Tag Archives: Marketing

An Irreverent Guide to Judgement Day 2011

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Through an aggressive marketing campaign, Harold Camping has forewarned via Christian broadcasting network Family Radio that today is “Judgement Day.” Even though the Bible has been published for centuries, God is only just now “opening up His Word because we have arrived at the time of the end.” With the “Biblical Timeline of History” and the “correct method of Bible interpretation” at hand, Camping determined today’s significance through a string of compounded assumptions:

  • The earth was created in 11,013 BC (13,000 years ago, when mankind first practiced agriculture).
  • Noah’s Flood began on May 21, 4990 B.C., per the Hebrew calendar (Genesis 7:11).
  • Christ was crucified on April 1, 33 A.D (April fools, sucka!).
  • Biblical reference to a single day is actually reference to a thousand years (2 Peter 3:8).
  • Therefore, Judgement Day would occur 7,000 years after the flood (Genesis 7:4). [Note that the same passage alludes to the floods lasting 40 days and 40 nights. So what’s going to happen in 40,000 years? God will retire?]
  • There are 365.2422 days in a complete year, according to astronomers (who also determined that the earth is 4.54 billion years old, but who’s counting).

Beyond those anchor assumptions, the variables in his calculations to reach May 21, 2011, are based entirely on biblical number symbolism. For a mind-numbing breakdown of Camping’s math, read his “infallible proof” (I suggest you trip acid first, you might actually be able to follow his genius).

According to Camping’s prophecy, true believers will be beamed up to Heaven today. Apparently, reading the Bible is your ticket to salvation: “God has always saved people through the hearing of His Word” (a crafty publisher sales pitch, wouldn’t you say?). As a “fuck you” gift to the rest of us left behind, a massive doomsday earthquake was supposed to start at 6 p.m. on the International Date Line, move west, and unearth corpses everywhere. Just in case you missed it, nothing happened. But if you are still here tomorrow, that does not mean the prophecy was wrong; prepare yourself for five months of hell until October 23, 2011, when the atmosphere will pop and solar radiation will toast us all (2 Peter 3:10).

Judgement Day street teams in Hollywood, who quit their jobs and families to preach the word, were taking salvation so seriously this week that they spent a lot of time discussing the quality of meat in their tacos and smoking pot. Harold Camping already predicted that September 6, 1994, would be the big day and convinced a lot of people to go along with it. But alas, his calculations were wrong. Oh well, Round 2. I give Camping credit for a strong 2011 marketing campaign, but nothing more. Family Radio has reached 66 stations across the United States and 61 languages globally; I can only imagine how much publicity traffic he has generated through his latest movement. I am very tolerant of most people and their philosophies, but I do not tolerate fear mongering in any form. Dear God, please rapture Camping and his believers (in their favor, mind you) so that we can return to reason and actually get some bills passed in Congress. Amen.

Family Radio aside, there has been a lot of apocalyptic talk lately. Sure, times are tough. But do not overanalyze, dear reader. Economic collapse, climate change, crime, wars, disease, famine, and natural disasters are not uncommon in history. Without question, we need to be better shepherds of our planet. But rampant paranoia will do us no good. I suppose the Mayan calendar, global warming, nuclear holocaust, alien invasion, dark matter, and zombies may all be plausible, but there’s no way to know for sure. All we can do is live and love life as if every day were our last. Take radicals with a grain of salt.

Groupon and Living Social Just Lost a Customer

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GrouponI’ve had enough. Fitness classes, yoga, waxing, Brazilian blowouts, facials, tattoos, beauty products, home & garden, apparel, too many hair cuts, too many massages, too many poorly yelped restaurants. I cannot delete these daily spam notes quick enough. I would never spend money on any of those things. I’ve been registered to both sites for over a year and only purchased five coupons. That means that I found only 0.7% of all available deals relevant and 99.3% mostly irrelevant. Terrible odds. I unsubscribed from both services this morning.

Not sure if you’ve ever checked, Groupon or Living Social, but I’m a 23-year-old male and not really that into blowouts or bikini waxing. A basic search and your own profile form would reveal at least that much. Connecting through Facebook or Foursquare could teach you even more.

The marketing prowess of daily emails and a clever coupon system has completely worn off. If these services made a little effort to market their offers by listing “best steak in town” or “highest yelped masseuse” in the subject line, I might pay more attention. Otherwise, the deal messages sit in my inbox like spam at the mercy of the delete button.

Groupon, Living Social, OpenTable, Facebook Deals, Google Offers and all of the other ripoffs coupon services need to start delivering relevant, targeted and meaningful deals. “Deal type” subscription checkboxes on signup pages are not sufficient. The delivery mechanism of email needs to be treated more delicately. And they all need to compete for poignant brevity (deal announcements should be no longer than a tweet).

I will stay registered to Yipit.com, which aggregates all of the major deal players into one daily email and does a far better job weeding out coupon categories I will never buy. But even Yipit could afford to target better and market the benefit of each deal.

Film Friday: The Mercenary Model

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Like recruiting a band of freedom fighters, a company can commission a handful of different filmmakers to generate original content for a single narrative or non-narrative campaign unified by theme, message, dialogue or genre. By recruiting several auteurs to produce independent work, the company reduces brand risk by investing in multiple creative visions to satisfy one campaign. Odds are much higher that at least one of the dissimilar campaign videos will be successful online.  As an added bonus, mercenary campaigns serve as strong breeding pools for discovering fresh directorial talent.

When pitting filmmakers against each other, it is much easier to negotiate competitive production budgets. Depending on the complexity of the campaign and nature of material, a brand could easily generate five pieces of content for the going price of one 30-second industry commercial. If your filmmakers are chosen through film school or a public competition online, you can offer as little as $1,000 budgets to each. Run productions concurrently and you can collect all of that content very quickly.

Coca-Cola has been doing this for 13 years through their Refreshing Filmmaker Awards. As another legitimate example, Philips commissioned RSA (Ridley Scott Associates filmmaker group) to shoot five short films using the same dialogue to promote their Ambilight Cinema Television. Five different directors produced radically different content and drove strong traffic to the brand.  Carl Erik Rinsch’s film, “The Gift,” even sparked a studio bidding war.

As with crowdsourcing, trusting outsiders to produce video content could potentially compromise your company image. Thankfully, you are in control of your own brand – do not release the videos if they fail to satisfy your needs. Either way, it’s worth the experiment. Young, ambitious filmmakers like 5 Second Films could bring a lot to your campaign if you award them the freedom to do so.

Film Friday: The Key to Becoming a Successful Director

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Writing a screenplay, filming shorts, building a reel, exhibiting talent and advertising yourself as a “director” are NOT enough. Film is a collaborative art and it takes a strong core team. The key to becoming a successful film director (or any key-level position) is to surround yourself with talented people who can only see you as a director.

True for any profession – surround yourself with people who believe in your dreams. Family and significant others are a good start, but you need professionals who can support you and your vision. Convince the industry you are best at doing one thing above all else.

I have mentioned this before, but it has to do with portrayal. If people see you as a good assistant, they will only see you as a good assistant. Best camera operator in town? Good luck getting calls for anything else. If your agent values you as a writer, hard chance earning a push toward the big chair. Show everyone you are a good director, and they will only see you as a good director.

Start on your level. It is far easier and more effective to prove it to peers who will recommend you than to a studio executive with your reel or a script. Your network is your net worth. A friend’s “I know this great director” is far more accelerating than “I know this talented guy who is working at an agency.” If your friends don’t title you a director, no one will.

Best to build your team on level, too. You need at bare minimum a producer, director of photography, production designer, sound designer and editor who can vouch for you. Part of your marketability as a director are the talented chaps you have in tow.

If you are not building relationships with collaborators, getting constant practice or stuck working a 60-hour week, I strongly encourage you to quit your mediocre day job and get busy because you are wasting time. Don’t tell people you are a director, be a director. The only person who will believe your lie is you, unless of course your lie comes true.

Share this with peers you believe in and encourage them with your vote of confidence. Success in collaboration is a two-way street.

Why the Email Subject Will Never Die

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Mark Zuckerberg does not favor email as a mode of communication because he finds it too clunky and formal. “You have to think of the email address, you have to think of a subject line. You write, ‘Hey Mom’ at the top. You write, ‘Love, Mark’ to conclude it.”

I agree with him about the email address part – any email client that does not automatically fill in the addresses in your recipient field deserves to fail. But I do not agree with the subject line part.

In the social world, it makes sense. Most people share relatively linear relationships with their friends and can contextualize a random message based on past and current circumstances. The person’s name is usually enough to clue you in on the content of the message. You do not need a subject line for a SMS or Facebook message.

But that only works until personal takes a business turn. When tasks, goals or projects are outlined in text between two or more people, it becomes necessary to separate and categorize different messages. All mixed together, task items become difficult to track and organize. To me, Facebook messages are an organizational nightmare. Don’t you dare try to do business with me through Facebook.

The naked subject line does not work AT ALL when you do not know the sender. The subject line is the sender’s only chance at catching my attention. Like a book title, the subject line must explain who the person is and hook me into reading the message. I get over 90 legitimate emails per day, 75% of which are not spam or newsletters and a large chunk from people I do not know. If I spend two mintues with each email (which is on the short end of what it usually takes), that’s nearly 3 hours a day in Gmail. I do not have time for that. Without the email subject, I cannot prioritize, categorize or contextualize.

Email subjects are titles. We are a title-driven culture. The title is a necessary barrier to entry. They always say, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” But the cover is all we have to make a choice. As long as we have choices to make, we will have titles there to help us. As long as I have a million emails to read, the subject line better be there to help me.

Fansource Five: How Your Fans Can Help Offset Risk

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New trend: crowdsourcing. Inspiring the masses to perform a service for your company and engage them in your brand. Core systems, brand identity, customer service, logo design, commercial production, word of mouth, product development, recipes and more. Cheaper, doubles as a marketing effort, and empowers your strongest audience.

It’s not always a good idea to call out to the whole world. Gap’s logo redesign failed in part because a large number of submission artists were not regular Gap customers; they were not familiar with the brand. Certainly not as familiar as the customers who lashed back and reset the logo.

Enter: fansourcing. Fan–sourcing is more focused than crowd–sourcing because it challenges your fanbase directly – the people who know and care about you the most. A new record label in the UK invites fans to invest (for a share of the profits) in an album before the music is even recorded. This model threatens rule #4 of my true fans definition by blurring the line between fan support and ROI profiteering. Nevertheless, sharing profits with your strongest fans is an unrivaled channel for gratitude. It could empower your supporters and win you more true fans.

Fansource financing can offset considerable risk in your venture for the following five reasons:

Reason 1:  Upfront Recoupment
Traditionally, you raised money to produce and then recouped costs when customers paid for your product. With fansource financing, raising money and recouping costs happens simultaneously. Pay before or pay after? As long as you can deliver on your promise to produce, what’s the difference? Less risk when you’ve already satisfied expenses before the product is made.

Reason 2:  Less Emphasis on Profit
Investors expect a financial return. Fans expect an experiential return. When your investors are your fans, the product takes first chair to profit. Investors are very important and should not be undermined. But I promise you: fans will give you less hassle about the dollar – if you do good work, of course. Less pressure, less stress, less risk.

Reason 3:  Fans Have Skills
By building a community around your project, you have thousands of supports who have talents and connections that could help you. Be resourceful (or perhaps fansourceful?). Know your fans. Do not be afraid to ask. They might love you enough to lend a hand.

Reason 4:  The Quality Committee
Investors want your product to turn a profit. Fans want your product to be great. By bringing in fan investors, you are building a community populated by your toughest critics and most loyal supporters. Build a relationship with them, collect their expectations and improve your product. Better quality, less risk.

Reason 5:  Fans Have Friends
With their hard-earned money in the pot, fan investors have more at stake in and therefore more attachment to your project. They want their friends to support the project and fuel their return. Fans will help you do the marketing legwork and reach more people.

While fansourcing reduces financial risk on your part, it increases fan retention risk. A fan invests thousands of dollars into your project and your project fails, no return on investment. Uh oh. You will lose the fan. They may even tarnish your reputation, hurting your ability to adopt new fans. That is why it is imperative to earn true fans who do not expect a return. Churches are really good at this. Kickstarter is kickin’ ass.

True Fans

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In a world of menial “like” buttons, ratings and million myspace friends, the notion of network is clouding the value of true fans. In this niche-saturated marketplace, fans are now more important to a brand than ever. They are your lieutenant commanders in marketing, stimulate the lion’s share of revenue, and take responsibility for the tribe. Filmmaker Kevin Smith values his fans and is self-distributing his latest film to them before anyone else. Identify your fans and show them appreciation.

 
A true fan:

  1. listens to you
  2. talks about you
  3. believes in you enough to give you money before your product exists
  4. does not expect financial return


Everyone else is just a customer.