The true genius of George Lucas

If you grew up in the 1970s or later, your life will have been affected by Star Wars in some way or other. The movie franchise is the most successful in US history, and third most successful worldwide. But that isn’t George Lucas’s most significant legacy.

In my last post, I argued that one of the side effects of piracy in online video distribution is that it will drive a much closer synergy between content and advertising. But George Lucas saw this coming in the 1970s, and his dominance of the movie industry is testament to this. When the original Star Wars was made, nobody was sure it would do as well as it did, especially not the people who stumped up the cash so it could be made. So they let George Lucas retain sole rights to any merchandise resulting from the movie.

As someone who lives in a house where it’s sometimes hard to move because of Star Wars Lego (it’s all owned by my two sons, honest), I can vouch for how smart George Lucas was to make that deal. The movies and cartoon spinoffs (ie, the content) clearly make a packet in their own right, but they also sell an absolute truckload of material goods. So they are very effective advertising too.

Content which has purely been created to sell merchandise is often very shallow and lacking in real entertainment value. Many die-hard Star Wars fans reckon the current Clone Wars cartoons on Cartoon Network, and the movie which served as a pilot for them, are a bit too far in that direction. But this has really always been the subtext of Star Wars. Nevertheless, even if they do have their faults, the movies are far more than mere marketing tools – and yet they do that job extremely well too.

So as you ponder where media is headed in the free-for-all of online video distribution, spare a thought for George Lucas. He worked out how to build an audience and make a profit from them beyond the content itself 30 years ago. That’s why he looks so kindly on Star Wars fan movies, and even judges a category in The Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards (now known as the Star Wars Fan Movie Challenge). Because if you can make content that not only people want to watch, but also makes them so obsessed they go and buy stuff, you’ve really cracked how to earn money in the brave new digital age.