What marketing tips can we learn from the movie business?

August 26, 2008 by Gary Seigel.

It’s no mystery that Batman will be the biggest blockbuster of 2008                  

Batman, Tropic Thunder, Mama Mia, Sex and the City, even a badly reviewed comedy like Alvin and the Chipmunks —-  all were predicted to do blockbuster business.

Meet Dave starring Eddy Murphy?  Studio heads knew it was stinker and dumped it during dog days of summer.

Some  movie insiders can actually tell you almost to the dollar how much money a movie will make its first opening weekend. Yet, there are exceptions. Over the past decades, studios were almost bankrupted by a few bad surprises. Remember Heaven’s Gate? Alexander? The Adventures of Pluto Nash? Town and Country? Stealth?

But, summer 2007 and 2008 earned the industry billions of dollars, more than ever in the history of film, and  I am amazed at how well studio heads and insiders can  design a movie, deliver it in previews, read the responses, re-edit the film, and then release it, knowing with fair accuracy  the exact amount of money it will make opening weekend.

What do these movie insiders do that we don’t do with our own creative marketing and promotion that could help us get even a fraction of  their success?

What can the movie industry teach us about promoting our business?

1. “You never send a marketing promotion out without getting feedback from either a focus group or a group of experts.”— says Richard Stevens, a c0-director of marketing and publicity here at Fly High Productions. A former publicist himself, Stevens believes “Projects that bankrupt companies or merely waste money are usually those that are done haphazardly without feedback - without the proper marketing research.  A genius idea means nothing if no one wants to gravitate to it. Yes, all that costs money, and it’s worth every penny.”

If movies can create “preview” audiences — why can’t businesses do the same?

2. Create focus groups by asking key people at different companies to be on your “mastermind” list. Ask them periodically to give you feedback on your ads, promotions, email campaigns, etc. Gary Zukov, author of the Chicken Soup of the Soul Series, enlists ten readers to view drafts of his books before they come out. That way he knows what works, what doesn’t, and what has to change in order to make the book meaningful and commercially successful.

3. Avoid unwanted appearances on the Tonight Show! Years ago, the company I worked for designed an expensive ad campaign — a beautiful postcard — that ended up on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show during his “worst postcards of the week” skit. The card showed a beautiful blonde in her closet, holding a glass of champagne. Her Labrador retriever sat next to her. The headline for this custom closet ad read, “Simply Romantic,” and Leno put together the equation — the dog — the blonde — the champagne—the closet —and  changed the phone number on the ad to read 1-800-BEASTIALITY.The audience went crazy. Our phones rang off the hook the next day, but it wasn’t (obviously!)  the kind of publicity we wanted for a high end, custom closet company. Why did we not see what Leno saw — BEFORE we mailed out that postcard?  

Lesson learned? You’re too close to your material. Get some distance. Show it to others. Put it aside. Get experts on your marketing team to offer advice.It is not unusual for a movie studio to shelve a film that  gets bad previews BEFORE spending hefty sums on marketing and promotion.  Reaching out for feedback first – before massive promotion — is just smart business.

4. Target audiences are the key these days.  Movie industry is very savy to this, opening artsy films in a few key cities, heavily advertising “youth” movies on the Internet, and promoting women’s films to women. Target your audience very carefully so that you’re not wasting money — sending, for example, slick expensive magazine-size brochures to people who wouldn’t buy from you in the past obviously wastes your budget. Sending it to strangers on a list you bought of people who specifically buy from your competition —that may be more viable. Think it out and show it to others first so that you avoid making costly, embarrassing, and humiliating mistakes

What’s the key?

The key — I think— to Hollywood’s success is partly their ability to sense what .Americans view as entertainment.  Whether you’re selling insurance or sandwiches, what do your customers want? That’s a question Hollywood knows the answer to quite well.

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