The Business Blog at Intuitive.com

Dave Taylor has been involved with the Internet since 1980 and is widely recognized as an expert on both technical and business issues. He has been published over a thousand times, launched four Internet-related startup companies, has written twenty business and technical books and holds both an MBA and MS Ed. Dave maintains three weblogs, The Business Blog at Intuitive.com, focused on business and industry analysis, the eponymous Ask Dave Taylor devoted to tech and business Q&A and The Attachment Parenting Blog, discussing topics of interest to parents. Dave is an award-winning speaker, sought after conference and workshop participant and frequent guest on radio and podcast programs.

Engage your audience by having them vote on packaging

Looking for last minute specials at Amazon.com and was intrigued to stumble across a promotion they're running where we, the customer, can vote on the best cover art for the new special edition DVD (and Blu-Ray) release of the brilliant Terry Gilliam / Handmade Films movie The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

Here are the three choices:

(you can vote by going here: vote for your favorite!)

I think this is a very cool promotion because it encourages customers to engage, to have a commitment to the packaging and release of a favorite older film (Munchausen was originally released in 1988). What they miss, however, is that when you've voted and are seeing the results, they should have a virtual coupon that would let you receive an instant few dollars off the pre-purchase of the DVD when released.

Here's another idea, though, one for the next release of a much-loved classic: why not invite amateur film critics to submit their own commentary on a film, and the one that's most interesting / insightful would be included in the official release as a commentary track? It could be re-recorded in a professional sound studio (or even re-voiced if the commentator just doesn't have a voice "made for radio")

What other ways can you imagine that a movie production company and/or distributor could engage viewers and help convert them into customers? Certainly most of the competitions that modern movies are trying are tedious and boring (cf. National Treasure: Book of Secrets), but then again, most movies suffer from the very same problems, don't they? :-)

For me, a copy of Baron Munchausen on Blu-Ray? Sounds like a five-star winner to me, a perfect match of complicated and intriguing visuals and a high-def video and audio format for home theater setups.

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