Fundamentally, marketing is about engaging with the market that makes up your customers. Hence, the term.
But, somewhere along the line, movie marketing took a bizarre turn. Everything began to look, and sound, the same.
What normally attracts customers to a product, service, business or, movie, is something special. Something unique. Something interesting.
Yet every movie trailer, the core part of any marketing strategy of a movie, sounds the same.
This video is a mock trailer for Monty Python’s Holy Grail. It manages to turn one of the greatest comedies of all time into a dramatic piece – complete with brooding characters, sword fights and ominous music.
Who would have thought that the Black Knight or, indeed the Knights who say “Ni!” would be so menacing!
Why is this bad marketing? While the trailer is great, stylish and well edited, it does the following:
- It’s a ‘me too’ approach, this could be any movie from The Hunt for Red October through to Inception
- It’s actually pretty boring
- Real quotes, taken out of context, take on a whole new meaning
- It doesn’t tell you anything useful or meaningful: you can watch the whole thing and not really know what it’s about it
- It’s completely misleading: this isn’t an action movie, it’s a comedy
Bad marketing tells the wrong story, even if it is all shiny and expensive.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail – The modern trailer
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