Not the Dog! Not the Dog!
Yesterday, I went to Transformers, possibly the silliest movie i’ve ever seen (and that’s saying a lot for a comic book graphic novel, vampire, sci-fi, zombie geek fan like me). Since it’s what I call a “comic book movie,” it was impossible to get upset about all the people getting killed. What did concern me was: a. the dog; b. the blue-eyed transformer robot, the beloved car/companion of the lead character. (Another old popcorn favorite of mine, Independence Day, killed billions of humans, but it was the golden retriever that really worried me.)
And just why is that? Because the dog (and that cute robot) made it personal. Those schlocky directors know exactly what they’re doing when they put a dog in the middle of the action. In even the worst movie, you feel at least a small tug of the heartstrings.
As Seth Godin writes in his post, Times a Million, in which he talks the numbers re SUVs:
The lesson of the National Lampoon cover, the best magazine cover in history, should be obvious by now. The way to sell the distant is to make it immediate. The way to sell the drop in a bucket is to make the bucket a lot smaller, not to extrapolate to even bigger numbers. “Buy this car and we’ll kill 10 penguins” is a lot more powerful than “Buy this car and forty years from now, if everyone else buys a car like this on, your grandchildren are going to spit on your grave.”
Note that it has more impact if there is a definitive direct horrific action - not a passive “saving” something. For example: “Turn off your air conditioner and save a polar bear cub.” or “Turn on your air conditioner and kill a polar bear cub.” Which is more affecting, hmmmm?
Read More: Transformers: They’re More Than Meets The Guy Angela Watercutter at Wired and her perspective as a woman (with some glimmer of implications for marketing to women, dudes.)
Lurking Readers! Like what you’re reading? Don’t “get” the whole RSS thing? Simply subscribe to Mary’s Blog by Email (I don’t send you any email or give the address to anybody else. It’s an automated feed to your email box to read at your leisure.)
If you’d like to leave a comment, please do so. It may take a bit to show up since I hate making people type in little letters (I can’t read most of them myself) - so I moderate all comments. Feel free to disagree - debate is healthy. However, I’ve blacklisted the worst obscenities, including the “f” word, as part of the troll wall.
Tags: Transformers, marketing, marketing troubleshooting, marketing communications
View the Blog Roll