Are You Making the Same Movie?

In 101 Things I Learned in Film School, Neil Landau quotes Sidney Lumet's description of the director's job: to "make sure everyone is making the same movie."

Successful movies aren't the handiwork of artists, but of practical visionaries, Landau says.

"Production staff need to get to the set on time, work hard, and take disciplined breaks. 

"Staff can't work at cross purposes, and must always understand the bigger picture into which their work fits. Where interpretation is called for, it must be performed within the context of the larger vision."

How are things going at your studio? 

Are your marketing team members "making the same movie?" 

Or is each preoccupied with budget, power and career?

If the latter, the team's probably not being held accountable.

Your top executives think of you as artists, and don't expect box office results.

The Internet of Experiences

The Internet of Things is coming, David Pierce writes in Wired, "like a molasses tidal wave."

Not so the Internet of Experiences, if event marketers have their way.

Last year saw quantum leaps in product design by the tech companies that serve event marketers (firms like Cvent, DoubleDutch, Eventbase—even Facebook).

Those improvements practically assure event marketers will embrace event tech—and with gusto.

While gizmos galore have been dispensed at events, none ever became indispensable.

In 2016, finally, that will change.

DISCLAIMER: My employer is an investor in DoubleDutch.

My Marketing Prediction for 2016

Lacking results, B2B marketers will quit more social media networks than they join.

YEAR-END NOTE: To mark a change in direction, I'm giving Copy Points a new name today, Goodly. I hope you'll keep following my blog, for more good stuff. Happy 2016!

Glitch or Kitsch?

In their relentless pursuit of authenticity, marketers are embracing "glitch art," Guy Merrill, senior art director at Getty Images, tells Chief Content Officer.

Marketers are posting crooked photos with arbitrary compositions and shaky videos that look like outtakes.

The errors featured (such as oversaturated colors, lens flares, overexposure and pixelation) are made intentionally or added in post-production.

Marketers like glitch because, by displaying realism, it eradicates the difference between user- and influencer-generated content.

Kitsch, on the other hand, eschews realism.

Well-known examples include those paintings of dogs playing poker; paintings of Elvis on velvet; and everything painted by Thomas Kinkade.

From the German word for garbage, kitsch "appeals to popular or lowbrow taste and is often of poor quality," according to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary.

Can you tell the difference?

Make a New Year's Revolution

Next year, instead of a resolution, make a revolution.

Rewrite your "fail script." 

Leave the catastrophes for the nightly newspeople.

Self-talk about rejection predicts both long-term success and long-term failure, psychologists have proven.

Your default fail script goes, "This always happens. It's all my fault. And it's going to ruin everything."

Instead, when you're next rejected—and every time thereafter—tell yourself, "It's temporary. Situational. And not about me."

Novelist James Lee Burke once said, "Every rejection is incremental payment on your dues that in some way will be translated back into your work."

Vive la Revolution!