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1. Movies Every Marketer Should Watch
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 families 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.
What women want
This is a slightly older movie about a male marketer who one day experiences 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.
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.
How to lose a guy in 10 days
You might already have seen this film? Were you thinking like 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.
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.
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 the 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. Analyze the key data and you can beat the competition.
Crazy people
A stressed-out adman is fed up with telling lies. He ends up in a psychiatric ward where, with the help of the other patients, discovers that the best ads actually tell the truth. Long story short: Always be truthful.
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 morals. 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.
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 to 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 color 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”.
The Circle
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?
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The Social Network
The Social Network tells the gripping origin story of a website that moved tectonic plates in the digital marketing world -- Facebook. As a marketer, it’s fascinating to get an inside look at what inspired the creation of Facebook, the founders’ thought processes when they built it, the steps they took to develop it, and all the ups and downs Facebook experienced as it evolved into the social media giant it is today. From its humble yet promising beginnings to its rapid growth, The Social Network shows you that Facebook’s rise to tech stardom wasn’t void of any obstacles.
Up in the Air
Nowadays, it seems like everybody strives for a more balanced life. But not Ryan Bingham, George Clooney’s character in Up in the Air. Ryan works for an HR consultancy firm that helps companies conduct layoffs. He flies almost every day to fire his client’s employees, so he doesn’t have a permanent address or a family. And he absolutely loves it. Ryan believes that relationships with people and things aren’t worth it -- they’re too taxing. He even gives motivational speeches to get people to follow his life mantra.
Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs, the man behind Apple, was arguably the most visionary product designer and marketer of our generation. In his biographical film, Steve Jobs’ notorious personality is always on full display. The movie delves into the complex reasoning for Jobs’ poorly made psyche, which provokes sympathy for Jobs despite his ruthless treatment of his diligent employees, meticulous micromanagement, and bitter coldness towards his loved ones. And, more importantly, you learn how much he impacted Apple, technology, and the world as we know it today.
The Founder
The Founder tells the story of Ray Kroc, a 52-year old milkshake machine salesman who discovers McDonald’s, a small yet remarkably efficient burger joint, and transforms it into the largest fast-food empire in the world. But even though Kroc’s grit and determination to catapult McDonald’s into the chain restaurant hall-of-fame is admirable, his broken moral compass and conniving methods are despicable. Throughout the movie, you learn the McDonald’s empire is built upon a heap of controversial business moves. It makes you question where you yourself should draw the line between doing whatever you can to fulfill your dreams, and being morally good.
The Pursuit of Happyness
Chris Gardner has one of the most inspirational life stories out there. While watching his biographical film, you experience the euphoric highs and heartbreaking lows of his life as a homeless, unpaid intern raising a 5-year old son on his own. But his ambition, perseverance, and love for his son ultimately drive him towards success, giving this movie a very happy ending.
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2. TV Shows Every Marketer Should Watch
Mad Men
Set in New York in the 1960s this is the story of Don Draper, an advertising Creative Director at Sterling Cooper one of New York’s most prominent ad agencies. The on-going storylines are mainly centered around the implementation of engaging advertising campaigns but also delves deeply into Mr. Drapers’ relationships with his friends, work colleagues, and family.
Silicon Valley
A group of tech-nerdy friends creates a piece of technology that is the envy of all of the other competitors in their space, including a Google-like fictional counterpart named Houli. They soon learn all about the cutthroat world of being first to market with the desired product in the world’s foremost tech hub, Silicon Valley.
How to Make it In America
From the makers of Entourage, How to Make it in America was originally pitched as Entourage New York and stylistically this comparison is certainly an accurate one. However, from a story perspective, it is very different. How to Make it in America is centered around the lives of Ben Epstein (Bryan Greenberg) and his friend Cam Calderon (Victor Rasuk) as they struggle to launch a fashion label in New York City’s bustling street fashion scene.
The Gruen Transfer
Panel show from the Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC) featuring comedian Will Anderson and a panel of guests from Australian Advertising Agencies discussing the concepts and tactics behind current television commercials.
Advertising Genius Lee Tae-Baek
South Korean drama following the life of Lee Tae-Baek as he climbs the ladder of the competitive advertising world. The show is said to be based on the life of advertising designer and social activist Jeseok Yi (a.k.a. Jetski), author of the book Ad Genius Lee Je-Seok. I personally haven’t come across Jetski myself, but anyone who pens an autobiography with the word genius in the title probably deserves their own TV show.
The Crazy Ones
This 2014 sitcom only lasted a single season and was the final role of comedian Robin Williams before his tragic death. Created by David E Kelley of Boston Legal, Alley McBeal, and The Practice fame (amongst many others), the show is centered around the life of an advertising executive, Simon Roberts, played by Robin Williams. The show is said to be loosely based on the life of John R Montgomery who was an Advertising Executive at mega-agency Leo Burnett in Chicago.
Happyish
A bored advertising executive played by Steve Coogan questions his entire existence after a lifetime spent in adland is turned on its head by a new generation of Gen Y ad execs.
Halt and Catch Fire
Not strictly speaking anything to do with marketing or advertising, but makes it onto this list for two reasons. 1. It’s aired on AMC (the network behind MadMen) and should immediately appeal to anyone who loved that series. And 2. it follows the personal computer revolution from the early 1980s into the early years of the internet, a period that undoubtedly led to today’s modern marketing and digital advertising world.
Betas
A group of young entrepreneurs endeavors to create and launch an online dating app in the competitive world of the Silicon Valley startup. Sadly, this television series, produced by Amazon Studios was canceled after the first series, so be warned if you start watching this show there is every chance you will get hooked, only to be left disappointed. But that said the series is well worth watching, it is extremely similar to Silicon Valley although in many ways it is arguably superior to the HBO dramedy.
House of Lies
Don Cheadle and Kristen Bell lead a group of shallow, manipulative management consultants with a flimsy ethical compass as they generally cheat their clients. This is another show that technology isn’t set in the world of marketing and advertising, but should appeal to anyone who has enjoyed any of the other shows on this list. It could just as easily be set in a shady marketing consultancy.
Girl Boss
Girlboss is a dramatized account of the life of entrepreneur Sophia Amoruso who grew a fashion empire (albeit one which eventually went bankrupt) by selling vintage clothes on eBay. The show follows Amoruso from her humble beginnings raiding the closets of deceased estates to her rise to become the “fastest-growing retailer” in 2012.
The Pitch
The pitch is an unscripted, reality tv series from the network that brought us MadMen, AMC. The show is a candid behind the scenes look at the pitch process of major advertising agencies. Each week two ad agencies are pitted against each other, with only 1 week to prepare to pitch for big accounts. So exactly like real life in other words.
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3. YouTube Channels Every Marketer Should Follow
The authors provide valuable insights into the need to sharpen your message by identifying the best medium that will better impact your messaging. They also say that by focusing on the prospect you are selling to, and not the product you are selling you will fare better while prospecting.
This is one of the best books on marketing incorporating insights gained from over twenty years of working, in the field, with real-life small businesses. The book offers a top-down format to help you first find your vision and then zoom in on what you need to realize it. The author advises you to embrace the Marketing Hourglass. This entails expanding the marketing funnel to turn new customers into advocates and referral partners.
This book will transform the way you communicate by highlighting success stories with a fast-paced tour, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny anecdotes. It shows how we make people care about our ideas by applying the human scale principle. Using insightful stories, from urban legends, such as the ‘Kidney Heist’; the story of Southwest Airlines as the ‘the low price airline’; to inspirational, personal stories such as that of Floyd Lee, a passionate mess hall manager. Each chapter includes a section entitled “Clinic”, in which the principles of the chapter are applied to a specific case study or idea to demonstrate the principle’s application.
This is considered one of the best digital marketing books and advises us to focus first on serving the needs of an audience, trusting that the selling part would come later if we keep them engaged enough. The premise Pulizzi proposes is simple. The internet doesn’t need content what it needs is great content.
Horn advises that we look to Purposeful, Original, and Pithy (POP) to create one-of-a-kind ideas, products, and messages that pop through the noise, off the shelf, and into consumers’ imaginations. The book is filled with valuable gems in chapter after chapter of unique ways to develop selling titles or product names. Horn tells us that there is so much more than just having a good product for it to sell.
The author argues the best-performing companies can do everything right and still lose their market leadership—or worse, disappear altogether. By focusing on disruptive technology, Christensen shows us why most companies miss out on new waves of innovation. Whether in electronics or retailing, a successful company with established products will get pushed aside unless managers know when to abandon traditional business practices. Using the lessons of successes and failures from leading companies, this book presents a set of rules for capitalizing on the phenomenon of disruptive innovation.