TheBlackBoxOffice.com is all about the Global perspective of entertainment. Movies. Music. Books. Visual arts. We are dedicated to advancing, discussing, and exposing people to new art from around the world.
The Black Box Office is for the professional, the aspirant, the aficionado, the underwriters, the writers of reviews as well as the casts of others who contribute their talent, blood, sweat, and sometime tears to keep the industry viable and growing.
We’re about creating awareness. Supporting and building appreciation and audience. We’re not about gossip.
The Black Box Office is trusted by News organizations around the world, like Reuters, for our unique global perspective.
We collaborate in the important task of making things happen. For film, we’re all about putting butts in seats, particularly when those butts happen to be multicultural. This audience is often the difference between a movie meeting the box office expectations and having to again explain – what just happened!
Butts in Seats
While awaiting the unaided word of mouth, a playable film for the multicultural audience, led by African American talent, might experience an under-whelming opening weekend, thus weakened returns, and an early exit for the film. Films deemed likely playable among these moviegoers require unique impetus, to drive traffic, particularly on opening weekend.
To create this impetus, you need a heavy application of word of mouth. Not word of mouth to simply to join the conversation, you need to blast the dialogue with trust*.
We get the absolute right people to direct the conversation in ways that guarantees to generate early talk. Talk that enlivens and raises the decibel of consumer voice needed to put more “butt in seats”, opening weekend.
Influencer Alchemy 101
Our focus is on the motivating power of the urban influencer; those local persons relied upon and lauded as urban thought leaders, the fashionistas, music makers, outsider artists or movie aficionados. The “influencer/maven”, as identified by business writer Malcolm Gladwell, are relied upon to reduce the cacophony of messages we all get, and to identify the best choices and options. The Influencer’s point of view, particularly among multicultural targets, often results in deliberate action by down-line cohort of, in this case, moviegoers. And for our needs directing them, at the first opportunity, to see new films.
For these reasons, you’ll notice that we talk about more than just “Black Hollywood” projects or American musicians. If you’re looking for what’s next, we’ve found that you have to look beyond your block.
So we celebrate, analyze, and discuss projects from Hollywood, Bollywood, Nollywood, and everything in between.
And most importantly – we actually see and listen to what we’re talking about. No trailer reviews here. We read entire books, watch entire films, and listen to CDs a couple of times before we talk about them.
Read The Black Box Office’s global perspective, and you’ll learn something new every day.
* A 2007 Myers Publishing study found only 17% of people trusted advertisers. And things got worse in 2008, when respondents to a Gallup poll said that only 10% of ad practitioners were trustworthy. Survey from Bridge Ratings found that the most trusted source among US consumers was their own friends, family and acquaintances. In 2009, a TNS poll indicated that the number one trusted source across all media was “recommendations by friends.”
