A Penny Saved

Om Malik responds to Mark Cuban’s challenge to come up with a better and cheaper way to promote movies with a ticket as coupon idea.

Whenever anyone goes to a movie theatre, they end up with a ticket stub. I would propose that you create a program/system to make those ticket stubs into currency… essentially a coupon that can be passed around, traded, bought/sold, etc.

Movie Tickets as a secondary currency.  And it just might work.  Hypothetically, I’m much more likely to watch a movie if my friends say it’s good vs. what the reviews say.  I’m also much more likely to see a movie in a theatre if I have the ability to save a few bucks.

While there are many more implications I could discuss (e.g. stubs will probably show up on eBay, people will list their stubs on their social networking profiles, etc.), I’ll stop here for now.

I don’t think we could go as far as to say they would begin showing up on ebay.  I suppose large lots of tickets might have some resale value, but a stub worth $3 is unlikely to become a popular seller on ebay.  Fees and charges would most certainly erase any profit potential.  I could see the potential for a trade system to develop however.  Imagine a system much like craigslist where I list my stub for Superman and you list your stub for Cars.  I want to see cars, you want to see Superman.  We trade stubs and everybody is happy.  We both save money.

How likely would you be to keep your stub and trade or give it to a friend if a system like this were implemented?

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