What Marketers can learn from Sydney's Flickerfest

I made my first short Pure Bull with fellow students at the 澳大利亚悉尼大学 Film Diploma program, talented writers, DOPs and promising actors. We even entered it into film festivals with some audacity given the steep competition. Ever since that wondrous experience in character creation and plot shaping, I’ve been an ardent short film enthusiast and experimenter.? This past week I attended Sydney’s 33rd annual Flickerfest Short Film showcase at the Bondi Pavilion and the global talent on display showed grit, moxie and a bold intention to enthrall audiences across all walks of life.?

As I watched the films, I reflected on the beautiful lessons that our marketing community could apply from these artful stories ranging from the joy of first dates to the comedic antics of a postal worker to the workplace drama debating an ad’s “whiteness”.? Flickerfest served up with verve and an intentional cheekiness that was universal across films from Australia, New Zealand, France, UK, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Estonia, Turkey, India , China, Mexico and more.

Grab some popcorn as you read through these lessons and check out the brilliant films that made Flickerfest sizzle. A special shout-out to Bronwyn Kidd and her amazing team for making the festival so memorable.?

Characters with dimension rule?

There was no shortage of characters with emotional range. The Festival award-winning film Cold Water portrayed a devoted elderly woman calmly dealing with her eccentric bird-shooting rifle-loving husband as the story slowly unveiled her husband’s experiences of discrimination as a St Kilda queer youth. This multidimensional aspect of character development is what marketers need to think through as they develop storylines and invite influencers, green light a new web series, review ad scripts and above all as they plunge into what drives customer behavior. We learn about human nature and the vagaries of life’s ups and downs through these films — we see ourselves, our customers see themselves. The more we watch and listen, the closer we get to our customer’s heart beat. Twin brothers, Jay and Shaun Perry were inspired to make this film after listening to the dark stories recounted by their neighbor who was a former cop in St Kilda in the 1970s.

We should see our ads and our content as short films and we should make them with the same joy and nuance as a budding filmmaker fresh out of film school.

Draw outside the lines with grace and wonder

Marketing is a craft and like any craft there are golden rules on everything from the ingredients of a positioning statement to the rules around algorithms for stories primed for SEO.? The marketer with creative audacity dreams up new formats, new storylines and defies convention. We witnessed a devout Catholic Irish Dancing teacher bend the rules in Clodagh in the name of enabling “God’s hand” and infusing passion into her life. In Prince’s Dilemma we get a fresh take on happily ever after with Prince Philip finding a Prince of his dreams and his jilted Princess taking charge of her life with a fierce female warrior by her side.

Representation is more than screen deep?

Flickerfest took representation to another level by giving a voice and texture to global culture and celebrating the stories, customs and experiences of First Nations people.? By portraying the universal moments that make us human and the quest for a common bond, films like Allira showed the anguish of decision-making between self-love and keeping up appearances and the code switching game in To Be Silent reminds us that embracing diversity is complicated and nuanced, especially when it involves self-acceptance and deep prejudices.?

Marketers need to ensure that representation is not just about visual cues and symbolism, it is about deep, meaningful emotions that involve all our senses, and above all, captures meaning by celebrating the differences and acknowledging the similarities across different lived experiences.

Experimentation is the name of the game

We cannot make progress without taking some smart risks and making it payoff.

Yeah the Boys, helmed by husband and wife duo writer Vanessa Varghese and director Stefan Hunt, which won Best Australian Short Film at the Festival, is an anthropologist’s dream as it captures the essence of Aussie male bravado amidst alcohol-induced bonding over beers, reflected only through movement and the rhythmic beat of the Avalanches. A tender yet tough story of drinking culture and artistic experimentation.?

Another film that also used novel storytelling formats and incorporated an AI female character was Biglove, with no dialogue, and a focus on screens with text messages, music and lighting and some furtive glances, we get immersed in lead character Chiara’s world and her prompt exodus from the AI world she craves.?

Experimentation in advertising is critical as we look for better ways to enthrall our customers.? Our smorgasbord of choices have accelerated – with opportunities to dabble in new formats, new styles of content, new types of characters and even dreaming up entirely new genres energized by AI, AR, VR and MR.??

The world of film and the world of marketing share one indelible thing in common - they are both about arousing emotion and making us think, believe, question, laugh or simply sit back and be entertained.?

Is there a film in YOU?

You are only limited by the strength of your narrative and your imagination – so let it take flight!