One of my kids is reading Max Brooks’ World War Z, which reminded me of its awful movie adaptation. To be clear, the film itself is not terrible. Despite the genre-cliches and the ho-hum third act, it has enough moments to tolerate Brad Pitt doing Brad Pitt things.
The problem for me was that I had read the book before watching the movie. I don’t consider myself a zombie nerd or a huge fan of Brooks’ work, but I did enjoy it enough to have high expectations of the adaptation. The challenge was obvious – how do you take a story with 40+ characters and “interviews”, which essentially depicts a UN report, and translate it for a main-stream Hollywood audience? Many attempts to adapt challenging work either end up as snooze-fests or something completely different, like in WWZ’s case.
So, the book was more of an inspiration than a source for adaptation; which is not uncommon, but there were so many great moments in the book that were discarded. In fact, there was really only one story element that was kept (Israel’s decision to build the great wall).
The zombies in the movie are not even zombies – they’re bodies controlled by parasites – more Last of Us than George Romero. That to me is a bit of a blasphemy, and though I understand the benefits of leveraging a best-selling title, I couldn’t help thinking that they should have just changed the title and made it something completely new, and saved the book for a truer adaptation. Given that the book is episodic, it would have been better served if they had instead turned it into a TV show.
That’s a question we often ponder here at Picturelab when developing ideas for a marketing video. With an office in the Los Angeles/Orange County area, we’re no stranger to Hollywood. But our number one question isn’t about the box office numbers, it’s:
How will the video serve the brand/product/service?
Often, the client simply wants a memorable video and nothing else. They want something different, something that will go viral.
We get the other extreme as well – a client that wants to hit every single bullet point in a 60-second spot.
Like everything, there needs to be balance. A video that is definitely watchable and leaves a mark, but also conveys the right messaging.
Here are a few ways that we ensure videos are best serving the brand.
Target the right audience for your brand
The screenwriters of the WWZ movie knew their audience. They knew that their Hollywood-conditioned ticket buyers demanded a traditional story structure with a bindable hero and the classic thrills complete with a car chase. In that sense, they did the right thing. But in that process, the overall essence and uniqueness of the book were lost.
As producers of marketing videos, we cannot do that. We need to ensure that we correctly convey the brand’s identity in the video and do so in an engaging way.
During our kickoff meetings, we try to find out everything about the target audience. Who are they, what can they tolerate, how do we reach them? We remind the client that if we target everyone, we target no one.
Once we have this information, we design the video to meet that target audience.
Knowing the target audience and adapting accordingly are keys to correctly messaging the brand.
Know your source material
The screenwriters of the WWZ film were more concerned with releasing a box office hit than serving the book. It’s not that they didn’t know the source material; they just didn’t have the artistic liberty to create something risky.
With marketing videos, we definitely do not want to do something risky just to do it, but it’s important to understand the source (the brand and its message) and to convey it accurately.
That means that the brand needs to be clear on its own identity and messaging.
We often work with startups that want a video but they hadn’t even designed their logo yet. In order to effectively adapt your brand to a marketing video, it’s important to first establish and know your source material.
Leave out the car chases and explosions if they don’t serve the brand
Even with marketing videos, there’s the temptation to embellish and add in booms and flairs. We definitely want a wow factor in all our videos, but we don’t want to distract from the message.
We did several videos for Gong from 2017 to 2021. One of the most successful marketing videos we produced was their explainer video. We’ve been told many times how funny that video is, but there’s really only one gag. We wanted to make something fun and engaging, but also ensure that the audience knows exactly what Gong does by the end of it. So we purposely avoided including too many jokes and weird use of the gong, etc, and it was still considered a fun video to watch.
Here’s the Gong explainer video:
We also did a Super Bowl spot for Gong in 2021. The video was shown regionally before half time during the big game. With Super Bowl commercials, we definitely want to grab the audiences’ attention, but again, we wanted to avoid the spot becoming nothing more than just a big gag. We wanted this “adaptation” to serve the brand.
Here’s the Gong Super Bowl Commercial from 2021:
Gong decided to do another Super Bowl spot in 2022 but with a different agency. What they produced was funny, but it didn’t serve the brand. It basically just showed different people in the office hitting the gong in funny ways. Yes, it was enjoyable to watch, just like the Brad Pitt WWZ, but I doubt people understood Gong’s message by the end of it. It wasn’t a very good adaptation.
Our goal here at Picturelab is to create an effective and impactful video adaptation of your brand message. Over the years, we’ve learned how to craft engaging stories that still serve the source materials. The suggestions above are a few factors to consider when producing a video, but we can help if you want your marketing content to be more than just the walking dead.
Contact us at info@picturelab.com.
Picturelab is a full-service creative video production company with offices in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Greater Los Angeles and Orange County Region.