ReelTime Completes Conference Call with Sony Senior VP Michael Arrieta
January 23, 2008 5:30 pm est
HIGHLIGHTS:
ReelTime's senior management: CEO, COO, President, IR Director, as well as a very special guest, Sony Executive Senior VP Michael Arrieta were present on the call. Topics included ReelTime's marketing plan and the re-launch of its core product ReelTime.com, its new content partners and their significance in furthering the goals of the company, financials and select shareholder questions.
New C.O.O. Mark Cramer had a formal description of his experiences in business successes and his 25 years of experience in Information technology. When asked what he hoped to accomplish while at Reeltime, he said, “It’s a little early to list specific plans, but I plan to evaluate current business opportunities and work them into operational plans.”
He also said “I’ve been working with the team to get my arms around the situation. For me it boils down to having a clear vision of where we are headed and a realistic plan that everybody understands and is 100% behind, and then having a plan in place for regular review and revision, and an organizational structure that supports the growth as we implement those plans.”
Beverly Zaslow, Reeltime President, says that digital distribution across the Internet is the most exciting thing to happen since video tape distribution.
"We are in contact with all of the content providers. Now that Sony has embraced and accepted our platform, now it’s a case of what studio do we want to do business with, which studios are lucrative enough for us to do business with, and not so much that we will do business with anyone. Its more, who do we want to do business with?"
"This is just the tip of the iceberg. As soon as it becomes commonplace to move (data) to a television and you can do that without any problems what-so-ever, the growth is going to be exponential. That's happening. I was just at CES and there are so many devices for transferring (movies) over to your television, and as this becomes more commonplace and easy to do, it will become like popping your food into a microwave, everyone will be doing it, except we have the best platform for doing it."
"We want to be the one-stop destination for all of your entertainment needs and to give people the best viewing experience they can have."
Sony Executive Senior VP, Michael Arrieta, voiced his excitement over the new contract to Digitally disribute Video Content securely via the reeltime streaming model as well as all the other models available. Sony likes this model. He mentioned the recent content deal with iTunes, although it doesn't have as quite instantaneous delivery paths as ReelTime. He states We're excited about this partnership and look forward to making money together.
Barry Henthorn, CEO stated that THE TIME IS NOW! Barry started out with a brief overview of how Peer-to-Peer distribution is so much more cost effective than the traditional Client to Server model.
"In the client server model, the most expensive movie is the most popular movie. In the Peer-to-Peer model the most expensive movie is the one that almost nobody ever sees, and the least expensive movie is the one that is the most popular. - The costs of the most popular titles gets less and less expensive with every view."
"It's our opinion that if you don't have some type of distributed model you really don't have a chance in the game, purely because the costs of delivery will not allow you to have a subscription based model, and it will not allow you to have the quality that people want to see in a way that you can afford."
"We are thrilled to be part of the Sony marketing machine. They have a tremendous amount of backend. They have an empire based on their ability to market their products effectively. Some of what we are learning from them (Sony) we are taking back to our other content providers and asking for their help in marketing with Reeltime in the same way." (I paraphrased a little here)
"We are in the process of finalizing a marketing agreement with a major electronics manufacturer whose products are distributed at major retail outlets. This will give us the ability to distribute Reelcash, which is effectively money which we give to people so that they can view any of our content, sign up for subscriptions, or view our premium content such as the Sony content up there now. This gets us into the retail channel so we can become more of a household name."
"We have also teamed up with an ever expanding number of charities and affinity groups. In a charity scenario we go to the charity and we say that for everyone that comes to us through you and uses the Reelcash to view a movie, we will give you a donation. We feel that the take rate will be much greater than asking people to come directly to the site and asking them to watch a movie because, we are asking them to accept the free gift and they will be contributing to something that they care about. That list is expanding and we will be announcing more partners."
"The other thing we are moving to is an extensive viral marketing campaign. The viral marketing in the past have proven that we can be cost effective at driving customers to our site. What we were unable to do in the past was to convert them into paying customers, or in many cases even into viewing customers beyond, wow this is a neat technical trick. The content we had didn't push people beyond the initial contact. Now that we have the top content, Sony being the number one first choice, we believe that now with our viral marketing efforts we can keep people coming back."
"In our budget for 2008 we are reserving funds for the purchase of search terms and banner adds in addition to allotting money for third party marketing companies to introduce our story."
"We are also evaluating and have made some commitments for a combination of traditional forms of advertising, including: print, television, and direct mail. The time is now. We are going to show the world what we have to offer."
"The phones are literally ringing off the hook with people wanting to partner with us. I couldn't take most of those calls today because I had to get ready for this call, but in the upcoming days I'll be returning those calls and evaluate those opportunities. But, the time is now; we are ready for the world to see us, and its time to get real."
Further questions can be submitted to jd@reeltime.com.
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