Stephen Ross Scott.com™

At the movies the other night and treated with this pretty cheese-tasticly awful ad:

Yep, someone, somewhere, got paid for that. Anyway, lured by a glimmer of hope that someone had actually tried to do a hulu.com for Australia I headed over to www.fixplay.com.au Sadly I was disappointed immediately. Each and every programme is fairly old, but some good new-ish shows are there, so some kudos to them. I tried to watch and was greeted by, on every single video;

We're sorry, this video is not available at this time.

I changed browsers and tried again, same thing. Refreshed, nothing. Every single video, all=FAIL! At this point a massive amount of traffic would leave, wouldn't you? I nearly did, but then in frustration at this failure, I eventually noticed a small link way below underneath... 

Well that's clear then, eh?

What fixplay have disastrously done wrong, is not put the users experience of the site first. Kinda shocking really, but then most sites don't. And especially after paying for an ad, and the cost of cinema advertising. If me, and in charge? I'd be kicking some bum riiiight about now.

In a world where the flash player for video rules, and is cross platform, and where YouTube is king, Queen and the royal family of online video. Even with HTML 5 video steaming ahead, fixplay have bet badly on the bespoke browser plugin horse.The plugin at fault? Namely, Silverlight. Microsoft's waste of time and not very cross platform answer to the Adobe flash player. Then again fixplay has investment by Microsoft , who also have stakes in channel seven and nine who supply the content. Poor buggers have no choice but to try to flog the plugin.

(Silverlight is frankly, more crap you and your browser do not need.)

So ironically given it's called fixplay, and it doesn't play for many of us, someone does need to 'fix' it. Even updating the message to 'You need to install Silverlight' would be the lazy but more workable option. Although for many, too late, and I for one wont be back. So before you can make an ad and spend money and state your product is 'exciting' and 'change peoples life's', make sure a little ten minute basic user experience testing outside of the office or online with some geeks or beta testers gets done? Please?

It might not change your life, but will change your customers first basic expectations of your site.

Taking a highly clichéd theme (USA high school teen comedies) and managing to do something different with it, is hard, as this is one milked dry genre.Or so I thought. However, credit where due, director Will Gluck does a good job, along with a strong cast of the excellent Emma Stone, Stanley Tucci, Thomas Haden Church and others.

Where things fell apart for me, was not with the film, but with the, I'm guessing distributor of the film, Sony.

Before the movie, and as we went to the preview, some nearly four hundred people had to queue and hand over laptops and mobile devices. WTF? So hold up... you've invited me as a guest, and your assuming I may well film this on my mobile? Really? Customer experience nil in my mind.(Tiny text on the ticket asked us to leave all mobile phones at home-yes really)

Four staff had to number each device, and deal with some very unhappy people, and place the devices in freezer lock bags, which let me tell you ended up being a veritable mobile and electronic mountain. (You should have seen the queue on the way out to get them back!) This was described as asking us to "be prepared to cloak devices with security before entering". Yep, leaving it in a bucket in a zip lock bag is pretty much 'cloaking' I guess...

We refused to hand over devices, and the poor staff just did not know what to do but let us in. In my case my phone is my employers property and I cant have been the only one. I'm responsible for it, and not mine to give away without a signature or guarantee I'll get it back. It wasn't just me, but we still found it appalling some of Sony's guests blindly handed over devices and laptops with no issues at all. Had there been a fire or theft I wonder if Sony would have dug deep and came across with liability for the devices? I'm guessing...possibly not, and would not like to try to sort that mess out.

Look my point is...don't piss off your customers, and certainly not BEFORE they get in to your event.

If one idiot wants to A) film a movie on a mobile and B) other idiots want to watch or download a low quality filmed on a mobile-movie that was pirated by idiot A, you can only do one thing. Hire some more staff to be present at the cinema and ensure devices aren't used. Can't see it happening though.

Treating customers like pirates, and assuming guilt is wrong, ultra shitty customer experience, and causing me to write more about this experience than the flippin' movie!

Most wont care I know, and I doubt Sony will either, but it reminds me of this video, which still looks like it's the way movie studios honestly think of us...

   

Click here to download:

black-dynamite-JiIejFdihCgGcukmdusE.zip (138 KB)

How I missed this I do not know. This 'Airplane!' like spoof of blaxploitation movies of the seventies is getting a very limited release in the UK just now, but is already up for sale on Amazon, having been released late last year. Great posters (just two of about fifteen available) get the vibe just right and I love the tagline;

 

        Hundred Dollar Suits

Ten Thousand Dollar Cars

        Million Dollar Ladies

 

Pimptastic!

Buy Black Dynamite on Blu-Ray now!