There has been an avalanche of articles about the lessons marketers can learn from Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign.

There has never been a political digital campaign of such scale and scope, and the technology and data mining techniques applied by Obama’s team should be of special interest to Hollywood’s marketers. There are striking similarities between campaigning for the next box office hit and for the election of the next president of the United States.

Let’s begin by observing some similarities:

First Weekend vs. Election Day

There is no other industry where the rules of market economy condense with such brutality and drama into one single moment of truth as film. Years of financing and development rounds, months of production, weeks in the cutting room, and then one opening box...