Marketing Solutions for Highly Skilled Professionals

Special effects have come a long way since my childhood in the 80s when, as exciting as they were, big budget blockbuster movies often came across as more comical than believable. I admit to having a little bit of bias against big budget productions packed with fiery explosions and monsters. I have never been able to sit through a Godzilla movie and I watch Marvel with my kids but end up making everyone snacks or cleaning the bathroom about halfway through. 

When I think of special effects, I’ve realized I only think about the scenes that came across as unbelievable, which means that when special effects are used to tell the story better, rather than to dazzle and impress, the actors, crew, and director are doing extraordinary work. 

One movie that uses a lot of special effects but doesn’t come across as jarringly explosive or creepy is Forest Gump. A few scenes are obvious – the footage of Gump interacting with dead presidents, for instance, but many of the trickiest special effect scenes feel so natural, that you stay fully engrossed in the story and don’t realize that what you’re witnessing something impossible for the actors to create or experience in real time. 

When Gump is in Vietnam, there’s a scene where soldiers in the same trench as him are hit by explosives and in the ensuing rescue, Gump is running down a path carrying one of his comrades while war planes drop napalm in his wake. The visuals for both scenes are much more complex than I realized. I enjoyed watching this video that explains how some of the most complex scenes were put together.

So what does any of this have to do with marketing? Well, everything.

One of the toughest things about creating your own marketing is that your story is boring to you and these new tools seem really, really cool. It’s extremely easy to get sidetracked by a cool look and end up creating something that just doesn’t do what you’re trying to accomplish.

Recently someone who is friends with a lot of my friends got laid off when their company went under. Being an accomplished marketer with lots of graphic design experience, this professional put together a very artistic PDF with a very short resume. The final product was eye catching, artistic, and easy to share so it’s flying through my feed and being shared and re-shared along with this person’s very moving story about why they need to quickly find employment.

There’s one problem – the graphic they made has a photo of them but is missing all the things that they need to get a serious job offer. There’s no name, contact information, or even a location where the job needs to be.

I have no doubt, based on the graphics, that this person is good at marketing. What has not been established is whether they can understand and promote the intended message.

For excellent story telling, the focus always needs to be the story. Everything else must serve that narrative arc and the investment we’re trying to get the audience to make.