It’s that time of year when we find ourselves looking both forward and backwards at the same time. Take stock in what we’ve accomplished, hopefully learn the lessons from our missteps, and move forward with thanks to the friends and fans who helped us get this far. Alas… my final blog of 2010 – The Year End Wrap up.
In 2009, the Maddy G Productions Network hosted 504,000 viewers from mostly The United States, Canada & The United Kingdom. In 2010, the Network hosted 2.66 Million viewers from 128 Countries around the world.
While we’re by no means a ‘Major Player’ in the Adult Industry, we more than quadrupled our audience in the past 12 months. I’m not gonna lie, it wasn’t easy. As a company, we experienced some serious growing pains and some of them we’re still dealing with.
Too much happened for me to cover it all, but here are the Landmark Events of 2010 that caused the biggest ruckus.
01. “Inside Marie’s Play Place 3” is Released
In January 2010 the Third Series of “Inside Marie’s Play Place” was released. I have a feeling a lot of people in the industry didn’t expect ‘The Show’ to last so when we hit #3 it seemed everyone wanted to take a look.
The DVD Pre-Order Sales to the stores was almost double what the previous two Series shipped. The critics had nothing but rave reviews for this series and the fans couldn’t get enough of Jade Houston.
I think it was a perfect storm of sorts with Jade still riding the wave of back to back hits with “Regarding Jenny” and “All Girls Taste Different” culminating with the scorching boy / girl scene she delivered for the third Series. Add to that, Marie Madison’s first Anal Scene of the show and then there was the introduction to tasty new cast member Rachel Lynn Porter.
For all those reasons, and probably more, A LOT more people where watching Maddy G than ever before. So, in addition to our ‘Regularly Scheduled Programming’ we began releasing some of the ‘Cult Classics’ from our catalog for the fans who where suddenly now looking for films like “Smoke Junkies” and “Indiscretions”.
This proved to be one of our bigger missteps of the year. It caused a lot of confusion for long time fans who had seen these films years earlier. As well as to close to 200 retailers who where already stocking the original versions. We where in unfamiliar territory with the demand we where getting, and we succumbed to pressure from some of our distributors. In hindsight, we should have stuck to our original release plan. Lesson learned.
02. “Regarding Jenny” Blows Up in Germany
In March of 2010 the mainstream press in Germany began reporting on a “Sex Puppet Movie” that had become a big ‘hit’ in America. Many of the German reporters thought it was making fun of “Porn Valley” and were quick to point out that AVN Awards nominated a RealDoll as an actress against well known human actresses with a lot of them wagering on Jenny.
On the heels of all the press in Germany, “Regarding Jenny” was invited to screen at the International Porn Festival in Berlin and the largest DVD Distributor in Germany had bought all the copies of the movie we had left, and placed an order for a 1,000 more that we didn’t have.
This would be the 3rd Manufacturing run of the film since it’s release. Everyone loved Jenny, and the numbers showing up to watch were reflecting that. Some months www.RegardingJenny.com would get more hits than The Play Place Site.
03. Rachel Lynn Porter Signs Exclusive
By April 2010 rookie cast member Rachel Lynn Porter had turned into a fan favorite. With a co-starring roll in “Jenny & Marie’s Award Show Fiasco” and multiple turns on “Inside Marie’s Play Place” the fans whipped themselves into what we started calling “Rachel Mania”.
04. Stella Marie Joins the Cast
This actually happened in January, when we shot the Fourth Series of “Inside Marie’s Play Place” and “Lil’ Stella’s Really Short Stories”, but no one really knew about it until the films were released in August.
We’re probably the only company in the history of Porn to make a ‘Midget Movie’ that wasn’t really about Midgets, and we did it back to back with “Series 4” and “Short Stories”. Combined, these two films earned us three AVN Award Nominations for 2010.
Thru the Spring and Summer of 2010, our lack of understanding of the Wide Release DVD Market had finally started to show itself. We mismanaged the entire process of manufacturing product in mass and getting it into the stores.
We had more than tripled our viewership by August and learned that we were seriously under prepared and grossly under financed to manage it right. So, yeah. We fucked it ALL up.
It took pretty much every resource we had to get “Series 4” and “Short Stories” to the stores before the whole supply chain completely broke down, and it did by the end of August.
To keep the ‘Maddy G Train’ on it’s tracks, we needed to strengthen our online presence pronto. To the rescue… Gamelink.
05. Maddy G Partners with Gamelink for HD Downloads
We’ve learned from our Scene Downloads that given the choice, the fans will pay the extra $1 to download their favorite scenes in High Definition, rather than DVD Quality. It’s like 3 to 1. Gamelink had already been offering our movies in Full Length Download and a lot of the fans were already hooked on shopping there, so the deal to have them be the exclusive HD Provider was easy for us.
An added benefit, is that I had to provide Blu-Ray Masters to Gamelink for the HD Encoding, so the fans get Blu-Ray too.
Six months later, Maddy G pretty much dominates the HD Download charts at Gamelink, taking up 6 – 8 of the “Top 20” at any given time. We’re outselling some of the biggest names in the biz.
In September 2010, our then ‘Ambassador of Strange’ Hyland noticed that Maddy G was lost in the weeds, but no one else there noticed until October that we were completely under water and the supply chain had finally crawled to a stop.
The folks at Pulse Distribution bailed us out with a new deal that would both continue our contract and allow us the ability to stay in the Wide Release DVD Market. It’s not exactly the type of thing you brag about in the press, because we more or less fucked it all up and they came in and saved our ass. But certainly...
06. Maddy G Re-Ups with Pulse Distribution
Pulse released “Thanksgiving Special” in November with the highest pre-order numbers of any previous series. Ladies and Gentlemen, we’re back.
At the same time, Hyland moved over to Vivid and we gained a new ‘Ambassador of Strange’ with Lewis Adams, who is actually responsible for breaking the record with this one.
And that’s where we finished 2010.
Not too freakin’ bad.
Happy new year everyone, we’ll see you in 2011.
- Mark
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