August 28, 2006
successful marketing is no different than successful film making. both require empathy.
Dear David,
Earlier, you asked:
So, we don’t have big budget hi-con studio material and we don’t have hip lo-fi hi-con from the myspace crowd, we have a rather special classy little teen movie that can’t be easily classified. So what do we have to offer in terms of marketing that is going to get us our must-see tag?
Sadly, I won’t know the answer, until I know what REAL, cash-spending, ticket-buying, cinema goers are saying and doing re. Hallam Foe… Then again, neither will anybody else.
Successful marketing is no different than successful film making. Both require empathy.
[UPDATE:] From John Dodds:
The Audience Isn’t Even Speaking Now.
With a box office take down below $300 per screen per day, Snakes On A Plane is dead in the water after just eight days!
They gambled all on a single “conversation” and rammed it home across 3335 theatres like any other major release. In other words, “thank you for your input and passion, we marketing experts will take it from here.”
[Lesson:] No Cluetrain-Bloggy-Woggy-Marketing 2.0-Avast-ye-scurvies marketing campaign can save a dud product [in this case, a film], no matter how good the execution. You have been warned.
At least… Hallam Foe is a good film…
PS. I agree with Tara.… the SOAP buzz was never about the movie, anyway. If it were, then God help us all.
Venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson doesn’t see any reason for startups to budget funds for marketing anymore.
http://www.intelligententerprise.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=192300310
I agree though I’m not sure it is a bad movie. It’s not a great one for sure but the reviewers I respect have not panned it. My feeling is that the subjugation of all other marketing activity to the online buzz (whatever that was about) meant the execution was at fault. A staggered release pattern coupled with critic viewings may have created a more honest conversation that would ultimately have led to greater revenue.
Hugh writes: “[Lesson:] No Cluetrain-Bloggy-Woggy-Marketing 2.0-Avast-ye-scurvies marketing campaign can save a dud product [in this case, a film], no matter how good the execution. You have been warned.”
I wasn’t involved in the Snakes on the plane “conversation” that went on before the movie was released, so I could be off, however, it seemed that the conversation wasn’t about the movie, but the “conversation”, or marketing campaign, itself.
Why could a marketing campaign have such success in getting people to talk only to see the movie flop? Well, beyond the movie sucking, the failed positive from the marketing campaign’s “conversation” was that people weren’t really talking about the movie, but the marketing campaign. This isn’t anything new. This is the same old hype, but in another format, and hype is nothing until the product is involved. That’s the real lesson. The product is the end all, and real conversation can’t begin until the product, the whole product, is involved.