The Quorum

Making Sense Of The WICKED: FOR GOOD Tracking

In most cases, The Quorum starts tracking a film once it’s within six months of release. A movie is added earlier if the campaign begins (trailer, still images, etc.) before the six-month window, but that doesn’t happen all that frequently.

This week, we decided to add WICKED: FOR GOOD even though it is ten months from release and there is no official marketing material in the marketplace. There was plenty of internal debate about whether we should add the film now or not. Ultimately, we decided to add the movie for one specific reason: we already see high levels of unaided awareness for the film – enough to qualify for our Weekly Unaided Awareness Chart. Had we been tracking GOOD last week, it would have registered 3% unaided, the fifth-highest total of all films.

The argument against adding the film is that there is some distortion to the tracking data, both to the upside and downside.

In our surveys, we ask about a film’s awareness in two different ways. First, we ask survey takers to name any upcoming movie off the top of their head. There is no prompt, nor are they given a list of upcoming titles. It is an open-ended question. This is unaided awareness.

Second, we ask about general awareness. This time, survey takers are given a description of the film and some artwork, usually a poster. These numbers are on our website under the “Awareness” heading.

The unaided awareness numbers for GOOD are likely undervalued. That 3% from last week could be on the low side. The word “upcoming” is key to the open-ended survey question. Not everyone is fully aware of when a movie is released. It’s likely that next week, we will still see people say DOG MAN even though it opened this past weekend. Even today, three months after the film opened, we still see people say WICKED for this question. At the same time, we also see some people say WICKED FOR GOOD or WICKED 2.

As you can imagine, it is sometimes hard to tell precisely which film survey takers are referring to. If someone just answered “Wicked,” we don’t know if they are talking about the film that came out last November or the one coming out later this year. This requires us to come up with some attribution rules.

Rule #1: If anyone says “Wicked 2” or “Wicked For Good,” we obviously credit the sequel.
Rule #2: If anyone says just “Wicked,” we assume they are talking about the first film.

Thus, the undervaluing. No doubt some of those people who say “Wicked” are probably referring to the sequel, but we don’t know that for sure. Had we added the sequel to The Quorum closer to its release – and further away from the first film – we would feel more comfortable attributing any answer with the word “Wicked” to the sequel. Right now, we can’t.

While unaided awareness may be underreported, general awareness is likely overreported. When we ask people if they are aware of GOOD, some might simply think we’re asking about the first WICKED film, even though the artwork and description we provide point to the sequel. Thus, true awareness is probably lower than what’s reported on The Quorum. Again, this problem will diminish the further we get from the first film.

So, given that unaided might be too low and general awareness is likely too high, how do the numbers look?

In its introduction to The Quorum, GOOD arrives with 52% awareness. That’s ten points higher than WICKED, then where WICKED debuted. These numbers make sense. Given how huge the first film was, we would expect some built-in awareness for the sequel, even if the number is inflated.

On the interest side, GOOD debuts with 49% interest. That’s two points higher than the first WICKED, but still a very impressive number – one that will likely rise over the next ten months.

The bottom line is that we will feel more confident in these numbers as we get further away from the first WICKED. But even with some baked-in uncertainty, this is a very healthy start for GOOD. Perhaps the most important data point is 3% unaided awareness for a film nearly a year away.

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