BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Hollywood has long relied on consumer surveys to answer a question about soon-to-arrive movies: To what degree have marketing materials made a film a must-see?
加利福尼亚州贝弗利山——长期以来，好莱坞都是依靠消费者调查来解答一个关于即将上映影片的问题：市场宣传要做到什么程度，才可以让一部影片成为观众的必看片？
It used to be easy for studios to use that data, provided roughly a month before release, to improve ticket sales for a film’s opening — a creative tweak to an ad, for instance, or more male-focused TV spots. But movie campaigns have grown considerably longer and more complex. Now, by the time the old tracking system kicks in, studios say they can do little more than brace for impact: Consumers have already made up their minds.
过去，电影公司在影片发行前大约一个月就可以拿到消费者调查数据，并轻松应用这个数据来提高影片的开画票房——对广告稍作创意性微调，或者投放更多针对男性观众的电视广告。但是电影宣传活动变得日益漫长而复杂。如今，老式消费者跟踪系统已经完蛋了，制片公司称，消费者在电影上映之前早已经下定决心，它们所能做的仅仅是被动应付由此带来的结果。

To help studio marketers get back ahead of their customers, United Talent Agency and Rentrak, an entertainment data company, are introducing a service called PreAct. It joins an array of Hollywood upstarts peddling “social listening,” a growing field that uses algorithms to slice and dice chatter on social media.
为了帮助电影公司的市场宣传人员领先于消费者，联合人才经纪公司(United Talent Agency)与娱乐数据公司Rentrak联合推出一种名为PreAct的服务。它同一大批好莱坞新贵一道，推销“倾听社交网络”——这是一个正在发展的领域，使用算法详细分析社交媒体上的闲聊。
PreAct begins unusually early. It closely monitors marketing efforts at least a year before opening weekend. At any moment, studios using the service can log in to a portal and receive various charts that detail how consumers are responding to promotional efforts.
PreAct的启动非常之早。它从电影上映的那个周末之前一年，就开始密切监视市场活动。任何时候，使用该项服务电影片公司都可以从一个入口登陆，获取各种表格，上面详细列出客户对宣传活动的反应。
“Every studio wants actionable information, and that is what we are providing,” said David Herrin, the head of research at United Talent, which developed PreAct at its headquarters here before teaming up with Rentrak to bring it to market.
“每个电影公司都想要可以帮他们采取相应行动的信息，我们提供的正是这样的信息，”联合人才研究部门的负责人大卫·赫林(David Herrin)说，他在该公司总部开发了PreAct项目，之后又与Rentrak联合，将之推向市场。
The rise of social media has created a data boom in almost every major industry, and motion pictures are no exception. Among the new studio-focused services: Fizziology, a five-year-old Indianapolis company that offers reports assembled by human analysts and not just by algorithms; Moviepilot, which studies social data and box-office trends; and ListenFirst Media, founded in 2012 and now a large supplier of “fan engagement” information to television networks.
社交媒体的崛起为几乎所有重要行业都带来了数据的暴增，电影业也绝非例外。以电影公司为对象的新服务有很多，比如，拥有五年历史的印第安纳波利斯公司Fizziology提供分析师人工编纂的报告，而不仅仅是基于算法；电影试播公司(Moviepilot)专门研究社交媒体数据和票房趋势；2012年创立的先听媒体公司(ListenFirst Media)擅长为电视网络提供“影迷兴趣”信息。
Other newcomers include Piedmont Media Research, which provides demographic data and looks at films when they are still just concepts, and C4, a firm led by the experienced Hollywood researcher Vincent Bruzzese.
其他新来者还包括皮德蒙特媒体研究公司(Piedmont Media Research)，它提供人口统计数据，在电影处于概念阶段就开始对其进行研究；此外还有C4公司，由经验丰富的好莱坞研究者文森特·布拉奇兹(Vincent Bruzzese)领导。
For studio marketing executives, the result can be an alphabet soup of competing analyses. Most studios, hoping to cover all bases, subscribe to a variety of these reports and try to make decisions by extrapolating from them. But that strategy can be expensive, with some services — PreAct among them — charging the biggest studios hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
对于电影公司的市场高管来说，这些研究结果可能是一大堆互相矛盾的大杂烩。大多数电影公司希望面面俱到，他们会订阅各种类似报告，试图按这些数据来推算决策。但这种策略花费不菲，订阅这些服务（PreAct也在其中）每年要花费数十万美元。
Since its introduction in January, PreAct has signed up studios that control roughly 40 percent of the North American box office. Clients include 20th Century Fox — currently the No. 1 movie operation in Hollywood, as measured by domestic box-office market share — and Sony Pictures Entertainment.
自今年一月成立以来，PreAct签下了控制着大约40%北美票房的电影公司，其中包括20世纪福克斯公司（以国内票房市场份额计算，目前它是好莱坞最大的电影公司）和索尼影业。
“It’s not a perfect tool, but it allows us to be really long-lead, and it provides information in close to real time, both of which are extremely helpful,” said Dwight Caines, Sony’s president for domestic marketing. Mr. Caines credited PreAct in particular with helping inform promotional decisions for this fall’s hit movie “The Equalizer,” including how best to use an Eminem soundtrack song, “Guts Over Fear,” to generate interest among young men.
“它并不是完美的工具，但能让我们从长远的角度看问题，并且提供接近实时的信息，这两点都非常有帮助，”索尼影业的国内市场总监德怀特·凯恩斯(Dwight Caines)说。他还表示，在索尼为今年秋天的热门电影《伸冤人》(The Equalizer)做宣传决策时，PreAct提供的数据极有帮助，比如怎样好好利用埃米纳姆(Eminem)为电影创作的原声歌曲《超越恐惧的勇气》(Guts Over Fear)，令年轻观众对电影产生兴趣。
When studios began to widely use tracking data in the 1980s, a single company provided it — the National Research Group, which relied on telephone polling. Back then, studio marketers followed a standard playbook: Trailers played in theaters, and TV commercials, print ads and billboards arrived a few weeks before release.
电影公司广泛应用观众追踪数据始于20世纪80年代，当时只有一家公司提供这种服务，那就是全国调查集团(National Research Group)。那会儿的调查手段主要依靠电话采访。后来，电影公司的市场宣传人员有了一套标准的程序：电影上映前几星期在影院和电视广告里播放预告片、发布平面广告、推出公告牌。
Now that kind of campaign would get a marketer fired. A promotional campaign often starts more than a year in advance, as soon as actors are cast, and can reach high gear six months before release. It is not unusual for a studio to release three trailers for a big movie and multiple online “featurettes.”
现在的市场宣传人员如果还恪守这种程序，可能就会被炒鱿鱼了。如今的宣传攻势通常是从影片上映一年多以前，也就是选角的阶段就开始了，并在影片上映6个月之前达到高潮。电影公司为一部大片制作三部预告片，以及在网上投放多部“片花”也不是什么新鲜事。
PreAct started in 2011 as a way for United Talent to arm its celebrity clients — including Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie and Channing Tatum — with better data about their films. PreAct’s vast array of social-media information is collected by one of United Talent’s corporate clients, Crimson Hexagon, a Boston analytics firm that uses monitoring technology invented at Harvard.
PreAct公司于2011年创立，为联合人才经纪公司的名人客户服务，其中包括约翰尼·德普(Johnny Depp)、安吉丽娜·朱莉(Angelina Jolie)和查宁·塔图姆(Channing Tatum)，向这些明星们提供他们所主演电影的更有价值的数据。PreAct掌握的巨量社交媒体信息是由联合人才经纪公司的另一个公司合作者“深红六边形”(Crimson Hexagon)提供，这家位于波士顿的数据分析公司使用哈佛大学研制的监控技术进行工作。
“My jaw dropped when I saw this product,” said Steve Buck, Rentrak’s senior vice president for business relations.
“这个产品让我大吃一惊，”Rentrak公司负责公司关系的资深副总裁斯蒂夫·巴克(Steve Buck)说。
PreAct essentially takes information that is culled continuously from Twitter, YouTube, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, movie blogs and other sites and provides coming movies with scores in various categories. The system, for instance, looks at the size of the online conversation and how much of it is positive or negative. It also tracks how much activity is organic and how much is the result of specific studio efforts.
事实上，PreAct公司使用从Twitter、YouTube、Tumblr、Facebook、Instagram、电影博客以及其他网站上持续不断提取的信息，为即将上映的电影按各种项目打分。举个例子来说，这个系统可以评估网上议论的规模，这些议论是正面还是负面。它还可以追踪什么样的活动是重要的，以及制片公司的特定活动是否有效。
Because PreAct has already collected this information for roughly 500 movies, it generates scores for new films by making comparisons against existing ones. Moreover, PreAct subscribers have access to scores for any movie headed toward theaters, meaning studios now have the ability to understand the health of competing releases.
PreAct已经为大约500部电影收集了类似信息，用已经掌握的数据为参照，为新上映的电影打分。PreAct的订阅者可以拿到所有即将上映的新片的分数，也就是说，制片公司可以了解竞争的健康程度。
“We’re going to continue to use it,” said Mr. Caines of Sony. “I love that all of the studios could be speaking in one language.”
“我们会继续使用它，”索尼公司的凯恩斯说。“所有制片公司可以使用一种语言交流，我喜欢这样。”
Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Studios, the two biggest studios that are not yet on board, declined to comment.
华纳兄弟与迪士尼这两家大公司目前还没有使用这个系统，也拒绝对此作出评论。
Traditional tracking companies like the National Research Group, which is now owned by Nielsen and still sells “competitive positioning” reports to every major studio, are aggressively defending their turf.
国家研究集团如今已经隶属尼尔森公司(Nielsen)，这样的传统观众追踪公司还在向各大公司出售“竞争定位”报告，它们坚决捍卫自己的领地。
“Our tracking remains very sensitive to moviegoer intent,” said Tina Wilson, general manager of Nielsen Content, which includes National Research and Nielsen’s social-media-monitoring services. “We are thoughtful, and we have a real vigor, which allows our clients to make multimillion-dollar decisions based on our data.”
“我们的观众追踪系统仍然能够敏锐地捕捉观影者的意图，”尼尔逊内容公司的总经理蒂娜·威尔逊(Tina Wilson)说，该公司旗下包括国家研究和尼尔逊自己的各种社交媒体监控服务。“我们深思熟虑，有真正的效力，客户可以根据我们的数据做出价值千万美元的决策。”