The Real Cost Of Organic Marketing Wins

A publication I lightly follow we recently ran a piece about the marketing campaign for the movie Smile.

In the summer of 2022, the marketing team hired actors to wear the stand out yellow shirt, and smile creepily for the entire duration of a sporting event (namely Major League Baseball games). Keeping the ‘funnel’ in uniformity the ‘Smile’ was related to a scene in the movie and subsequently the cover image for their posters.

The goal was to get attention from the large audiences and cameras at these sporting events to create a buzz about WTF this is about.

It turned into a huge success with major publications catching the actors on camera and discussing it curiously during broad cast. The Film in total grossed a notable 215mm for a modest budget film.

But let’s talk about the budget for pulling off this marketing campaign/stunt.

The publication I was following touted this as an example that great marketing doesn’t have to be expensive; which to me implies that ‘organic marketing is cheap’

While no placement was paid for in this campaign, it certainly wasn’t cheap. I also is not systematic.

Let’s break down what went into this.

• Casting and auditioning for actors.  Maintaining a creepy smile in public for hours ain’t easy. It required trained actors.

• Identifying optimal seats for camera pick up & purchasing the tickets.  Seats needed to be in places regularly skimmed by tv cameras and within range of field photographers. Cheap seats wouldn’t cut it. Consulting with someone knowledgable on filming practices of baseball games was probable necessary, but someone on staff may have had that insight.

• Transportation and logistics for actors.  People got to get around.

And then there is the ‘risk’.

There was no guarantee this was going to work. There was no guarantee it would even get any impressions. Their whole budget could’ve went to waste.

Now clearly it didn’t go to waste in this instance, but the majority of organic marketing efforts flop hard.

Movies like this by nature are roulette model where the entire success hinges on some big levers of luck and the scale of success is broad high — but your business most likely is not.

That’s why I stick to marketing models where you pay for ads and can evaluate directly what you’re getting and scale what is working (or cut what is not).