Urban genre casts wider net
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URBAN GUIDE: Companies define market in different ways
By Mekado Murphy -- Video Business, 1/1/2007
JAN. 1 | The urban DVD market has seen significant growth over the past decade. With new distribution companies continuing to emerge to cater to the urban DVD audience and with major studios partnering with small companies to find urban titles to distribute, the market is as active as ever. However, defining the urban market is a tricky task.
Other companies use the term “urban” to cast a wider net.
“Buyers and the retail chains seem to think that urban titles should just go into African-American stores, where they feel that the titles will be best targeted,” says Doug Schwab, founder of Maverick Entertainment, which releases around 20 urban titles a year. “But the truth is it’s really not a color that’s the audience of these films. It’s more of a young age group that has a curiosity about the lifestyle they consider to be hip-hop or street. It isn’t really white, black, Spanish or Asian; it’s just youth.”
The differing viewpoints on how to define the market have made it a difficult one to track in terms of numbers.
“There’s no way to track urban product in the marketplace because the industry doesn’t have a true definition of urban,” says Jeff Clanagan, CEO of CodeBlack Entertainment, whose DVDs are distributed by Vivendi Visual Entertainment. “So when you look at Videoscan and Rentrak, they don’t have an urban category. You have to go through individual titles and track the titles.”
Though the industry has a difficult time defining urban, Clanagan and his team came up with a way to clarify their target audience. “We named the company CodeBlack because nobody in the industry really wanted to acknowledge what urban is,” he says. “We are defining what it is. If you ask retailers like Wal-Mart and Target, ‘who is your urban customer?’ they’re going to say, ‘African Americans.’”
It is the African-American consumer that has proven to be the most dominant consumer of urban product. The Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia estimates the buying power of African Americans will reach $847 billion in 2007. And these consumers often pick up their product at major retail chains, such as Target or Wal-Mart.
Geno Taylor, co-president of Polychrome Pictures, whose DVDs are distributed by Warner Home Video, provides some numbers on the major retail success of urban titles.
“Wal-Mart has 500 to 600 stores considered urban stores,” he says. “In terms of urban titles, you can easily move 50,000 to 80,000 direct-to-DVD units to sell-through.”
The forms of marketing used to promote urban titles are fairly diverse. Maverick uses a network of Web sites geared toward fans of urban-themed DVD. Ads in such urban music magazines as XXL and The Source also tend to do well.
Marketing campaigns are more frequently launched for urban titles on or after their release date so that consumers can get the title right away. Also, companies that specialize in direct-to-DVD urban titles tend to launch more targeted, grassroots campaigns to reach consumers.
“Grassroots marketing is the reason why we’ve been so successful as a company,” says UrbanWorks’ Dismuke, “because most of our campaigns happen in smaller locations where no one else is advertising. So when you go to these types of places, people say, ‘Oh, wow. I didn’t know Clifton Powell was in this film,’ or ‘I didn’t know DMX did a movie like this.’ And the word spreads.”
Urban titles are connected to an overall lifestyle within the African-American community. And independent retailers have an advantage by catering to communities with a variety of retail interests.
“We have created a lifestyle store,” says Tobago Benito, owner of DBS Sounds in the Atlanta area. “You can come here and get t-shirts, caps, music and movies. And we always have events going on to stay connected to the community.”
That lifestyle tends to drive the market and build more loyalty from urban consumers, as long as they feel like the product that they are getting is quality.
“About three or four years ago, the urban market got flooded and a lot of people were putting out poor-quality product,” says CodeBlack’s Clanagan. “There was a backlash as consumers started to spend more on good sound systems and flat-screen TVs. People now want quality product. Give them good quality and they will buy it.”
Though the urban market carries a variety of definitions, one thing is certain: It’s a market that’s here to stay and one that brings a significant amount of unique content to the industry.
