According to the AP, Netflix is offering $1 million prize for better movie recommendations. Here are the first three paragraphs of the article for any who missed it....
"Online DVD rental pioneer Netflix Inc. wants recommendations on how to improve its movie recommendation system, and is dangling a $1 million reward as an incentive.
"The prize, offered in a contest scheduled to begin Monday, is part of Netflix's effort to sharpen its competitive edge as it continues a bitter duel with Blockbuster Inc. and prepares for an anticipated onslaught of services that make it easier to download movies onto computer hard drives.
"By spurring engineers to develop a better way to decipher consumer tastes, Netflix is betting its market-leading DVD service will become more useful to its 5.2 million subscribers and attract new customers."
I am a huge fan of Word of Mouth Marketing (WOM); however, a million bucks is a ton of money. How much advertising, direct mail, advertorializing, telemarketing and event marketing could we buy with $1 million big ones? Not enough.
Netflix has it just right. Let the buzz begin. In fact, I am making this one short post so I can rush off to www.netflix.com and ... Oops! Can this be the biggest hoax ever perpetrated, or just a big marketing nightmare.
Before writing this post, I visited the Netflix site and what did I find? Not a single word about the promotion. Now, I long-ago canceled my subscription, so I couldn't log in. Maybe the promotion stands tall in giant neon behind the sign-in. But is that the way to go, if true?
The story first appeared on Monday, October 2. It's more than a week later. And Netflix.com's home page doesn't say a word about the promotion. So what's up? Anybody got a clue?
