Last night I went to the screening of a documentary called Pelada. It followed two former collegiate soccer players as they traveled all over the world playing pick up games of soccer. Their travels spanned the globe and included countries from Brazil to South Africa and China to Iran. Check out the Pelada site for a trailer.
In terms of production quality, it was nothing fancy. There were no special effects and the whole thing was made by 4 people: a 2-person camera crew and 2-person cast. They stayed in places most tourists would never stay at even in their worst nightmares to save money and shot with equipment that most professional production crews would cringe at when thinking of using it for three years on one movie.
Despite all of this, the movie was outstanding (and not just because I’m a soccer fan. My fiance loved it and is pretty indifferent about soccer).
Why?
Because it told a tremendously compelling story.
Amazing, right? You don’t have to have a multimillion dollar budget to be successful. You don’t have to be James Cameron and you don’t have to be a Fortune 500 company to capture the minds of the consumer. Limited resources are nothing but a tiny hurdle. You don’t need them.
What you need, is a story.
And you need to inspire your fans to create stories about you.
Stories are mesmerizing. They evoke emotions that billions of dollars could never even touch. No matter the size of your marketing budget, something you always can (and always should) do is ensure there’s a story behind you.
Now, let’s not be naive and think that money isn’t helpful. James Cameron had less than compelling story (which he clearly stole from Pocahontas and Fern Gully) and a lot of money. He did pretty well for himself. But, BP had a whole lot of money too, and the stories that they’re creating right now are making all of that money useless.
So don’t be discouraged when you look at your budget for the coming year and see less money in it than you payed for your first car. Instead, create a story and explore what you can do to share it with your customers and inspire them to share it with their friends. So that begs the question…
What’s your story?
Image from pelada-movie.com
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