Porn Stores Turn Into Clip Joints
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By Holly J. Wagner / Also by this reporter
02:00 AM Jun. 20, 2005 PT
A trip to the adult section at the video store is about to get spicier.
Vivid Entertainment, one of the leading suppliers of adult entertainment, has licensed a system that will let shoppers preview racy trailers on their camera phones just by scanning the bar code on the box. Now that's handheld entertainment.
At the store, the phone takes a picture of the bar code, which includes an embedded URL, and the phone's screen is redirected to a website that hosts the clips.
"There is not going to be any sex or nudity on the trailers; it will be G-rated," said Steven Hirsch, co-chairman of Vivid. "You are going to see a beautiful girl and the title, and you will decide whether to buy."
Called LeapScan, the technology is licensed from xobile (pronounced zoh-bul, adult content), a subsidiary of the Adult Entertainment Broadcast Network.
The company started as an incubator for internet upstarts, but is striking out with LeapScan as a new line of business. The company has been in beta since January and plans a Las Vegas launch party at the Internext online porn conference in August. The technology should become more widely available thereafter.
Plans for the launch party include some of Vivid's star performers putting temporary tattoos of embedded bar codes onto their bodies, Kaplan said. Fans who scan the bar codes will find their phones directed to clips of the stars performing acts that involve the tattooed body parts.
"People have to understand the technology or it will fall on its face," said xobile CEO Harvey Kaplan.
The technology's not just for porno. It can work for anything with a bar code and web content, Kaplan said.
"There are mainstream applications for it," he said. "Japan is a good market for click-and-buy technology. There you can walk by a movie poster on a bus stop where you scan a bar code and see a clip of the blockbuster movie."
Several other suppliers already offer streaming or downloaded content from the xobile site, but Vivid has an exclusive, eight-month license to the technology. After that, negotiations are open and other suppliers may contract for it as well.
"We have the ability to stream (suppliers') content over the internet. The only thing that has changed is the device consumers use to access the internet," Kaplan said. "They get a site optimized for a mobile phone."
Vivid plans to incorporate LeapScan into the 60 new movies the company gets each year. Vivid's 1,000-title back catalog will also receive the LeapScan treatment as titles get re-released, or get new liner notes.
And lest anyone think the web has replaced brick-and-mortar stores as outlets for porn, Hirsch said, Vivid still sells 80 percent of its DVDs through physical stores.
The content is refreshable, so content providers can change what the consumer sees. For example, the link could send users to a new title by the same performer.
"It was interesting to me because it gave us another way to reach out to the consumer and to market to the consumer in a very cool, technological way," said Hirsch. "What was intriguing to me were the marketing opportunities that go along with this. At the end of the movie, you will be able to scan a code and get some behind-the-scenes stuff."
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