This new “promo” cost $270 million and bombed (here’s why)

My wife and I watched The Marvels this weekend.

Now, I’m usually a pretty easy sell when it comes to superhero movies…

But my goodness…

This movie was AWFUL.

I knew it had flopped at the box office…

(Apparently it cost around $270 million to make and only made $84m domestic. Yikes.)

Yet I was still amazed at what an unmitigated disaster it was.

Funny thing is…

Visually, the effects were as impressive as any Marvel movie I’ve seen.

They probably spent a fortune on VFX.

But the writing was terrible.

The dialogue sucked…

The story made no sense…

And the stakes were nonexistent.

As I was watching, I just kept thinking “who the hell greenlit this thing?”

Anyway…

Reason I bring this up is because there’s a perfect parallel in copywriting.

Which is:

If it doesn’t convert in black and white, sexy branding won’t fix it.

In other words..

If it’s gonna convert, it’s gonna convert.

I’ve seen lots of marketers & creators fixate on branding and design…

But in my experience, this is often just a smokescreen for perfectionism.

And frankly, it makes little to no difference 9 times out of 10.

There’s boatloads of people using plain old Google docs to sell stuff these days.

(something I’m curious to test)

Anyway, moral of the story is:

Focus on what actually drives performance.

Don’t get hung up on all the fancy bells and whistles.

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Jim Hamilton