As both an aspiring screenwriter and an advertising professional, I like to keep an eye on how movies are marketed. I love how you can always tell when they’re trying to convince you to go see a crappy movie. Often, they don’t even show footage of the movie, presumably because the movie is either A. So obvious that if you saw the preview, you wouldn’t need to see the movie, or B. So bad that you can tell from the clips that it ain’t worth plunking down the $10 on a ticket and $97 on a barrel of popcorn. They end up showing interviews with drunk people saying, “I had so much fun, I’ve seen it twice.”
Political candidates take a different tack. If the candidate isn’t worth electing, instead of showing how great the city/state/country/auditor’s office would be if he were elected, his people create commercials that show how bad the other guy is. As I mentioned in a previous post, I often don’t know who to vote for because both guys have made a great case against the other guy (though neither has made a good case *for* himself).
You know, on second thought, maybe it’s Hollywood that could learn a thing or two from political candidates. Here’s how it might go*:
ANNOUNCER: If you see only one movie this fall, make it ‘Daddy Day Camp.’ It’s nowhere near as bad as ‘Super Babies: Baby Geniuses 2.’
RANDOM DUDE: I just saw “Baby Geniuses 2” and I nearly threw up in my popcorn.
RANDOM WOMAN: I tried to see “Baby Geniuses 2” with my kids, but I wasn’t in there five minutes before the movie offended me. This is not the kind of movie I want raising my kids.
ANNOUNCER: More than 11,000 users on IMDB have said that ‘Super Babies: Baby Geniuses 2’ is the worst movie of all time. So why would you even think to spend your time and hard earned money watching it? Go see ‘Daddy Day Camp.’ There’s less of a chance that you’ll throw up in your popcorn.
*I pick on “Super Babies: Baby Geniuses 2” and “Daddy Day Camp” only because they’re #1 and #94 on IMDB’s worst movies list. I have not seen either one, nor do I ever want to.
I think a better scenario would be for political candidates to show a trailer for how the city/state/country/auditor’s office will be if he or she gets elected. I want none of this “Candidate A has a plan for eliminating poverty and keeping illegals out of our fair city, but Candidate C once had lunch served by an illegal alien” crap. I want to see what our fair city will look like if Candidate A gets elected:
ANNOUNCER: In a world where Candidate A was elected as City Sanitation Director, one man made it his life’s work to clean up the streets.
LITTERBUG: No, please stop, Candidate A. I’ll recycle. I’ll recycle!
CANDIDATE A: You’ve just been sanitized.
See, better. And why stop with new candidates? For incumbents, we can treat it like a sequel… “Barack Obama II: Barack by Popular Demand.”
I kid, but I really do think that political candidates could learn something from the way Hollywood markets its best and its worst. Because even if the vision for the future ends up being wrong, at least they’ve given me hope and a compelling reason to vote one way or the other.
My name is Greg Feist and I approved the hell out of this message.