Leaking Funke Akindele’s; A Tribe Called Judah: Implications for Public Relations, Brand Equity and Media Economics

A few days ago, a group of people leaked Funke Akindele’s new cinema production, that is, A Tribe Called Judah. While this generated a lot of outcry, especially on the tendency for pirates to infringe on IP rights and then distribute on the platforms for ad revenues, it also calls for another form of introspection.

The first reaction to the leak of such a movie will be to blame pirates or assume that some unscrupulous people want to benefit or reap from where they have not down. But have we thought that there is a possibility that this is a form of dark public relations and brand building exercise?

I am not unequivocally saying this event is based off dark or underground public relations by Funke Akindele’s team. I am only saying there is a possibility that entertainment PR gurus, especially the ones that operate in the movie and music industry are now involved in unconventional practices, driven by the internet. But why will they do such? Great question.

The incentives for deliberately leaking such a movie will include a sequence of logic, which is discussed below.

There is a large audience of people that are far from cinema screens or cannot afford the movie tickets, how do you further monetize this audience?

While the movie has broken the box office records by miles, they may decide to leak to download sites or even telegram platforms for a fee or share of revenue from downloads engagements.

In case you have not noticed, these Telegram channels are monetized, same with the download platforms that keep serving you pop-up ads. There you go.

The point here is that digital audiences, just like radio and television audiences have been commoditized. Your eyeballs are worth so much. If you don’t come to the cinema to watch, you will download and still get monetized.

Kindly note that this is a possibility and not a statement of fact. Years of experience in the digital business industry, especially marketing makes this possibility vivid.

Another incentive is to build Funke Akindele’s brand. Funke Akindele has indeed come of age as a movie producer. She has been consistent and has done well over the years. This brand power is one of the major reasons for her box office records.

In marketing, people your product for a the following reasons;

1. They buy your product on recommendation.

2. They buy based on curiosity

3. They buy based on face value and finally

4. They buy based on your past performance, which means you have greater brand equity.

The last reason ensures greater revenues because your old customers will buy, they will drag their friends to buy, then an additional set of new customers will also buy because of your reputation. In the other instances, people can taste your brand and fall off of you don’t meet expectations, but the last one is not the case. This is where Funke Akindele is operating.

The PR team upon review of the productions success at the cinemas may decide to democratize the digital version of the movie and distribute it to people who cannot make it to the cinemas or even afford to pay for that cinema experience.

These ones would have heard the review and hype and will jump on the downloads readily. Since the production is great, the ranks of Funke Akindele’s admirers will swell and some of those people who downloaded will convert into paying customers subsequently. The rest will turn into raving fans, such that they will promote her subsequent productions and hype it. This is why the movie should be on their laps, even if they can’t afford it.

This way, they have become unpaid influencers, further building the brand, and Infact, they have paid with their downloads and eyeballs, per analysis in a previous paragraph. This is the economics of the information economy. It is based on network effects, wisdom of crowds and offline brand equity which is necessary for dominating the digital economy of the media business.

If you got this far, thank you for reading