“Paranormal Activity”: A Great Lesson for Marketers Whose Budgets Are Being Dragged Away
The new movie “Paranormal Activity,” is taking a lot of professionals to school. And they aren’t in the movie industry.
The movie teaches us about the power of The Big Idea in a down economy. Big Ideas are honest. Honest to the client’s brand, honest with the budget and, most of all, they’re honest with the idea itself. The filmmakers didn’t try to create a world they couldn’t. They just masterfully created the one they could.
Scary Returns
Made with a pocket-change budget (by Hollywood standards) of just $15,000, it didn’t have room for anything more than a great idea. According to the Wall Street Journal, Paramount Pictures purchased the film for $300,000 and spent $10 million marketing it. It’s been playing in fewer than 2,000 theatres, but, as of October 26, 2009, the film has grossed more than $62 million and has been declared the most profitable movie in Paramount’s modern-day history. Not a bad ROI for marketers keeping score at home.
Money Can Polish a Turd, But It’s Still a Turd
But what if the filmmakers had much larger budget? Sure, the production value would have been better. But the idea would have suffered. It would have lost its home-grown feel which is essential to the overall concept. Eventually, someone looking after their investment would have suggested that they show the monster because “you have to show the monster.” Now you’re following the rules instead of the idea.
A Whine And Cheese Party
As marketers, we use this down economy and slashed budgets as excuses to whine. We can’t build a multi-platform booth with LCD screens on every corner for our next trade show. Waaah! All we we get this year is a black and white ad in the industry pub instead of the four-color that we ran last year. Boo-Hoo! We can’t travel to New York to shoot a commercial. Sniff! We don’t have what we need to execute The Big Idea.
Bullshit.
Anyone can throw money at a problem. Great marketers don’t let limited budgets get in the way. They put on their Big Boy pants and spend what they have more wisely and create work that moves the needle. Unless your budget is zero, you can do SOMETHING. You just need to think differently.
Theater of the Mind
I love the fact that “Paranormal Activity” didn’t have the budget to do something stupid. Because as the film progressed, the monster in my head became much more vivid. And my monster was much scarier than any monster they could have created.
Popularity: 13% [?]
I’ve been teetering back and forth about seeing this film, primarily because horror isn’t my favorite genre. Still, I have heard positive things about being able to raise the hair on one’s neck without a big budget.
I suppose this just means I’ll need to check it out.
I had seen the movie the night it was released in my local area. I had not seen previews or reviews before stepping into the theater itself other than it was a amateur made film on a low budget.
This added to my low expectations.. however, when the movie was playing I found it far more frightening to see a normal camcorder video taping the scenes.
Most older camcorders have a static film grain to them and resonate a certain frequency… by making this film seem as realistic as possible was an excellent goal and standard to set. We see far too many generated graphics and effects to believe what’s real in a movie and what isn’t. There was a particularly inspiring scene with a wee-gee board. The only effects made were a sound clip, wind, and the eyeglass piece for the board moving around. Very inexpensive and added what I want to call the climax of the movie. How cool is that?
We need shift the trend more towards reality, here and now and less towards robots and the future.
Think: when will actors really become obsolete? If in these times real actors are becoming CGI effects, just like backgrounds and blood, then where will we be when several of my friends, who are in theatre studies, want to make it big?
CGI Ruining Movies
Uh, wow.
I saw this movie last night. It’s clearly targeted at 12 to 15 year old girls, primarily white, primarily suburban, primarily upper middle class, primarily bubbleheaded.
It may have some secondary appeal to a small percentage of other audiences, here and there, based on how naive those people are and/or how pre-disposed they are to going along with suspension of disbelief when watching anything at all. You know, people who watch mobile phone movies of dogs humping cats and the like.
I think it’s great for those rich little girls. I find it amusing that anyone else were to find any entertainment value in it. It’s definitely not for anyone with real world experience beyond junior high school.
Get real. Try showing that film to some urban kids. Or a group of 18 year olds. 90% of them wouldn’t sit through the whole thing unless forced.
Having said that, I should mention the lead actress did a near flawless job in her role as the kind of girlfriend which upper-middleclass 13 year old girls imagine they’d like to be. The expensive furniture in the gigantic house owned by the rich semi-attractive boyfriend was a nice fantasy considering neither of the protagonists had jobs (nor would be capable of holding a job). She was basically perfect in her execution: a sort of Hannah Montana at age 24 except without actually growing up.
And I applaud the movie studio for pumping up the ten million dollar hype machine and netting a six fold return. It’s truly amazing what you can sell. Pet rocks, anyone?