I'm bookmarking the article for later, but the clip you posted really made me laugh to my socks ... not because it's wrong but because when I first started work in advertising the guy who taught me said there are only three things you need to find out about a product from a client in order to sell anything:
1) Who are you talking to? ... (described not as a demographic but as a need - desire or problem)
2) What do you want them to do after they see/hear/read the spot?
3) Why should they do it?
If you identify a need and then demonstrate how the product pefectly fills that need, then the product is guaranteed to sell. I guess that means I've been doing psychographics for sixteen years now. LOL
Where this applies to film marketing is probably in two different areas (we called them briefs)
Brief One
Who are we talking too?
A large sales agent who makes his living by selling feature films to distributors for cinema and DVD releases, but whose main income comes from selling it into various international territories for TV showing. (You find this out by doing research)
What do I want him to do?
Buy ... Critical Mass, my new film about a film critic who accidently takes an experimental drug - a drug that forces him to double in weight every twenty-four hours
Why should they do it?
(this is the question that every film maker needs to ask in the script development phase if, they have a genuine intent to sell their film)
The important part is to remember that your product has to solve a problem for, or fill the need that the sales agent has .. so "because it's a great film" isn't the right answer.
We all know what most of the right answers are:
... because it's got Bruce Willis in it (names make a film an easy sell, a slam dunk for the sales agent even if the film is a turkey) .. this isn't about the quality fo the film it's about the sales agent knowing that a picture on the DVD cover that punters recognise from film or the TV will make people buy/rent
... because there it's in a genre that people will buy without having a name ... if you're not shooting horror the key here is probably the non US markets ... Give a sales agent who has contacts in Latin America a fairly macho, action flick with minimal nudity and limited dialogue - deliver it with the sound mixed so it can be easily dubbed (do your own research on this ... this is just me guessng the profile based on some time in Mexico) they might know exactly where they can pick up ten percent on it.
... because it won a shed load of awards at the festivals that the industry considers cool ... Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and Sundance
... because it has somehow generated a massive underground following and the day it is released the sales agent believes people will flock to buy it
The other brief relates to that and it's about defining your film's audience
Who
A person who rents films every week and likes to watch intelligent thought provoking movies with their young family
What
Watch my new movie ... Critical Mass
Why
Because it's the heart warming tale true story of how a Catholic Priest (Harvey Keitel) saves a village of Peruvian pygmies from an evil logging company who want to turn their beautiful rain-forest into more Ikea coffes tables and in the process overcomes his own personal demons ... co staring Kate Blanchett as the in your face doctor.
I know you guys already know this stuff ... it's just another way of reality checking your movie in the development stage and it also helps you plan your marketing strategy accordingly.
BTW, Clive, if you want to let the board know your idea for our film please go right ahead (as long as you don't reveal who gets shot ... but I don't think you know anyway). I'm back from Mexico ... all tanned and relaxed!
Thanks Alphie .. I will do, (I don't know who got shot, yet) not today though as I'm just writing this post as a way of avoiding getting started on the next script.
I'm out-a-here
