I can’t tell you the first thing about movie marketing, but that didn’t stop me reading every word of a long, interesting article in the New Yorker which delves into the life of a top movie marketer – a man known as The Cobra.
While I’m not suggesting you immediately adopt Hollywood methodologies, the article’s still a fascinating read for any lifelong student of marketing:
Publicity is selling what you have: the film’s stars and sometimes its director. Marketing, very often, is selling what you don’t have; it’s the art of the tease. A première lets the marketing and publicity teams join in a final effort to “eventize” a film, to move it to the top of the nation’s long to-do list. Many premières feel slack and dutiful, but this one had the fizz of a genuine event.
The article is long and involved (as New Yorker articles often are). In this case, the thread runs through literally months of the subject’s life, and the narrative’s spotted with intriguing personal glimpses.
Still, my marketing-oriented readers will be most interested in the glimpses behind the Hollywood marketing curtain, including the passages about playbooks, audience segmentation, and even the standard campaign layout:
Modern campaigns have three acts: a year or more before the film débuts, you introduce it with ninety-second teaser trailers and viral Internet “leaks” of gossip or early footage, in preparation for the main trailer, which appears four months before the release; five weeks before the film opens, you start saturating with a “flight” of thirty-second TV spots; and, at the end, you remind with fifteen-second spots, newspaper ads, and billboards.
Studios typically spend about ten million dollars on the “basics” (cutting trailers and designing posters, conducting market research, flying the film’s talent to the junket and the première, and the première itself) and thirty million on the media buy. Between seventy and eighty per cent of that is spent on television advertising (enough so that viewers should see the ads an average of fifteen times), eight or nine per cent on Internet ads, and the remainder on newspaper and outdoor advertising.
The hope is that a potential viewer will be prodded just enough to make him decide to see what all the fuss is about. It’s the “belt and suspenders and corset and parachute harness” approach.
How do Hollywood’s marketers keep from reinventing the wheel?
Each maneuver and ad buy in Palen’s campaigns is detailed in a confidential playbook. For marketers, much of the science of marketing is determining which old movie your new movie is most like, so you can turn to that movie’s playbook as a rough guide. Much of the art of marketing is developing a campaign that reassures moviegoers that the new film is very similar to (or at least “from the director of”) another one they liked.
Like most long New Yorker articles, the writer wraps up a lot of loose ends at the finish, typically offering us one final (often startling) glimpse at the character, and this is no exception:
Many film marketers grow disillusioned with their jobs, with the lying and the cheating. But when I asked Palen whether the job had affected his understanding of our primary levers—of the human eagerness to give way to laughter, fear, sorrow, and passion—he looked at me sharply and said, “I hope not. Because owning the secrets of cattle mentality is not aspirational. I love my job, I love being a part of all this, of staying fresh and young.” He was thinking aloud, not his favorite mode of self-presentation. “I mean . . . my mom still listens to Patsy Cline. I have this—not a fear—but she stopped at a certain age, and I don’t want to stop, to get old.”
Brilliantly told, it’s an article worth reading – even if you don’t glean one useful marketing hint from it.
Keep reading, Tom Chandler.
What John Carter Fans Know That Disney Doesn’t
After I got done reading the usual kid books, I got hooked on science fiction — starting with the Edgar Rice Burroughs’ classic “Barsoom” (Mars) novels.
They featured John Carter, a civil war veteran who found himself transported to Mars, where he found adventure galore. The book series — first published in 1912 — has influenced countless writers and filmmakers.
The novels are old and pulpy, but they’re also first-class adventure. I loved them, and recently read the series again.
So when news leaked that Disney was producing an epic John Carter movie for the series’ 100th anniversary, I perked up. The question wasn’t if I was going to see it, it was how far up the line I’d be.
Which is when the Disney movie trailers started appearing on the Internet.
None of which seemed very… good.
I knew the story. I was impressed by the effects. And I’m a big Taylor Kitsch fan (Friday Night Lights).
Yet the trailers seemed choppy and disconnected. And I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Comments by viewers — especially those unfamiliar with the novels — were negative.
With $250 million in the movie, Disney noticed too, and released more trailers.
Which consistently missed the mark.
Until a bunch of fans got together, and — using only the footage found in other trailers — cut their own trailer. Which made the movie make sense:
Compare that to this:
I find it wholly interesting that it’s taken a crowdsourced fan trailer to make the movie seem intelligible. As screenwriter William Martell noted, the success of the fan trailer “makes me wonder why Disney isn’t firing people.”
After watching a couple, the reason why became clear; the fan trailer builds the tension and leaves us hanging; the studio trailers seem like collections of pretty pictures “aimed” at different demographics.
In simple terms, fan trailer told us a story (an interplanetary adventure/romance). The studio trailers were too busy aiming a “product” at specific demographics to bother (one trailer suggested the film was a comedy).
Story is a powerful tool for writers of all colors, including those who sell things (and those who edit together movie trailers). I’m still waiting for Disney to tell me one.
Insteady, the studio lost the thread, marketing an adventure like it was a bar of soap.
The fans, who never consider themselves a target demographic, knew better.
Keep writing, Tom Chandler