Last week I wrote an article about what porn and action movies get wrong, and I left it up to you to tell me what the moral of the story was. (Go read that article first, if you haven’t already.)
The answers were amazing. Here are some of my favourites:
Both the porn and the action movie lay it all on the line without asking an investment from us. Kinda like a $2 whore we haven’t paid enough to care, so she doesn’t even bother to fake pleasure. It is a one-sided relationship. – Eddie Louise
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The plastic porn or anonymous kung-fu guru don’t seem human… so we don’t form a human connection to them. To put it simply: we don’t care about them.
Honestly, do you give a shit if the TV repair man had a satisfying sexual experience? I sure as hell don’t. –
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For me, though, the biggest crime is that the filmmaker had my attention, and yet failed to do anything with it. Seth Godin calls it delight. There was nothing to delight, stimulate, excite, compel, or even amaze. ho-hum. Another failed transaction.
By the way, you made the point a lot better than Godin. – , who I will now swear my sword and service to for the rest of time for that Seth Godin comparison
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I’m gonna go with the fact that they didn’t engage the brain and fascinate. They didn’t tease with questions that you were begging to know the answer for, showing you a little peek behind the curtain, a little bit of a promise of more to come that will BLOW YOUR FREAKING MIND.
Which, it seems, is exactly what you’ve done with this post. Created a sense of mystery. –
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The process is as important as the result. The mistake is that neither provide the experience their viewer is craving. Neither movIe is in touch with what their viewer really wants because they are not anticipating their changing needs. They are offering what others before them have done without thinking about what the new viewer wants to experience. – Krista Smith
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Both of them start with a bang – but there’s no leadup. Nothing to make you care about the characters and what happens to them. No relationality. So it’s sound and fury, signifying nothing.
In other words, they go straight to the features, but the features aren’t benefits because the audience isn’t identifying and engaging emotionally.
I discovered an application of this principle when I changed my main “hire me” page. A few months ago I rewrote it all clever and with a big form where people could book time with me online.
Nobody booked me. Just recently, I lost the form and described, instead, why someone would want to work with a health coach, a personal development coach, a hypnotherapist, and specifically me.
Now I’m getting inquiries again. - Hypno Mike
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Both the porno & the action flick are trying to pander to the most people possible, so they don’t ACTUALLY appeal to most people and just end up boring a lot of people. (They bore me, anyways…) – Michelle
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Ah, see…here’s the thing. Both the porn and the action flick give us what we *think* we want…but utterly fail at giving us what we actually need. So, when its over, instead of feeling satisfied, we feel kinda dirty. We ask ourselves “what’s wrong we me that I wanted *that*?”
It’s kinda like getting all tingly with excitement during a call, then feeling empty and even more lost as soon as you hang up the phone. A person can only take so much pink smoke blown up their.. ehm…yeah. At some point it becomes impossible to suspend reality any further and the whole illusion dissolves like a big, disappointing mirage. – Laura White-Ritchie
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Because they both gave you exactly what you expected – nothing more, nothing less, nothing unique, nothing special, no surprises. –
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We can’t invest in a story that is all show and no humanity. – Beth
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If they used some of the creativity and originality they did when hyping up the product and actually made the product GOOD, then there wouldn’t be a problem. – Gayle
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You think you’re giving people something new, something edgy, but really, it’s a tired old retread of an idea that you’ve tried to spruce up with your bedazzler. Once you’re past the sparkle, you realise that you already own 17 useless versions of it in a multitude of colours and you wonder why you wasted your money on it. All of which just fuels the inner cynic and makes it more difficult to reach the person the next time. – Gareth, whose entire comment is worth reading
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It is all about “why”. The cause and relation that drives us with passion. That’s why a good erotic scene in a movie can kick you more than top-class porn. It’s not only attention, it’s involvement. –
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In the first movie, the sex is perfect, the tool belt is perfect — even the kitchen trim is perfect. Same with the movie starring the leather-clad, motorcycle straddling ninja. It’s all just a bit too staged, theatrical and perfect to be real.
Spun sugar. – Glad Doggett
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Neither of them had Hugh Jackman with his t-shirt off. – , and pretty much every other dude-fancyin’ being on earth
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Not enough cowbell. – Kate, who made me giggle
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I don’t care how much some people claim they love action — we just can’t get involved in pure action, can’t relate, can’t picture ourselves as participants.
This applies to just about everything. To take the field I know well — graphic design — it so often becomes all about that glossy shiny look, or the over-abundance of effects and filters; or even the total opposite, the super-clean and ordered look. –
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Whether sex without intimacy, violence without believable moral outrage (see Ip Man for a great martial arts movie), or sweet tasting food without any nourishing nutrition, what we truly long for cannot be satisfied with a shallow substitute. –
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They broke the fourth wall, not deliberately, but by allowing the details to rule over the passion and the tales they were trying to tell. – Birdy
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No trust. Neither of the films does anything to win my trust. If I don’t trust, then I don’t relax, don’t engage, don’t allow myself to suspend my disbelief. Without trust, my brain is going in full-on critique mode because it’s protecting me from leaning into something that doesn’t feel solid and reliable. To keep with the porn metaphor, the viewer has to be seduced. If some stranger proposed to you on bended knee while you were shopping for tea towels you’d think they were out of their mind. Everything in its time, and trust is the first of these.
That’s why you feel icky when the porn “works” — it doesn’t feel safe, doesn’t feel like you did the right thing. You gave yourself over (partly) to something that was unreliable so you betrayed yourself. –
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Even though story is often proclaimed to be King, my favorite porn can have the worst story of all time, as long as the characters are saying certain things. I’ve got my own story all ready that I’m in! they just have to say the word(s.) (So I guess in that way, I am in the story, and then I am left very satisfied, the way a mere observer, isn’t.) – Karen Paritee
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It’s obvious that in the porn & typical action flick that the people involved (actors and/or characters) aren’t enjoying themselves really at all – it’s all fake, if there is any enjoyment. And so there’s less connection with what they’re doing at all. –
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If our products have different mediums included, we should make sure that they are really working well together in order to get the product we and our potential market wants. – Angie Meeks
So who won?
Kudos to Bill Todd, first-time commenter, for being the first to identify what I thought the correct answer was! In his words:
Neither engaged you at an emotional level, nor allowed you to picture yourself as a participant. You are stuck as a spectator, because the premise is so un-lifelike. Or life giving.
(He also gets extra points for appreciating my Sammo Hung reference.)
Congrats, Bill! Send me an email and we’ll organise your free hour-long session!
What about the second prize?
There were SO MANY great answers that I decided I couldn’t possibly choose. So what I’m going to do instead is this:
All of next Tuesday morning, from 8am Brisbane time until 10am, I’m throwing open my schedule. I’ll be on a teleconference line where you can join, chat with the other amazing commenters, and ask me anything – I do know quite a lot about marketing if you want to talk about that.
The number to access the call is 1-570-870-0201. (Non-Americans, we’ll have to dial in using Skype or long-distance.)
The access number is 471805#
See you there!
What’s the moral of this story?
My readers are freakin’ AMAZING.
And it doesn’t matter how much shazam you pour on your marketing if you don’t make me care.
But mostly, my readers are freakin’ AMAZING.
photo credit:
