Fahadh on movies

Saw a very eye-opening interview with actor Fahadh Faasil by noted film critic Baradwaj Rangan. In one part, he speaks about the role of a movie in the life of a moviegoer. He says (paraphrasing):

“I’ll make the film watchable. Don’t take me seriously outside the theatre. Cinema is not beyond the theatre, there’s more to do in life than discussing cinema.”

Baradwaj Rangan then tells him that it’s not always possible to do that as people discuss what they are passionate about, be it sport or film and Fahadh agrees that it’s a tall order.

We sometimes do spend an undue amount of time discussing things like movies and sport, which have no immediate bearing on our life. But if we spend all our days doing that, it’ll spell trouble.

Marketers can take something away from this. You may believe that the customer is spending a whole lot of time analyzing your brand and debating it and waiting for what you have to offer with bated breath.

Hint – they aren’t.

Add to it the echo chambers that make it hard to look outside the self-imposed walls and it’s easy to fall into a trap.

While some brands are more loved than others and building a brand takes effort and is time-consuming, it’s easy to lose track of the fact that most brands at best play a minute role in a person’s life. And customers don’t really care for brand purpose or story. They want the brand to solve their problem when they interact with it and want to be entertained when they come across its marketing.

If you had a minute with a user, would you give them something to remember or regurgitate information that is forgettable?

The late Dan Wieden said it best:

“make me laugh, make me cry, just move me dude.”

PS: The most recent movie of Fahadh Fassil’s that I saw was 𝘗𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘶𝘷𝘶𝘮 𝘈𝘵𝘩𝘣𝘶𝘵𝘩𝘢 𝘝𝘪𝘭𝘢𝘬𝘬𝘶𝘮. It’s highly enjoyable.