Hello! Hello! Hello!
In this series we will look at the events happening around us with the lens of ‘what-can-we-learn-from-them-as-working-professionals’.
Unless you have been living under a rock, I am sure you have heard about the movie - It Ends with Us.I am also sure that all that you know about it, has been against your will. The movie deals with an important social issue and while the media and your next door neighbour is having a field day analysing, theorising the behind-the-scenes hostility between the movie’s actors etc., as communication professionals there is much for us to learn/unlearn from the movie’s promotion strategy.
Communicate thy subject - Expectation Setting
Respect thy Team - Relationship building
Promote others - Everyone wins
Communicate thy Subject
Their team received a lot of flak for not being clear on the movie’s subject while promoting the movie. The movie got promoted as a summer-romance-love-triangle, without adequate advertisement of its triggering dark subject matter. This inadvertently led to some viewers not being mentally prepared for what appeared on the screens when they went to view it.
There are many things that demand our time, energy, and attention and it is more important than ever to give heads up to people on what is expected from them during the meeting.
If agenda less meetings could speak, this is what they would say
Send them an email, shoot a text, a one pager. Be very concise. Write information in bullet points if you would like - on the meeting agenda,what is expected from the team, share relevant material if you want them to contribute to the conversation.
What is this meeting for? - 1 line
*
Links to relevant reference material
*
What are we expecting out of the meeting - 1 line
Keep the suspense of not knowing what to expect when someone is entering a meeting room for the makers and characters of the dragon show.
Respect thy Team
The screenwriter of the film found out at the same time as the rest of the world that some part of the film was not improvised by the actors on set, but was rewritten after they were done locking in the script.
So here is the thing, if you are collaborating with someone on a project, first, TRY to not make any changes to it unilaterally. Run the suggestions by your team member, get their feedback, and then modify.
If at all you had to make some last time minute modifications to the project, inform your team member.
Drop in a text/email : Hey, I changed abc on xyz. Sorry could not get your input on it because it had to be sent on a short notice.
This is how easy it is. You don’t want to blindside your team members. You do not want them to be caught off guard, and appear as if they don’t know how their presentation/ report looks/reads.
Honestly leave the blindsiding, one-upmanship to the Roy siblings. We are better than that.
Promote others
A lot of people pointed out that this movie tackled a social issue but the follow up information about - how to seek help, which are the organisations working on it etc. was absent from the movie promotion materials. It could have been an opportunity for the people associated with the film to promote tools, resources, help, and support to create awareness about the cause.
If you find yourself in a situation where you are in the position to connect people to resources/other people who can be a good fit for each other, do not gatekeep! Share your references, put people in touch with each other! There is absolutely no point in being stingy on these fronts!
Here is how you could do this -
Another team is working on a project that closely aligns with your feedback, I could connect you with them.
Let me mail you the reading material I used to prepare this.
So there you go. Real life lessons from real life events in the world.
Goodluck for the rest of the week!
Cheers!
P.S. Bonus tip : The promoters tried to capitalise on last summer’s Barbenheimer promotion success and couldn’t. Remember just because some strategy has worked in the past, just a mere copy-paste of the same template may not work again.
