But, it turned out that people really didn’t care what studio made a movie, as long as it was a story they were interested in featuring STARS they wanted to see. The star of the film became paramount, because the producer couldn’t control what happened to the film, not the way the directors and the actors could. That was the true measure of quality.

The best Harlequin authors are hte ones that become brands outside of Harlequin, and eventually move on. They break away from the studio system that fostered them, because no matter how Harlequin tries, it’s the individual that controls the content that is the true value in the system.

And yet, in spite of this brilliant marketing strategy sales are declining and execs are mourning the fact that there is no new generation of pop acts with staying power of over ten years. Why? Because somewhere in their rush to create a pre-fab, glossy and thoroughly undifferentiated product, they forgot about the people who actually buy their stuff. Consumers have very limited loyalty to a product that had to be force-fed to them in the first place.

Ditto movies. Execs are scratching their heads wondering why audiences aren’t rushing out to pay $10 to see movie versions of the Dukes of Hazzard and Bewitched.

The idea that I would buy a Harper-Collins book just because I had some kind of special warm feelings towards that brand name is exactly the kind of idea that sounds great on paper and probably goes over big at board meetings but will not survive an encounter with reality.