The 4 ways being a screenwriter made me better at marketing, branding, and sales!

Since my earliest memories, I have always loved movies and television. I was 8 years old, living on a small farm in Jamaica when a traveling salesman sold my mother a television for our home. Over the next four years, every day (after a long day of working on the crops), I would park myself in front of the glowing screen and dream of creating stories of my own.?

Eventually, I became one of the lucky ones. I had the honor and privilege of working in the film and television industry for just under a decade - predominantly as a screenwriter and producer of independent projects. During those years, I learned valuable lessons about how to construct or portray identity, the nuances of storytelling, and (most importantly) what audiences seek most.?

Now in my new life in the world of sales and marketing, I still find those lessons invaluable and see them as cornerstones of my understanding of how to reach and connect with customers.

These are the four lessons from screenwriting that I have found most applicable to the world of marketing, branding, and sales:

1. Voice is identity

One of the hallmarks of a great script (and by definition, a great writer) is when the characters speak in such a distinct voice that you could remove all the names from above the dialogue lines and still know who is speaking. Everything that a character says not only informs you regarding their beliefs and motivations but also reinforces what you already know about that character. Everything they say rings true, and with each sentence, you feel that more of their identity is revealed.

The same can be conveyed in the form of email correspondences and ad copy, social media posts, and articles created by the company. The establishment of a distinct and powerful brand voice is essential to showing not just what your brand is, but who your brand is.

2. People connect with people (especially the person in the mirror)

As a continuation of the argument for the importance of a strong and definitive brand voice, it should also be noted that audiences/customers have a very unique relationship with connecting with generated identities. Any competent screenwriter or student of the screen will tell you that audiences oftentimes need more than merely a character they know… they need a character that they subconsciously believe to by themself in disguise.?

In screenwriting, this concept is often referred to as the neutral mask - it’s by no accident that, compared to other characters in the film, Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, and Neo have few initially observable personality traits. They are designed to be related to and lived through.

Effective marketing and the utilization of brand voice should also contain components of relatability that allow the customer room to superimpose their own personality, concerns, and needs onto that of the brand.

3. Audiences want what they know first (and want what they don’t know right after)

As is common with many disciplines within the arts, the more disenchanted and snobbish elements often lament the fact that “nothing new ever gets made, everything is a remake”.

During my early days as a screenwriter, I too shared this opinion. It was only after a few stints as a Producer (the common existential villains of the creative industry) that I realized there is a bit more to this reality.

Audiences as a whole prefer what they know and understand over entirely new concepts. This was especially true during the pre-streaming era of movie theater attendance, when looking at the theater marquee and making a decision about where to invest your dollars in the form of a ticket was a judgment based on the name, poster, and perhaps a line of description.

This aspect of the collective nature of the audience is what led me to become almost exclusively a writer within the horror genre. Horror is the ultimate money maker within the film industry - if a ticket buyer knows nothing about any of the films showing, they will almost undoubtedly choose the horror film. This is because horror is very efficient at iteration.

It starts with a trope (or a series of tropes) that you already know and then endeavors to impress you with the new direction it takes the concept.?

The same application of presenting what is familiar with a unique twist and then delivering unexpected value is also an incredibly powerful tool in the world of sales and marketing. It is important to remember that both familiarity and innovation are important to customers and their understanding of what you provide.

4. As above, so below (the power of microcosm)

Humans are inherently pattern-seekers. This fact was not lost on the earliest storytellers and is still a pillar of fiction today. Audiences internalize and connect with stories based on their perceptible rhythm and associate quality with a certain form of narrative symmetry.?

There is a popular metaphysical concept that states “as above, so below” - a cosmic understanding that all things in the natural world have an equivalent system ranging from the subatomic to the universal - and many of the top storytellers throughout history have applied this system to their work.?

From the pages of Homer’s Iliad to the interplanetary conflicts of Star Wars, many key elements of a story repeat and can be found as parallels within the smaller or broader arcs of the tale. This reiteration and structural harmony both engages and comforts the audience, drawing them into the mythology of the brand they are engaging with. Keeping this in mind, brands should always design even their shortest public interactions with their customer base to reflect the broader concepts and messaging that the brand conveys with their large-scale marketing.

This is the surest way to make what your brand says feel true.

If you would like to know more about how my experiences as a screenwriter have shaped my outlook and techniques in the world of marketing and sales, I am always open and excited to share ideas with my peers.