Prussia

Mark Cuban offers an interesting marketing challenge/job offer:
This is an open challenge. You come up with a solution, you get a job. Seriously.
Basically, Cuban needs new ways to get people into movie theaters:
We are looking at affiliate programs. So people with lots of myspace or other social network friends could get a buck or 2 or 3 if someone goes from their myspace page directly to fandago, moviefone, movietickets.com etc and buys a ticket to a film of ours prior to its release. Get 100 friends to buy tickets to a movie, get a 100 bucks from us.
We are looking at other similar ideas.
We already do movie marketing 101. We do buzz marketing. We put up videos all over the net. We set up websites, myspace accounts for the movies and its characters, we work with movie forums, we buy ads, etc, etc, etc. If its been done before, we are doing it.
So if you want a job, and have a great idea on how to market movies in a completely different way. If your idea works for any and all kinds of movies. If it changes the dynamics and the economics of promoting movies, email it or post it. If its new and unique, i want to hear about it. If its a different way of doing the same thing you have seen before, it probably wont get you a job, but feel free to try.
So go for it. Come up with a great idea that i want to use and I will come up with a job for you to make that idea happen.
Cuban then ends the post with the catchphrase "for real", but I have to say, he's one of the few individuals at that level that I always assume is for real, whether I think he's on target or not.
Though it's not a music marketing issue, the challenges seem similar, especially for those promoting events and hustling to get folks into clubs. Hip hop promoters have tended to exploit every opportunity they can find to promote events. So looking at music events marketing might be one place to look for a new idea.
I've always found that if you look at one field closely, ideas will often carry over or inspire new ideas in other fields. That could go for taking an approach from a street marketing context and figure out how it might work in the malls [not the best example but I hope you get the idea].
So if you've had some unique thoughts, even something that hasn't been tested, you might consider brainstorming on this one for a bit and seeing if you can hook up with one of the truly unique business figures of our time.
I call dibs on the barbecue angle. In fact, I'm considering launching a marketing with barbecue research firm. Hit me up if you're down.

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