Before the ribbon cutting officially opened the 2005 Adult Entertainment Expo, about 300 attendees gathered in a conference room at the Sands Convention Center for the Opening Session seminar, “Where Are We Headed?”
Chaired by Tim Connelly, publisher of AVN and editor-in-chief of AVN.com, it featured a range of industry insiders assessing some of the opportunities and risks the New Year may bring to the adult industry. They covered such issues as novelty sales, piracy and digital media convergence.
Keynote speaker was Phil Harvey, owner of PHE and Adam & Eve, one of the most respected voices in adult entertainment. He noted that the good news is that sex is here to stay. “This is important for our industry,” he added drily. And also that it is still “unacceptable” enough socially that sales of porn movies and sextoys won’t be soon be taken over by Wal-Mart.
On the negative side, he cautioned, “The anti-sex nuts will always be with us. They are a surprisingly durable phenomenon.” He also warned that the “byzantine” federal record-keeping law (2257) “is going to be a problem and is likely to get even worse.”
Al Bloom, marketing director for California Exotic Novelties, recalled that when he entered the adult industry in 1970, “there was no novelty business. Now there is no end in sight to the demand.” He said the trend in toys is toward “new materials, better motors, more functions,” and that in spite of growing Internet sales, “80 percent of our business is still done over the counter. It depends on touching, feeling.”
Joy King of Wicked Pictures spoke of piracy as a “huge problem, largely ignored,” that extends beyond bootleg DVDs to the Internet where people are “stealing your content and making money off of it.” Wicked, she said, uses the Macrovision copy protection program that scrambles content when DVD duplication is attempted. But she said that technology may be invented that can override it.
She recommended that manufacturers create packaging “specific to your brand” and, most importantly, go after the bootleggers aggressively and prosecute them.
Evil Angel owner John Stagliano said the most interesting thing from his point of view is that “porn is getting more and more acceptable.” He said that mainstream entertainment attendees at his dance version of The Fashionistas at Krave have told him, “Porno is hot.” He urged manufacturers and retailers to look into “how this market is expanding. Where is [porn] more acceptable?”
When asked by an audience member about Hi-Definition video, Stagliano said he thought it was “not necessarily the best format for porno. I just don’t see it being a big deal in the long run.”
For Aly Drummond, marketing director for AVN.com, the key word was “convergence.” Not celestial convergence, but “digital media converging with the video side of the industry.” She pointed out that “digital media” extends beyond the Internet into such areas as cellphone content delivery, set-top box content, and satellite delivery.
All, she stressed, “are new ways of revenue delivery.”
After a brief question and answer sessions, Connelly invited everyone to attend the ribbon-cutting ceremonies presided over by adult legend Seka and Seymore Butts. “Seka has just found her birth certificate,” he quipped, in a wry reference to the 2257 regulations.
