There’s an ongoing dispute between marketers and sales which needs to come to an end. You will get...
As a marketer, it is important to stay up to date on the latest trends. With a rapidly changing market, you might feel like you always need to stay on your toes? Are you perhaps finding it hard to just relax?
Need a break? Here are 10 movies marketers can both enjoy and learn from!
- The Joneses
- What women want
- Thank you for smoking
- How to lose a guy in 10 days
- Jobs
- Moneyball
- Crazy people
- Quiz show
- The ides of march
- The circle
1. The Joneses
This movie is a “must see” for all marketers. The movie takes a closer look at a family of four and their seemingly normal life in an affluent suburb in the US.
On the surface, they seem like the perfect family. They have everything you could ever want. In reality, they are not even a real family. They are marketers and actors that are working with what the movie coin as “self-marketing” or “hidden marketing”.
The family members and their lifestyle are meant as inspiration for others who want their lifestyle and then buy the products successful family have.
The movie provides a fascinating insight into how people think and act when faced with this type of marketing. It takes a unique look at peer pressure and how we influence each other, especially those we are close to.
2. What women want
This is a slightly older movie about a male marketer who one day experiences an electroshock and starts hearing everything women are thinking. The movie looks at how he then learns to listen to the women’s voices and adapt to their wishes. Both in his profession and in his private life.
Watch this movie to get insight into how you can market in a way that appeals to those you are trying to reach. It is not enough to just know, you need to understand as well.
3. Thank you for smoking
“Thank you for smoking” is about a lobbyist trying to keep people smoking. Why? Well, it’s their job.
The main character makes smoking look cool, and is, therefore, marketing it without knowing. One of the peak moments in the movie is when he is observed at an elementary school telling children it is not actually that bad to smoke…
You are probably not trying to get your kids to start smoking, but this story is more about how people want to believe what people are telling them. It is a great lesson in how “anything” can be marketed.
4. How to lose a guy in 10 days
You might already have seen this film? Were you thinking as a marketer at the time?
The film is about a man that is planning to get a woman to fall for him to win a competition. The argument is that he can sell anything – even himself. The plot twist is that the woman he tries to convince also has a little project going - to get him to hate her, on purpose.
The movie highlights how you can nudge people’s thoughts and emotions by pushing the right buttons.
Read more: "10 Christmas songs about inbound marketing"
5. Jobs
Did you catch this film about Steve Jobs? It’s all about his highs and lows at Apple and in particular his very successful return to the company.
A movie showing that things don’t sell themselves. You have to show people that they cannot live without your product. As a marketer or salesperson, you can learn a lot from how Steve Jobs identified what people really wanted by thinking as his persona.
6. Moneyball
Based on a true story, this is about a baseball team without much money. Using maths and data, the manager changes their strategy for how they buy players. It is not always the first players that come to mind that are of the highest value. The new strategy brings the team amazing results. Similar to inbound marketing, it is analysis and data-driven action that will bring success.
The movie is a great example of how your marketing can bring a significant return on your investment, even if you don’t have the biggest budget. Analyse the key data and you can beat the competition.
7. Crazy people
A stressed out adman is fed up of telling lies. He ends up in a psychiatric ward where, with the help of the other patients, discover that the best ads actually tell the truth.
Long story short: Always be truthful.
8. Quiz show
Based on a true story, this movie looks at a quiz show scandal that changed the advertising industry as we know it. When the interest increased for quiz shows back in the day, the producers of these shows started “paying” contestants to take part by promising to ask questions the contestants already knew the answers to.
Soon, people started to wonder if the competition could be rigged, and chaos ensued.
The movie teaches you about money and moral. How money affects your actions, as well as how different people actually are. Lastly, maybe not all things are as black and white as they seem.
9. The ides of March
A popular movie is set during a fictional presidential campaign in the US. It is about a campaign manager that allows his extreme pride and confidence get in the way of ethics and morals. In his own words “I’ll do and say anything if I believe in it, but I have to believe in the cause”.
The film shows how easy it is to colour outside the lines if you think you can get away with it. Important lessons can be learned when it comes to how to act in the “heat of the moment”.
10. The Circle
The latest movie on the list is from 2017.
It is about a woman who gets a job with a tech company in Silicon Valley, becoming a part of their experiment to eliminate all private life.
It is not hard to compare the company in this movie to real life equivalents such as Google, Facebook and Apple. Maybe this storyline is not far from the truth in some areas.
It is an interesting movie considering GDPR that comes around in May 2018. What will the future bring?
