High schoolers band together to save the mall

The Future. A Boston-area mall tapped students from a local private school to see if they could come up with creative ideas to save the space from irrelevance in the age of e-commerce. The school’s entrepreneurship club eventually came back with some big swings that may not be totally feasible. But knowing that malls have historically been a staple suburban-teen hangout, turning to their counsel may soon provide a breakthrough for making the mall cool again.

Teen redesign
New England Innovation Academy’s entrepreneurship club is searching for a solution to save their local mall in Marlborough, Massachusetts, reports Fast Company.

• At the invitation of the management team at Solomon Pond Mall, the club made it their project to advise how best to revitalize the underperforming mall.
• Using NEIA’s focus on “human-centered design,” the club initially came back with more aesthetic updates like adding more seating areas and plants and updating lighting. Management didn’t love it, wanting more “big, more open ideas.”
• The club brought back more radical ideas like retrofitting vacant stores for more experiential things like VR arcades and immersive spas — management dug the ambition of these new proposals.

While Solomon Pond Mall probably won’t be taking all of the club’s ideas to heart, it shows that malls are thinking outside the box to stay alive — lest they become just another fulfillment warehouse.

Gamma updates the record label

The Future. Former Apple exec Larry Jackson is launching a new record label called Gamma with some of the biggest names in hip hop. Armed with a business plan that lets artists keep ownership (a recent desire for everybody from Taylor Swift to Kendrick Lamar), Jackson may be at the forefront of remixing the power dynamic of music in the streaming era.

License to license
Larry Jackson is creating a record label for the artist-ownership era.

• Jackson’s Gamma is launching with $1 billion in funding from investors such as Todd Boehly’s Eldridge, Apple, and A24.
• Gamma’s pitch is that he’s an “alternative to traditional record labels,” per Bloomberg. The focus is on long-term licensing over ownership so artists have more control.
• And artists love the sound of that — Gamma will soon release music from Snoop Dogg, Usher, and Rick Ross.
• And to avoid needing to partner with a major label to distribute music to streaming services, Gamma has acquired distribution pipeline startup Vydia.

Gamma is also already looking into content creation outside of music — it has struck deals with A24 for films and The Shade Room for podcasts.

No size fits all
For those wondering, betting on Jackson (who worked for Clive Davis and Jimmy Iovine) is a good bet.

• While at Apple, he convinced Drake to release his music on Apple Music before it went up on other streamers.
• He convinced Frank Ocean to cut out a record label and release his new album exclusively on the service as well.

And now, with Snoop Dogg, Gamma is showing just how innovative it can be. When Snoop bought Death Row Records, he pulled all of its music from streaming and was deciding on what to do next. That’s when Jackson pitched him a unique way of getting the music back out — dripping some of Snoop’s spoken-word songs from Dr. Dre’s The Chronic on TikTok to build buzz.

The plan worked, and the songs blew up (again). Now, with Gamma, Snoop Dogg is planning to put all of Death Row’s music back up.

Movie theaters beg for more movies to show

The Future. Thanks to the cost of making movies during COVID and the desire to pad new streaming services with fresh content, theater chains have far fewer films to show than typical… and that’s seriously hurting their earnings. Unless studios start making theatrical-bound movies and streamers start sending more marquee titles to play on the big screen (such as Amazon’s Air), cinemas may be in dire straits.

Where did all the movies go?
Theater chains are really hurting for movies.

• The four largest exhibitors — AMC, Cineworld, Cinemark, and Marcus — all reported losses for the fourth quarter of 2022 ( Cineworld is even going through bankruptcy).
• Each of them mentioned on their earnings calls that a major contributing factor to the missed expectations was that Hollywood just isn’t giving them enough movies to play.
• And the numbers don’t lie — only 71 films were released on more than 2,000 screens last year, compared to 112 in 2019 (the domestic box office is down 22% from that year).

The chains noted that the situation might be even direr because the revenue gains they did make were padded by “ticket price hikes, strong high-margin concession sales and premium big-screen play for tentpoles, according to THR.

Cut costs
Trying to strike a hopeful tone, the chains believe that a lot more films are coming this year, but a full recovery may not be made until 2024 or 2025 (if they can hold on). Additionally, the outsized grosses they made from Avatar: The Way of Water will be felt in the Q1 2023 report.

Not to pour cold water on cinemas, but every studio seems to be in a cost-cutting mode right now, so making more movies might be wishful thinking. But, with Wall Street turning on the economics of streaming, studios are now opting to release streaming-made movies in theaters first (see: Smile and Evil Dead Rises).

So, maybe the tide is finally turning in favor of theaters.

Starbucks takes their coffee to Twitch

The Future. In its first Twitch marketing effort, Starbucks has employed the freestyle rapper and influencer Harry Mack to recommend their coffee to his viewers via improvised rap verses. If it works, this kind of partnership could give creators a new option to avoid burnout — and give Twitch a lot more attention from major brands.

A light, nutty roast
The partnership centers around content foreign to Starbucks but perfect for Twitch.

• The main event was the “reverse roast,” an hour-long livestream in which Mack suggested viewers try various Starbucks coffee flavors based on personality descriptors they typed in the Twitch chat.

• Mack also went to the coffee aisle of a grocery store and recommended Starbucks products to strangers through freestyle rap, then uploaded recordings of these interactions to Instagram and TikTok.

• Mack built his following from live-streamed freestyle Twitch raps based on viewer-generated prompts, so the ad campaign’s format plays to his strengths.

Mack’s reverse roast stream peaked at 537 concurrent views and has over 3,200 views.

Twitch’s brew
Twitch attracts over 31 million daily users, 70% of whom belong to Gen Z. Capturing this demographic would be a big win for Starbucks, and it really could happen. Though primarily a gaming platform, Twitch has diversified recently, with its music category attracting 9 million followers.

Twitch has potential. The question is whether this partnership has the magic beans.

Disney might cut Ant-Man down to size

The Future. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania had a strong release at the box office. But as Disney tries to streamline its spending — particularly for its Marvel offerings — the franchise could find itself on the chopping block, especially as competing projects break box office records. So much for the little guy.

We’re (not) #1
Thanks to Disney’s unique circumstances, Ant-Man’s best might not be good enough.

• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania brought in $105 million on opening weekend, outperforming every previous film in its franchise. Not bad for a small fry…

• But it’s nothing next to monsters like Avatar: The Way of Water, which recently surpassed Titanic to become the third-highest-grossing film of all time after Avatar and Avengers: Endgame — both of which are Disney-owned.

• It gets worse… Marvel hits tend to have huge opening weekends, followed by precipitous drops in theater attendance, whereas offerings like Avatar films yield steady returns for months.

Disney’s animation department is in a similar situation, with lackluster 2022 releases pressuring the company to curb its output, potentially axing new projects in favor of safer sequels from established franchises.

Marching one by one
The jury’s out until box office numbers from Ant-Man’s second weekend roll in. But with the imminent release of Marvel films from Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain Marvel — two franchises that have historically outperformed Ant-Man — it seems likely that Quantumania could get crushed underfoot.

Disney will need to cut back on these movies if they’re edging out their own releases. They might become a victim of their own success.

TikTok Shop grows brand participation in the US

The Future. TikTok’s onboarding more brands for their US Shop feature, which allows companies to sell products on TikTok via a full online checkout service. The platform has had mixed success with Shop globally, but if the test phase yields good results, Shop may come to the States for good.

Checking out checkout
Techcrunch covered the feature’s structure and its growing collaboration with brands.

• Shop users in the US can now access apparel and beauty products from brands like REVOLVE, Willow Boutique, PacSun, and KimChi Chic Beauty.

• Shoppers can view product catalogs from these brands’ profiles by tapping on the displayed shopping bag icon. From there, they can complete the entire checkout process from within TikTok.

• Users could always buy things through TikTok before Shop but had to be redirected to an in-app browser. Now, they never have to leave the app (just like how Instagram Shop works).

TikTok Shop is still in a “testing phase” in the US and has no public release date for the feature’s full rollout.

Right place, wrong time?
TikTok’s expanding its e-commerce efforts just as other major players are scaling theirs back. Facebook shut down its live shopping offering last August, and Instagram just announced they’ll be nixing theirs too. That said, Amazon and YouTube are still trying out similar services.

Evidence suggests that social commerce like TikTok Shop is less successful in Western markets than in Asia, but TikTok has bucked trends before. Only time will tell.