MoviePass is back in the news. The controversial movie subscription service has been the subject of some recent negative headlines. From an independent auditor’s report that raised “substantial doubt” about the company’s future to the recent news that their one-movie-a-day plan was being replaced by a much less consumer-friendly offering, MoviePass seems to be in a state of flux. Well, don’t tell that to CEO Mitch Lowe.
In a recent interview with Variety, Lowe is confident about the future of the subscription service and explains why they’re bringing back the one-movie-per-day plan. You see, it’s all about marketing!
“We never planned to abandon the flagship product that everybody loves,” said Lowe. “Any time we’ve done a promotional package, we’ve taken the monthly plan off our site.”
“It’s marketing 101,” he continues. “We wanted to focus everybody on this partnership promotion. If people knew the [movie-a-day] plan was coming back, they might not be interested in the iHeartRadio deal.”
For those that don’t know, MoviePass recently replaced (unannounced) their infamous subscription plan with a new promotion, where customers would only get 4 movies a month and a subscription to iHeartRadio. Obviously, that’s a big step down from the one-movie-per-day plan that put the company on the map.
The way Lowe blows off criticism by chalking it up to “Marketing 101” is, frankly, insulting. How were new customers, that ended up subscribing to a clearly inferior offering (sorry, iHeartRadio but no one gives a shit about your service, they just want movies), supposed to know that if they just waited a week, they could get the original plan anyway? Sounds shady and dishonest. But who am I to judge? Clearly, I didn’t take that 101 class in college.
But for those naysayers that think that MoviePass isn’t long for this world, Lowe doesn’t agree. Oh, and that little report about the financials? Yeah, don’t pay much attention to that.
“That’s just really relative to how much cash we have at any one time in the bank,” Lowe said. “We have a constantly evolving business model. We’re getting more and more occasional moviegoers and cutting back on fraud and abuse. I feel very confident about our trend lines and I know we’re going to continue as a going concern and continue to be popular.”
See, it’s all about the “trend lines!”
Well, no matter what the future holds for MoviePass, for people interested in getting extremely discounted movie tickets, better sign up now. You never know when a new “promotion” is coming.
Well said. They just continue to exhibit disingenuous behavior. “Promotion” implies something better. If you have to withhold the previous offering and give no other choice..come on.
Another commenter made a good point: Their major selling pitch has been to watch a movie every day for $10 a month. Now with the latest restriction you can’t really watch “a movie per day” unless there is a new movie released everyday. There is not.