Director Joshua on a New Breed of Piracy: Voting Piracy
(August 12, 2009-Atlanta, GA) “It’s time for a wake-up call, people. Clearly, Twitter has its place in the Adult World, and adult stars, producers, directors and fans are some of the biggest aggregate users of Twitter. Twitter is a great marketing tool, and a great way to directly interact with fans and win awards. The F.A.M.E. Awards, NightMoves and Exotic Dancer Awards use fan-based voting and clearly can be won or lost by the use or lack thereof Twitter. Besides my role as a director for skinworXXX, I am also a publicist at my core, and I am one of the bigger proponents/flagrant abusers of Twitter vote soliciting. Fans of Teagan Presley and Eva Angelina come out in droves to appearances and fan-based voting contests, and it is a huge benefit to us as a company. BUT, Twitter fan-based voting has officially gone too far.
This topic has been commented on already by such noted columnists as Ryan Razer of LukeFord.com, but clearly the message is not loud and clear enough, so I will expand on it and drive home a point ALL of us need to listen to, fans and industry pro’s alike. For the last few years, the driving message from studios in the Adult world is that piracy is killing the DVD business. We all agree: Tube sites and download sites stealing our products is a heinous crime that continues. No one on the business side of adult wants to have others making money on our product we spend hard dollars and hours on, yet we are letting it happen on a new front, and happening aggressively.
I may be relatively new to the Adult Business, BUT I am not new to business. Every time a hottest girl on Twitter contest or most popular porn star contest pops up on Twitter, porn stars and publicists instantly start tweeting about these contests, and then fans retweet. Twitters uses vote. By the thousands. With the Twisty’s Treat of the Year contest (which was for money), fans voted forty thousand times between Bree Olson and Eva Angelina, and that was primarily a result of huge viral marketing on Twitter. That contest had an end date and a prize, but none of these new contests have either, and yet we all still engage this non-sense because of our own vanity and push the ever-loving shit out of them, as do our fans.
Today, I was notified that I was up on a new contest as one of the hottest male Tweeps. Now, I am as vain or more vain then anyone, and I think I am a pretty well-rounded guy and not too shabby-looking guy, but I am sure this wasn’t the point of nominating me. The proprietors of this new contest, one of six or seven running now, obviously knew that I would attack this for Eva, Teagan and myself aggressively, and I did then I sat down and thought about this.
EVERY SINGLE TIME A FAN, A PORN STAR, A DIRECTOR, A PRODUCER, A PUBLICIST VISIT ONE OF THESE SITES AND VOTE THAT’S TRAFFIC FOR THAT SITE! Traffic equals dollars in their pocket and exposure. The big name girls up for these contests like Teagan, Eva, Jenna Haze or any of the other 100+ girls listed are ALREADY famous. Let’s not support them by voting and wasting tweets on a contest that offers no prize other than a bogus title, and doesn’t even have an end date. They don’t want an end date, as they know our vanity will continue this voting and tweeting on indefinitely.
Let’s save our votes for the contests that have prizes or true meaning, like the Exotic Dancer Awards, F.A.M.E. Awards, Nightmoves, RogReviews, etc. Life is not a popularity contest; porn is but let’s not put more money in someone else’s pocket. Let’s retake our business and make great product again that people will want to buy NOT steal.
I have spent hundreds of hours as have some of our fans working on these contests that have no end, and I feel like I just got slowly ass-raped over months. If you are gonna ass-rape me, please buy me dinner and promptly shoot me right after you are done.”
About skinworXXX:
skinworXXX was formed by adult powerhouse Teagan Presley and director/executive producer Joshua in December 2008. The studio’s first film, Sun Goddess: Malibu features Teagan Presley, Bree Olson, Sasha Grey and Gianna Lynn, and was shot on location in true high-definition. skinworXXX recently added Eva Angelina as an executive producer/owner, and both Presley and Angelina perform exclusively for skinworXXX. skinworXXX promises to be a new technology leader for the adult community as well as delivering crossover mainstream marketing such as The Search for Sun Goddess contest in which fans will vote to pick ten girls to appear in an upcoming Sun Goddess release. For more information on skinworXXX and the Sun Goddess or the Deviance series, visit on the world wide web at www.sungoddessxxx.com or www.deviancexxx.com. Press inquiries email skinworxxx@me.com.
You can contact Josh at rockstarprm@me.com of Rock Star Public Relations & Management
A very timely post, Joshua. My initial thoughts to your observations were ones of dilution and differentiation in the Adult Industry (“AI”). Purely as an aside, fortune (of the non-monetary type, regrettably) has befallen me since my professional practice has produced exposure to many industries & businesses and the risk-takers who make them tick. The machinations of the Adult Industry is a current focus of attention and it’s quite the curious and fascinating enterprise.
Just last evening, after exposure to the space-wasting disclosures on Twitter of so many new contests, I ruminated about simply not following them any more. “Contest-fatigue” I shall claim as mine. The reason is very simple. The plethora of Tweets and RTs about the contest-structure linking Twitter & the AI dilutes the significance of any victory while diminishing the legitimacy of each the contests—even the ones with the strength of recognizable branding. As a publicist and entrepreneur, do you prefer as an intangible asset the mileage that a F.A.M.E. Award can provide to the credentials of your budding enterprise, SkinworXXX or instead do you prefer the shallow and meaningless designation on Twitter as an award-winning flavor of the day tweepster? While my choice of words characterizing the latter of the two exhibits my bias, I’d venture th guess that the F.A.M.E. brand would prevail because it is industry-known ad easily recognizable among your AI peers and fans. It has the value you and your colleagues seek.
Dilution is but one issue arising from the propagation of these AI contests on Twitter. Differentiation is another. Effective marketing of whomever’s “widgets” requires differentiation to capture market share and win the treasures & rewards that risk-taking and competition produce. Your industry appears (to this AI amateur) as one where the differntiation of both production and talent is keenly important to accomplish success. Specifically, the “Search for the Sun Goddess” business model to secure the differentiation for your franchise is noteworthy as are the “parodies” productions, although dilution is an issue there as well. In my view, the contests that have gained your attention fail to provide meaningful differentiation the winners from the rest of the pack and for that reason, and also for the dilution to the whole of these award-granting contests, they have become liabilities instead of assets, especially for talent.
Aside from the discipline of personal discretion and one’s greater sensitivity about participation and voting in these contests-lite, there’s no real solution to contest piracy. What’s truly perplexing to me about the Adult Industry, and I pointedly admit my amateur credentials, is that industry leadership seems lacking and industry-unified agendas seem elusive. Perhaps it’s the intrinsic nature of the adult business, still one not yet completely mainstreamed socially or legally.
I commend you for a provocative essay and hope others weigh in too.
What? These contests are designed to market and drive traffic to Twitter and other sites?! I thought they meant that people really CARE! What evil charlantanry will the Twitter t’weasels think of next…?
As popular as Teagan and Eva are, I’ve been led to believe that your repeated messages caused a backlash that caused others to win (several of them actively voting for, and I quote “whoever is in the lead against her”). I like both of them but grew tired of the messages and just stopped voting altogether on some stuff but frankly, it puts you in the category of “why am I following these three or reading anything they write if 95% of it is spam?”
Awards, I really need to sit down and right a story about XXX Awards. Does anyone ever stop to think, “hey, maybe some of these chicks are going to diffrent comp’s and voting for themselfs?” Which to me makes most of these Awards or titles, B.S… I mean, what’s the nastiest girl in porn really mean? The girl with the most I.P. adresses? This is what the girl would say as she goes to speak and thank the audience: “thank you so much, I never knew that my talent for chucking softball sized spit, would ever amount to anything, I really enjoy spitting on people and myself, which I practiced while chewing tobaco, thanks again everyone. I love you all!” She then waves to her fans… Does an award really matter? One of my friends had four AVN awards for directing, I said to him: “um, these things are really heavy, you could use this if someone breaks into your house, and hit them in the head with it,” he said yep, they also make great paper weights. Excuse me for saying this: “but does anyone really care a couple of years after receiving the award, that they even won?”