Giving Customers Exactly What They Don’t Want
A friend of mine in the industry told me something poignant about his company’s high-level conversations this past week. “I haven’t heard anyone mention the customer in months,” he lamented; “The only time the customer comes up is when they ask how we can extract more money out of them.”
Continuing yesterday’s subject of how Obsession and Backrooms are finally giving movie-goers a reason to return to the cinema, it was announced yesterday that May was the biggest month for the U.S. box office since May of 2019.
I’m confused. Didn’t COVID kill Hollywood? Aren’t young people watching movies on their phones instead of at movie theaters? How could May of 2026 be so profitable when every study shows that people are tired of paying to see films in public and would rather stream from home?
Could it be that people stopped going to the movies because the selection being presented to them is exactly what they don’t want?
To admit that would be to admit that Hollywood executives are completely out of touch with the general public, and we all know there’s no way that could be the case. These guys have MBAs from ivy league schools and decades of experience reading charts and graphs instead of actually knowing anything about public sentiment. It couldn’t be their fault, right?
The amount of greed, delusion, and general ineptitude I’ve witnessed behind the scenes in the booze business over the last year is shocking, but it seems to be pretty widespread across industries. I’m guessing it has to be on the same level as the film business. I’ve met so many people in high-level positions who don’t seem to have any passion for alcohol whatsoever, which is why they’re seemingly paralyzed at the moment, watching their sales go into the toilet without a plan to right the ship. Every decision is based on data, rather than know-how. Every plan of action revolves around money rather than people. They introduce products that nobody asked for, spend a fortune on marketing them, and blame the consumer or the general market when nobody wants to pay for them.
Looking at the data from American cinemas over the last month, I have to ask myself: are young people really not interested in drinking, or are they repelled by an industry that makes absolutely no effort to give them inspiration? When you put the right product inside of a movie theater, the people will show up. What would happen if you put the right liquid inside of the right bottle and gave them a reason to be excited?
-David Driscoll