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Why don’t you know what films are coming out anymore?
The first spend CEOs love to cut back on is always marketing
A film came out in 2023: a massive feature film. A film that the producers hoped would spawn a huge global franchise. It has an (no kidding) eighty million dollar budget. An A-list cast. CGI that makes Marvel look like Peppa Pig. Robots. Huge fight scenes. Ethical problems. Star Wars on Earth. This film should have been massive. But you’ve never heard of ‘The Creator’. And it didn’t make much money. And it was quietly forgotten. I only know it even exists because I went to the premiere. Like most films made nowadays, no one really knows they exist. Why?
Well in short, the marketing is bad, or just non-existent.
Marketing: the ‘disposable’ department?
The money people in any industry (C-Suite suits: CFOs, COOs, CAOs, you get the picture) aren’t often creative people, and they definitely aren’t ‘people’ people. They aren’t good communicators, and marketing baffles, alarms, and confuses them. They don’t really understand it: why can’t you just make a graphic? Why can’t you just put it on the interwebs? Why do you need to hold an event? Why do you need to do posters? By the time you’ve explained actor network theory, product identity, ad blindness, USPs…
