by Masingita Mazibuko. Fifty Shades of Grey — The Movie, based on British author EL James’ world-conquering trilogy, comes to the silver screen early next year. Given the series’ best-seller status, on the surface, the movie’s success at the box office is surely a given. Or is it?
For many book readers who are also movie goers, and many movie goers who are not book readers, watching such sexually explicit scenes as described in the book could prove an uncomfortable experience in a movie theatre. After all, it’s one thing to get all hot and bothered in the privacy of your own home; doing so when there’s an 18-year-old hottie sitting to your right and your faded hubby is in the seat to your left is another.
Is this perhaps why the promoters appear to adopting Fifty Shades of Marketing?
First step
Naturally, in our digital world, one of the first steps taken by the marketing team was to post the official movie trailer. Official trailer #1 (aha — I wonder how many more we’ll see?) was uploaded almost two months ago on YouTube. It’s been shared many, many times and is now one of the most-watched trailers for 2014, with over 30 million views.
• Evoking talkability
This initial activity brings to mind the marketing genius witnessed in the mobile telephony space.
Here, Samsung and Apple create so much fanfare and appetite for new devices that the product and its features play second fiddle to the hype and the experience of the launch.
Steve Jobs was, of course, renowned for his showmanship and love for big gestures. He used similar antics to capture his audiences, enthralling all and resulting in an increased fan-base desperately seeking to be first to get the latest digital toy.
• Creating experiences
In the battle to capture attention, our consumers are bombarded by many, many messages and promises of enthralling experiences. Once someone has experienced what you have created, he or she must be sufficiently stimulated to share.
The starting point is, of course, clear insight to the target market, and using this as the thread in every conversation and engagement to ensure consistency and clarity. Importantly, you cannot try to please everyone; that only results in vanilla.
Instead, create and then satisfy a desire so bright that those who buy in ultimately become brand evangelists and mouthpieces. Virility (if you’ll pardon the many puns in this paragraph) is vital in the increasingly digital world.
• Meticulous in execution
An undeniable deliberate approach in every aspect of the marketing mix is critical. Often an idea emerges and execution is rushed. Yet the importance of execution should not be underestimated in creating the desired end result.
Being a devil for the detail in all aspects of execution is ever-more important in an increasingly complex and changing society. Ultimately, detail is what will make or break the experience you are seeking create.
Simplicity is a mean feat. We often underestimate the discipline and time required in deployment. Oddly, it is at the coalface that we either win or lose.
Meticulously planned hype
I’m certain the marketing geniuses tasked with bringing ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ to the world’s attention know this all too well. Regardless of whether the movie is a good one or not, I’m certain the hype will be meticulously planned to galvanise many to purchase that single movie ticket, and to convince those who may have misgivings to throw caution to the wind and join them.
I can’t wait to see what comes next. Who knows, maybe men or women-only screenings?
- EL James’s controversial erotic fiction trilogy, Fifty Shades (Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed), has entered the all-time top-selling books list with a total worldwide sale of over 100 million copies. At the peak of its popularity, one book was being sold every second somewhere in the world. The fastest-selling book series in the history of publisher Random House, Fifty Shades, often dubbed ‘mummy porn’, sold 27 million copies in the UK and Commonwealth countries, over 45 million copies in the US (International Business Times, 27 February 2014).
Masingita Mazibuko is a marketing director at Unilever. The views expressed within this monthly “Africa Style” column are, however, entirely her own.
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