduate: “I want to say one word to you. Just one word. INTERNET.” Digital distribution is the future, and right now no one, not the Yahoos nor the Studios nor the Bit Torrents of the world have a lock on that business. So why not Blockbuster? They could even partner up with Time Warner and put their content on demand. (We totally need to be Blockbuster execs.) This is Blockbuster’s chance to leapfrog NetFlix in the next generation of media.

And what about social networking communities? Lets get vi-r-al! Currently there is a Blockbuster application on Facebook that has less than 300 subscribers. I know people with more friends on Facebook! (And some of them kind of suck.) This is an easy, efficient, and effective way to reach a huge, relevant, impressionable population. Build an application that allows users to compare movie tastes with friends, order rentals online, and (when possible) download/stream content. This is doable! You’re Blockbuster, you still have the money, the clout, the relationships with content creators (Studios, Networks, etc.), to make it happen.

Blockbuster needs to articulate a forward-looking and innovative message that puts the company in the future of entertainment. It just takes some smart PR, a little bit of Punk attitude and stop talking about late fees already, dudes.