I ♥️ talking about horror films and celebrating them any chance I get. Barbarian needs to be celebrated in film AND marketing, BUT —

I get it, it’s not everyone’s cup o’ genre. (They’re wrong… but, I get it.)

Horror can be (and has been) regarded as a much maligned genre, verging on ‘trash cinema.’

But, every now and then, it breaks through the Academy Award barriers, sweeping the ceremonies with nominations and wins — from the 70s with The Exorcist to more recently with Sinners — to challenge how it’s regarded in the mainstream, against other award-friendlier genres.

At the same time, I don’t care if a horror film gets an award or not. If they’re great, everyone can see its greatness and will be talking about it long after its release.

FYI: I will always be a big classic John Carpenter and Dario Argento fan. Plus, modern filmmakers like Mike Flanagan and his ‘Flanaverse’ of limited series and Stephen King adaptations show how horror has evolved with intricate stories and deeper characterisation.

Barbarian is one of these great modern horrors, written and directed by Zach Cregger.

(I can’t help it. This post will be spoilerific if you haven’t seen it, but it has been out for a while, so… that’s more on you than me.)

If you actually haven’t seen it yet, not only are you missing out on seeing Bill Skarsgård make a bed in a way I’ve only seen one other person do in real life (it’s a charming treat), ‘Barbarian’ does something brilliant with its characters’ perspectives…

There are three main ones:

– Protagonist Tess (Georgina Campbell), who books an Airbnb and ends up in a house, double-booked with a dark secret hiding in an underground labyrinth.

– Protagonist-Antagonist AJ (Justin Long), the owner of the property, blissfully unaware of what he’s bought into, while trying to sell it now he is going bankrupt and facing a sexual assault case.

– Antagonist Frank (Richard Brake), the original owner and current subterranean dweller, whose past actions have created the monster that causes havoc for Tess, AJ, et al.

But what makes Barbarian so effective and inspirational for marketing is how it tells these characters’ stories…

The characters’ stories aren’t told in a traditional, linear fashion. Instead, they smash into each other, also known as ‘smash cuts,’ jumping between perspectives, dropping you into different timelines from different POVs:

– Tess’s story is present day, taking place first, then smash cuts to:

– AJ’s story, which is also present day, but set 2 weeks after the smash cut from Tess’s story to his, then…

– Tess, AJ, and Frank cross paths in the tunnels of the property as their timelines catch up and converge in the present. Then, we smash cut backward to:

– The past with Frank! In fact, it’s decades earlier, like a flashback, to explain how he became Daddy Monster. Then, we smash cut forward to the present, leading up to the final act of the film.

At first, it feels disorienting… as you can imagine. (Are you disorientated by this post yet?)

It took me a few beats to adjust from a terrified Tess in the dark tunnels during the monster reveal to the first smash cut that jumps to a bright and sunny California coastline, introducing us to a new central character to follow: the very arrogant AJ.

Brilliant and jarring.

Then, everything starts to connect and you realise you’re not watching ONE flat story, you’re watching a three-dimensional story from three different angles.

And that can happen in marketing when you have multiple audiences or audience segments who use your product or service.

When this is the case, there are some big mistakes (huge!) that a marketer can make with their product or campaign marketing strategy by assuming:

– A campaign can speak to and engage all customers, turning them into one, homogeneous prospect or customer.

– One message, pain-point or challenge + one solution or desired outcome means the same/ has the same value attached to each audience.

– All prospects or customers are at the same point in their buying journey.

In reality, there can be multiple prospects or customers, all experiencing your product or service in completely different ways…

Being Head of Content at an agency that specialises in marketing to schools, let’s use the education sector as an example…

Edtech brands can be marketing to different audiences with different needs:

– Heads / SLT
– Teachers
– Students (not marketing to children directly, as that’s a no-no, but when students are also the end-user. E.g. brands that have apps/ separate dashboards and logins for student access as part of a school or parent marketing campaign)
– Parents

When the same product or service has different features and benefits designed to be used by different audiences and use cases, there will be completely different perspectives to consider.

Like Tess in Barbarian AKA the end-user…

Tess is the one experiencing everything first-hand. She’s cautious, practical, and trying to make sense of an unfamiliar situation that becomes more unfamiliar and uneasy in the cold light of day:

Tess sees how unsettling the neighbourhood really is after arriving in the middle of a rainy night, the documentarian she’s meeting for a job interview says she shouldn’t be staying in that area… and not forgetting the homeless man who runs, ranting and raving at Tess when she returns to the house.

Yep, the warnings keep on comin’.

Like being unfamiliar with a brand and finding barriers for committing to a trial, booking a call or demo, Tess is the end-user who is asking:

“How does this fit into my day?”
“Is this safe and/or reliable?”
“Will this make my life easier or harder?”

And let’s not forget about Keith, sweet Keith…

He’s another end-user, but one who doesn’t have time to take advantage of the free trial period and doesn’t engage with the nurture email series.

Let’s be honest: the “Keiths” are the end-users who definitely don’t make it to the end/ purchase stage. (Subtle spoiler!)

The “Keiths” aren’t your hot leads. Whereas Tess IS a red-hot lead who sees it through to the end.

Then, there’s AJ AKA the decision-maker.

AJ owns the property, but has no idea what’s really happening inside or underneath it. Regardless, he’s focused on value and financial outcomes only.

As the head or SLT decision-maker character, AJ is asking:

💬 “Is this worth the investment?”
💬 “What’s the ROI?”
💬 “Is this scalable?”

However… AJ’s not concerned with the wellbeing of the end-user, like a human decision-maker would be, IRL.

Unlike Tess, whose initial reaction is ‘flight, not fight’ when she finds the door to a hidden corridor in the basement, AJ is cock-a-hoop! He whips out his tape measure to calculate the additional square footage of the secret, subterranean tunnels to see if he can add it to the property listing and make more money from the sale.

Classic AJ.

Honestly, rewatching it for this post made me remember how much Justin Long made me LOL. (It’s a LOT o’ LOLs.)

In edtech marketing, the ‘AJ’ school SLT or MAT leader will be examining products and services in a similar way:

– Cost vs. impact
– Implementation risk
– Long-term value

No, they’re not living the day-to-day experience like Tess the end-user is (who has booked and is staying in the property as an Airbnb customer). The head or SLT decision-maker is evaluating the bigger picture.

Which leads us to Frank…

In the film, he is the origin AND the problem in the bigger-picture.

We get a glimpse at how he created the situation AND the monster in the first place — a very sick and twisted man, still living in the property, but in the tunnels, away from civilisation. (Decades before Airbnb was even a thing.)

While Frank doesn’t exactly represent another customer per se, he does personify legacy, history, and pain-point causes, mainly adding context to the product or service:

– The existing systems
– The previous decisions
– The problems that already exist before you rocked up on the scene

Plus, this narrative perspective shows how a product or service doesn’t exist in a vacuum — the traditional linear, single timeline story. It exists in an ecosystem that has existed beyond the campaign or product release — like Frank before Tess arrived or when AJ showed up in the middle of Tess’ ordeal.

Overall, the marketing inspo is:

You’re not telling ONE story if your audience is made up of multiple people. You’re telling MULTIPLE stories about one product or service.

The mistake is using ONE message for all of them, because what resonates with a teacher won’t resonate with a headteacher. What reassures a parent won’t matter to the child AKA the student.

Instead of falling into the ‘one product, one catch-all message’ trap, think:

One product ⏩ Multiple perspectives ⏩ Different campaigns ⏩ Separate campaign landing pages ⏩ Tailored campaign messaging, focusing on one big pain point for each audience

You can get your customer perspectives from case studies for each type of audience and use these to promote to your different prospects audiences.

Better yet, record these case studies as talking head video interviews, then share these across home pages, campaign landing pages, blogs, ads, and social media posts to leverage this rich content.

One could say, it’s like adding square footage you didn’t realise you had to your product listing, AJ-style!

Like Barbarian, don’t use one perspective if it’s not enough to tell the product story. When you see all of the perspectives, the full picture make sense.

Now I’m curious: how many different customer perspectives do you market to and what are their nuanced stories?

Comment, pleaseandthankyou! 🙏

BOOP! 👉 👃 🔴