That is the conundrum we face on a daily basis. And in the marketing realm I was pleasantly surprised yesterday. I saw an engagement advertisement apparently in the Boston Globe. It was an image of a man known in his role of Mickey17 (the first 16 were better) flogging himself to the girlfriend of Tom Holland, yes I am talking about Zendaya. With the engagement story to give a glimpse of a movie.
I actually didn’t have a clue or any interest in that movie, but now, I might actually got to the cinema to watch it (A cinema is a great room with loads of chairs facing a big screen), I thought I’d mention this to the Netflix population as they might not know what it is.
It hit me by surprise as marketing has gone globally bland, the only exception is that crazy marketeer named Ryan Reynolds (Blake Lively’s husband) his advertisements of Mint Mobile and American Gin are pretty out there, so to see a second marketeer stretching his (or her) legs into the creative pool of goofy alliances is pretty neat so say the least. And I reckon that Square Peg who is the distributor needs to give whomever got the idea of this marketing campaign a raise.
And in this world a marketing population of one is not a real deal, so I am happy to see that there is a contender for the role of the craziest marketeer on the planet. You see in marketing we have Awareness and Perception are like concentric circles, we first come aware of something and then we get to Perception of the matter, which at times is a reflection of the subject on self. In this Focus, Process and Objectivity are matters of something liked and sometimes not linked matters that inflict the awareness and perception of the matter. It sounds overly academic and it needs to be. We come aware of a movie and when we become more aware we start to get the perception of that movie. How do I relate to that movie and most often it is a mere setting of entertainment. Will I like this? Is it what I want to spend my time on? The second question is the banger for Netflix. If that movie is not your cup of tea, you switch it off or you select another movie to watch. Especially In America where your time is seemingly more precious (and travel comes with its own set of challenges) Netflix is largely the only one that gives the least impact on your timeline. So Cinema’s are down (a lot) and as such marketeers need to be more and more alert to what could drive a person from aware to a deeper a focussed set of perception. That is what drives people optionally to the cinema. Still cinema’s need to address their settings too (really $8 for a popcorn?) And it is a hard setting, space is expensive now and over the last 20 years that setting switched for doable to no longer affordable. Cinema started in 1895 and from 125 years of a good setting we see in the last 20 years that this stage has largely become unaffordable. So a good campaign is more and more important to a dying stage of entertainment. In this, whomever set that stage to The Drama (April 2026) with Robert Pattinson and Zendaya set terrific campaign and applause for whomever did.
As I see it, they perpetrated a lie without actually lying, a rare feat to say the least.
Have a great day and for those in Canada, still enjoying Sunday have a great day too.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 