500 Pound Gorilla with a Long Tail

Logan McMillan’s cheekily named Gorilla Pictures has scored a publicity coup by posting a YouTube clip taken from their latest project, a splatter movie about zombies taking over the world.

What is remarkable about this episode is that McMillan received an offer to fund the movie whilst he was already part way through shooting it. It also demonstrates the disintermediating power of the Internet and supports Chris Anderson’s long tail hypothesis – if you can focus enough eyeballs on your product niche, eventually somebody will buy it.

McMillan’s extraordinary success does have a negative corollary however. Because the Internet aggregates vast numbers of users, it also enables other less noble business models. Nobody really believes that Google ads will make them rich and spammers continue to plague us because they know that 5 guys out of every million actually will respond to their viagara sales promotion.

Zombie movies are not really my thing, but I applaud Logan McMillan’s initiative and I hope the screening at Cannes and subsequent release goes well.

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Epilogue – The New Start-Up

I’m particularly interested in the success story mentioned above because a bunch of us are currently in the throes of launching ourselves into the unknown with a new and rather exciting venture. Our project is also very much about leveraging creativity and knowledge and having some fun along the way. Web-based marketing will certainly form part of the mix because, apart from a diversity of other skills, we all share an interest in blogging.

I’m very realistic about the hard work that lies ahead, in fact it feels a little bit like we’ve grabbed a 500 pound gorilla of our own! But I’m also enjoying immensely the collegial atmosphere and the opportunity to develop my leadership skills and business knowledge. Keep those eyeballs tuned for progress reports.

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