You're good at what you do. You study and listen and read - honing your trade - only to understandably and occasionally forget that behind the progress toward success are real neighbors consuming your work.
So you must ask - and keep asking - not the myopic, "How can I get customers to fall in love with my product?" but a more generous, "How can I love by getting this product to my customers?"
I needed a Stephanie Smith about seven years ago, before I gave up on publicity and a book I felt compelled to share with the world. It is what it is now, but I'm encouraged to know that service is her focus in a world of too many self-serving, megaphone-toting, insecurity-driven authors. I am happy to share her marketing view with you this morning at TheHighCalling.org:
"In between the dozens of drafts and the time their magnum opus hits the printer, some authors get cold feet. They feel it’s still an
important book, but suddenly, to spread the word about it through a
publicity campaign would be disingenuous. Suddenly, it’s not God’s
message, but 'self-promotion.' They feel more comfortable in the high
art of the writing process, and want to leave the 'dirty work' of
promotion to me.
I count it my professional privilege to debunk this illusion. I
understand that when you’ve poured so much of yourself into a work, it
becomes harder to discern the lines between yourself and your art, and
easier to equate book promotion with self-promotion. But these don’t
have to be one and the same. What often makes the difference is our
motives: Are we serving ourselves, or are we serving an idea that we believe will influence lives for the better?"
I missed the Oscars Sunday night because I’m on a TV hiatus. But I didn’t really miss the Oscars. I watched a couple of the nominees via Netflix but wasn’t too impressed. Then I read a recap this morning in the New York Times about how the Oscars needs to deal with its antiquated formula: extensive advertising, long months of telling potential viewers about the show, countless blog posts and movie trailers and pre-vote casting opportunities. As the article goes, nearly five months of marketing are aimed at one hopefully spectacular, star-studded, entertaining, successful celebration.
Yet many think it fell flat this year.
Brooks Barnes and Michael Cieply wrote the review that caught my attention. It’s entitled, Fears Grow That Oscars’ TV Allure May Be Resistible. They said, “With films that most of America hasn’t seen continuing to dominate the Oscars—“Hugo,” a winner of five trophies on Sunday, has been a box office dud—the Academy seems to have effectively eliminated one of the crucial measuring sticks of the past: the ability of a picture to move the masses to buy tickets.”
For me, this is the crux of the matter. Good vs popular. On one hand you may have good films which weren’t popular but win Best Picture. On the other hand, you may have popular films which weren’t exactly good but win Best Picture anyway. The former highlight the power to amaze us or shift our worldview; the latter, the power to fill seats.
But good vs popular creates an interesting dilemma. If all of the Oscar nominees are good but not popular, viewers have to force themselves to preview the line-up prior to Oscar night or else they won’t have a clue about who’s in the running, and therefore have no real buy-in to the show. If, however, all of the Oscar nominees are popular but not good, viewers will naturally tune in like sports fans to see if their pick will win. (But then people like me end up questioning the voting system and wonder why such-and-such an incredible no-name movie didn’t get noticed.)
I have to confess. My peculiar tastes aside, I don’t trust the masses. They are—and don’t take this personally; I share it as what I think of as basic sociology—ignorant, emotionally driven, and generally lacking in good taste. Crowds follow each other with a certain blind excitement that dampens objectivity when it comes to valuing cultural artifacts. What is popular is not always promising. What is mass is not always remarkable. But without, as the article said, “the ability of a picture to move the masses to buy tickets,” the Oscars—at least in its current format—will eventually die.
Preachers know this. Marketers know this. Authors know this. TV show producers know this. You can have a great message, but if you aren’t filling seats, it’s going to be an awfully poor and lonely road ahead, if there even is a road ahead.
I ask whether the Oscars’ TV allure was resistible this year because a handful of the nominees were neither good nor popular. Such a combination does not bode well for anyone.
