Do what you love and you will be successful.
We’ve all heard that before. But you have to admit there are a few exceptions to this rule. For example, what if, the thing that you love is offensive to some people? In that case you may not be all that successful. You will be relegated to serving a very small and select market. But this leaves you without the broad appeal that brings in the big bucks.So how can we leverage “doing what we love” to create success, satisfaction and even wealth?Few, I think would argue the fact that actor-producer-director Mel Gibson has accomplished this with his movie, “The Passion of the Christ.”There’s no doubt that this film is on its way to being a blockbuster. But how could this be? Here’s a movie that depicts the final 12 hours of Jesus Christ’s life in excruciating detail. It is first off, politically incorrect (Christians are less popular than the gay community today), filled with more blood and gore than all Freddy Kruger flicks combined, and scripted in ancient Latin and Aramaic. Not exactly the formula for successful filmmaking.Yet “Passion” opened in over 3,000 theaters, an unusually large release for a religious film with English subtitles and the sparsest of plots. Advance ticket sales hit $10 million and in the first weekend generated over $30 million in sales.You’ve got to wonder with all this gratuitous violence, no dialog or characters to speak of, no advertising and NOT A STAR in sight, how Gibson ended up selling this movie?Regardless of our religious beliefs, there’s no doubt that Mel was passionate about telling this story. He was clearly doing what he loved in making this film. And he was employing that “remarkable marketing” that we talk about all the time in on our weekly radio show, in our classes, seminars, and in our weekly Business Updates. With everything against him he created something exceptional, new, interesting, compelling, worth noticing and worth talking about. He actually built the marketing right into the product itself.Newsweek said of the film, “when all’s said and done he’s made what may be the most watched Passion Pay of all time. Putting his money where his mouth was, Gibson invested $20 million of his own cash in a film so divisive that no Hollywood studio would touch it.”Tom Peters said in his book, “The Pursuit of Wow,” that the only products or services of the future will be those that are created by passionate people. Gibson used the hive mentality to create sneezers (the Christian community) to develop something virus-worthy. He didn’t create an ad campaign catering to the masses. That would be trying to swim upstream. He went with the flow. He previewed the movie to evangelical media and church leaders.Focusing on this small, self-contained hive market was very smart marketing indeed. There’s no better organized subgroup. This was the market segment most influential, most profitable and most likely to sneeze. And sneeze they did – all over each other. Think about it, these religious groups have their own radio stations, TV networks, publications and web sites.Not long after this, Churches from coast to coast reserved entire theaters for opening. According to People magazine, The National Association of Evangelicals, which represents more than 50 denominations and 43,000 congregations, even helped sell tickets on their web sites. The religious community embraced the film as “the best outreach opportunity in 2,000 years,” according to the Rev. Rob Schenck, President of the National Clergy Council. Pope John Paul II seeing the movie said, “It is as it was.” Billy Graham was so moved that he wept and called it a film “equal to a lifetime of sermons.”Now how would you like to enjoy these kinds of accolades for your business, product or service? I would not for a moment reduce Mr. Gibson’s work to one that is aimed only to generate profit or business success. On the contrary, I believe that the film is enjoying the success it is particularly because of his passion and focus on making a product that is a tool for evangelism as opposed to one that needs to be marketed.What about if we could apply these principals to our business? The good news is that we can. Here’s my advice:1. Identify the smallest most influential market that you can possibly find – a powerful, smooth subgroup that will have interest in what you have to offer. 2. Create a premium product or service that is so impressive and compelling and offer it ONLY to this group. 3. Figure out a way to give them a small taste of the product. Do so in advance of everyone else. 4. Empower the leaders of this group to make claims and statements to their community regarding the product that you have created. 5. Build your marketing right into your product or service rather than tagging it on as an afterthought. 6. Inject your own passion in what you do. Do it because you believe it. And if you don’t believe it, don’t do it! 7. Do what you love. Love what you do. Let it show no matter what anyone thinks!Our thanks, Mel. Bet you never thought you’d be giving us a marketing lesson along with the Gospel?I hope that this “Business Update” has been helpful in assisting you to improve the performance of your organization. For more information on how the Small Business Advisory Network assists companies in improving their performance, please feel free to contact us at 310-320-8190 or email mark@markdeo.comMark Deo