I experienced this firsthand this week as I was helping an aspiring author map out her strategy. She had a great product, and a great message, but she didn’t have any reviews yet of her work. She also didn’t have any credentials after her name that screamed “authority on subject.” She knew those pesky back-of-jacket reviews would be a key spark to the word-of-mouth flame. We know the importance of word-of-mouth recommendations. One guy tells another guy who tells another guy, and the train pulls out of the station, right? But where to begin?
As we started brainstorming, I realized this process isn’t one that comes naturally to some creatives - the process of digging down to find those people who can help kick-start your buzz. It’s all about figuring out who to target, and what to say once you get there. If you’re smart, you’ll never have to hard sell anything, because the folks you’re reaching out to have a vested, natural interest in your output. In other words, it should be a match made in heaven. Reciprocal love.
So here’s a mini-brainstorming session using a documentary film as our creative subject. Our fictional subject is a documentary film on a group of Buddhist monks working in urban high schools, teaching the kids how meditation and mindfulness practices can cut down the violence in their lives, improve their grades and lead them to a more peaceful, successful future.
You are the director/filmmaker and you don’t have any big name people in the film. We realize you have no press reviews yet, and you need 3-5 endorsing blurbs to add to your press materials, websites, and online. You don’t have an agent or a distributor, so you’re doing the legwork yourself, or with the crack team of friends you’ve assembled.
I’ll do this as if it was questions from me; answers from director; group-generated ideas from a small circle of friends we’ve invited to the brainstorm. (It can really pay dividends to have 3-4 people in the conversation - you’d be amazed at the dynamics/input you get from a variety of minds.) So here’s how I’d help you begin a target list of folks to reach out to….you’ll get the idea. I’ll often make an idea web while we’re talking (unless we’re doing this together on a treadmill) to help us see/graph connections between people and who/how we can reach out to them. It starts with a mishmash, but you’ll see how it evolves into some pretty cool connections.
Hope this kickstarts your creative buzz-seeking marketing mind!
Q: OK, so if we could get ANYONE to endorse this project, who would it be? Think really big here…
A: Well, we’d never get him, but I’d say Deepak Chopra? Thich Nat Hahn or Eckhart Tolle?
Q: OK, who else moves in this circle - who are the leading writers on integrating Buddhist practices into your life?
A: Let’s see…(names a few) Tara Brach, Jack Kornfield, Sonia Choquette…
Group: (guy with laptop) Hey, who was that guy who wrote that book about “happiness” that course at Harvard? Yeah, Tal Ben-Shahar! He wrote Happier - that taught college kids about mindfulness. Maybe HIS book has other contacts on it..(we check that, and that yields: Ellen J. Langer, author and Martin E.P. Seligman, psychologist/author). I mean, these guys are into mindfulness AND education.
Group: We should ask our friends who take yoga - maybe the yoga studio owners have ideas - what do they read and where do they go for information? Those would be great outlets to target with the film - and maybe the folks who run those blogs would write a review blurb?
Q: Great thinking. Let’s figure out who’ll reach out there…
Q: OK, let’s look at who we actually envision watching this film. Is it your high school English teacher? Your sister who’s into yoga? You must have some idea of who is really going to be into this subject. Describe them to me.
A: Yeah, my teacher would probably be into the film. My sister is perfect for the film too. Their are two audiences, I guess. The “mom” type and the educator who’s looking for new ways of looking at teaching.
Q: So what about the sister - what’s she doing?
A: Well she has 3 kids. She doesn’t live in the city, but she’s on the outskirts and gets involved in alot of urban projects. She really cares about education. And she’s big on the mind-body stuff. She’s 48 and has 3 kids - 2 in high school, one in college. She read all the guys like Deepak and I think she reads the books by the Dalai Lama. Ha- maybe we can get the Dalai Lama.
Group: Ask your sister where she goes online - where she visits, which blogs and sites. That’ll give us a big window into who else likes this kind of stuff. And we can look at where those sites link to.
Q: Right, that’s exactly it. You find your audience, and that leads you to similar circles of influence. So let’s assume we won’t get the Dalai Lama, but let’s think about it. There are zillions of folks working in this space. You might not know their names off the top of your head, but they can be really big influencers in their circles. Let’s think about who runs the programs and conferences that attract people who follow/like the Dalai Lama and Deepak?
A: Well, there’s Kripalu in New England. And Unity Church is big. And the Institute of Noetic Science in Northern California, they all run a bunch of programs on mind-body connections, I know someone who just got back from a retreat at IONS.
Group: We should get on their websites and check out who is talking at all their workshops - there are tons of big names and up and comers who teach there. Maybe some of them would review?
Group: Yeah, and let’s get the name of the friend who went to the workshop - maybe THEY met other folks at the retreat who are influencers. It’s all about making the network expand…maybe they met the presenters, and could reach out to them for us…
Q: Here’s an offshoot idea. Do those organizations run seminars FOR educators? Let’s check. All those groups run conferences not just for “people” but for the people teaching others. Like training workshops. Maybe they do workshops for teachers?
A: That reminds me of Omega Institute…they’re a really big influencer in mind-body circles and they run conferences all over the world.
Group: Hey - my brother just sent his daughter to an Omega teen camp…I bet the guy who RUNS that camp would be a potential reviewer - I mean their entire purpose is to help kids gain self-confidence through mindfulness….he may not BE a big name, but he must know the OTHER big names…let’s see how we can reach out to him.
Q: Yeah, and maybe Omega is an outfit that would screen the film at their teen camps, get what I mean?
Q: OK, so who else does this kind of work - what about educators in more mainstream but cutting-edge circles- who are the big names trying to re-invent how we educate our kids?
A: Well, they’re doing some cool stuff in California. I heard about some pilot programs in Oakland and the Bay area. (we look that up)…
Group: What about Sir Ken Robinson - he just wrote that book The Element calling for education reform, maybe he’d be interested in this program - it’s new and novel, like he’s advocating…I just read that book, and he references some cutting edge educational programs across the US - let’s look at that and see how we could reach out to the people running THOSE programs - that’d be cool.
Group: Yeah - and maybe any or all of these folks would not only take a look at a screener and give us some positive comments to use, but maybe they’d all bet interested in purchasing bulk copies to USE in their programs!
Group: Here’s a totally different idea. What about religious leaders? I’m friends with a guy who heads up a delegation of all the religious leaders in our state. He said they run programs all the time for the religious leaders to help train them in teaching new ways of thinking in their parishes. Like they run programs helping Iraq vets re-enter homelife. Maybe they run teen violence prevention training and our film would be a cool thing to screen.
Q: Great thinking - and maybe the top leaders would write a review for us? That would have alot of pull in a specific circle of potential viewers…
Q: OK, this is fantastic. Let’s split up who’s researching who and what and regroup in a few days. Meanwhile, let’s set up some Google Alerts using the top names and subjects we’ve identified - that’ll definitely lead us to some new ideas and sources for potential reviewers….
So you see how it goes and grows. By the end of an hour we have generated a huge list of potential and real possibilities for reviews, endorsements, and distribution outlets. We’ve gone from really no concrete names to reach out to, to a long list of folks. Some will get the axe, but others will lead us down more concrete paths. We’ve even started researching our media outreach plan and potential speaking opportunities for the directing/producing team.
And we are feeling really powerful about not only the film, but its potential impact with alot of folks out there who could become our “true” fans - the ones who tell their friends about the film, and get the buzz going.
One Comment
Very cool, Deb!
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