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KEEP IT SIMPLE, tell a good story – and don’t take yourself too seriously.
That’s the advice that The Einstein Couple (aka Danish married couple Philip Einstein Lipski and Maria Einstein Biilmann) have for marketing films, but their words could apply to anyone who’s looking to get their message out there.
They were in Dublin this week for the Digital Biscuit event, where they spilled the beans on how they crafted the marketing campaign for Lars Von Trier’s latest film, Nymphomaniac.
They were working with a controversial Danish director who doesn’t do press (and didn’t talk to them after their first meeting) to market a four-hour movie about a sex addict. So it’s fair to say they had some unusual circumstances to deal with.
But no matter what you’re dealing with, they gave this advice at their Digital Biscuit talk on how to get your message across:
They don’t care how hard you worked on the project – they only care about themselves. You have to give them a story about themselves, and one they can relate to.
“We told a story about Nymphomanic that was about the audience,” the couple said.
Just don’t.
It’s not about the most creative strategy, it’s being able to tell a good story, or the real story. What’s the story? How can you sum up the film in one sentence?
When people say “It’s so much more than that [one sentence]“, the Einstein Couple respond: “Nobody cares”.
“Communication really is that simple,” they contend. Make it simple and easy to understand.
The golden rule – don’t market your own film. Find someone else to do it, who isn’t so personally connected.
“Life is not serious,” Lipski said. “Don’t fill it up with more seriousness.”
Even if the film is a very dark and serious one, audience members “always need to have a little bit to puncture the seriousness”, said Biilmann.
Entertain people – even if your project is dark, you can still bring some entertainment into the marketing of it.
How they used all of this to market Nymphomaniac
First, the Einstein Couple met with Von Trier, who has a somewhat formidable reputation. Due to an incident at Cannes Film Festival in 2011, after which he was banned from attending, he no longer does interviews, and didn’t want his words to form part of the campaign.
The couple were dealing with “a Nazi scandal and a dirty title for a four-hour movie”, as they put it. Plus, Von Trier had looked over the marketing campaigns for all of his previous films.
They wanted “to make Nymphomaniac relevant for a wider audience” than just hardcore Von Trier fans.
That meant they had to make it accessible “to everyone – except nuns, monks and children”.
Working off the script alone, they came up with ideas for how to market Nymphomaniac.
They decided:
If you’ve ever had a little sex, this movie might be for you.
The tension between porn, or ‘low culture’, and Von Trier, or ‘high culture’, was what they called their ‘battlefield’.
They took their initial cues from album covers for Kylie and Madonna, and perfume ads, which showed off the ‘sex sells’ aesthetic.
But “aesthetics alone are boring”, they determined.
So they took further inspiration from Davidoff’s D spot’ cigar ads, and merged:
That was the key their successful campaign, from their initial poster:
Pic: Facebook
To this character-driven poster campaign:
Pic: Facebook
“Sexuality is ugly, funny, adorable,” explained the couple. For them, these posters showed all the different sides to sexuality.
“Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it,” they said of their posters. “Once you’re sucked into the curiosity”, you want to investigate everything else.
The campaign was so eye-catching that it even inspired take-offs, which was when they knew they’d hit on the right approach:
Pic: Facebook
If they had to sum it all up in one line, the Einstein Couple’s motto would be this: “There are no good strategies – only good stories”.
What do you think of their work?
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Speaking of which, I see the NOC have paid Hickeys fees and he’s coming home but we still can’t comment!!
Nor can you comment on the GSOC/sexual assault complaint where no charges have been made yet. The charging is the normal point for cutting off comments.
Surprised the coppers didn’t catch these fellas given how many checkpoints they’ve been deploying in Clane lately
No Garda info on descriptions, characteristics, clothing, size or accents. These things would be helpful in any public appeal, or maybe they’re not really that bothered.
They don’t give full descriptions because these men would be seen on every street corner. I’m sure anyone who saw an armed robbery and a distinctive Skoda will be able to give their own descriptions. This way Gardai will know if the witness is legit!
Gerry, being seen in every street corner, means too much follow up work?. Surely these lads were lurking around at some stage before the robbery, maybe they called into other shops in the area looking for easy targets. They wouldn’t have brought the car into some shops and afterwards are certainly not going to be hanging on to the car. First thing I would do is provide a description to other shopkeepers for their protection and also for them to check their videos for these guys scoping thing out. Back in the days of actual policing, descriptions were given out. We are now in the days of just incident recording.
So you think Gardai should tell the public and potential witnesses every detail of this crime. That would be a barristers dream when they get witnesses in the witness box and be able to say that the Gardai led the witnesses into making statements. Gardai hold back certain information for a reason. You should wander down to the local district court some day. There are thousands of people prosecuted on a daily basis by Gardai for Criminal offences so much so that the courts struggle to keep up and it takes months and years to get through the courts. Even take a look at the news. Today alone I saw 4 articles about criminals being locked up for serious and guess what all of these prosecutions were brought about by Garda investigating crime. So either you are misinformed or you just have a chip on your shoulder!
No Gerry, no chip here, I support the Gardai, that doesn’t mean I have to agree with the withholding of suspect descriptions. They’ve always been a useful community protection tool when dangerous people are at large, which is the case here. This is a strange policy development I’ve noticed in recent times and I can’t see the logic behind it.
It may be useful in conserving scarce resources for other functions such as traffic, it may or may not have an effect in the courtroom. There may even be anti bigotry reasons in some cases. These are issue that the Garda management and the prosecution people should sort out themselves without lazily resorting to deteriorating the public policing and protection function. Public protection should always override organisational convenience.
Garage is 2 minute walk Garda station. There Harley ever there.
Clane is an awful shi*hole
Nope.
Now why would you offer that nugget, what don’t you like?
Which petrol station was it? The one on the barberstown side town?
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