Giant heads in the clouds

Marketing is a craft, not an art. One proof is that you don’t always have to be creative or original. In fact, that can even be detrimental.

Why? Because marketing is all about getting results, and marketing professionals have been testing different methods for getting results for generations. Can you do better than they do based on the idea you had in the shower this morning? Well, maybe, but the odds are against it.

If you’re a movie studio that has just spent tens of millions of dollars on a movie, you really want results—and posters are one of your most important ways of doing that. So it’s not surprising that studios have fallen back on a variety of tried and true formats. (This one has been dubbed “Tiny People on the Beach, Giant Heads in the Clouds.")

What can we learn from this? We could conclude that the more money is involved in a project, the more formulaic it is likely to be. But on the positive side, we might note that these formulaic movie posters actually do a good job of conveying what the movie will be like. And at least for me, seeing these dozens of posters grouped by category makes me realize that I have a high tolerance for formula. On some level I’m aware that I’ve seen this format dozens of times before, yet I still find myself wanting to see some of these movies.