To: Hal Yeager, Chief of Development, Galaxie Pictures
Fr: Richard H. Levey, Studio Hack
Re: Direct Marketing Summer Blockbuster Movie
Hal:
You were right. Direct response marketing has proved fertile soil for summer popcorn movies. Review the following treatments and let me know what you think.
If you had a romantic comedy in mind, how ‘bout Julia Roberts as a lonely-yet-spunky inbound call center rep? She falls for Nick Nolte, who gets the upsell of his life when he tries to buy some exercise bands he saw on TV. The tag line: “She took his credit card number – he took her heart.”
It even has a juicy supporting role for Danny DiVito as an identity thief with a heart of gold.
Want a thriller? Dig this: Dennis Hopper plays a crazed direct marketer. He launches a mail campaign that must pull at least a 5% response rate, or he’ll blow up a mailbox that has Keanu Reeves stuffed inside. Problem is, he mentions this in the lift letter. The campaign is a total bust.
I’ve also come up with a spy drama featuring Pierce Brosnan as a hard-boiled FBI telephone technician. Brosnan is assigned to protect Senator Charles Palantine (we’ll B-list this role) from a renegade defense industry lobbyist (Malcolm McDowell), who tries to assassinate Palantine with a surface-to-surface missile.
McDowell calls Palantine’s office to make sure the Senator is at his desk, which is conveniently located near a window. However, Brosnan has arranged for the Senator’s phone line to be forwarded into McDowell’s K Street office. This causes the missile to go astray, and it wipes out a branch of the Sierra Club. (In movie science, this is perfectly plausible.)
Because of Brosnan’s call forwarding activities, the missile is mistakenly sourced back to Palantine. It comes out that Senator Palantine is on the federal do-not-call list. He is immediately accused of a cover-up. As a result, Brosnan is kicked of the phone unit, and has to turn his headset in to the Department of Justice’s chief of telecommunications services. But unbeknownst to the chief, Brosnan has another unit stashed in his sock and decides to go out on his own and clear his name. (We should consider teaming Brosnan up with a chimp at some point.)
Finally, an Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle. Arnold comes back from the future to ensure the success of a direct mail campaign vital to mankind’s survival. But there’s a limited budget, so Arnold has to use futuristic modeling techniques. We can call the flick “Total Regression.”
I see a scene in which a young MBA (the brat from the first two Terminator movies?) watches as Schwarzenegger hoists 500,000 double postcards above his head and, with one throw, separates them into half a dozen bins – and they land perfectly carrier-route sorted.
The MBA picks up one postcard and looks at the response portion. “You sure this’ll work?” He asks Schwarzenegger.
“They’ll be back,” replies Schwarzenegger.
Hal, pick one, and let’s move fast, as I understand another studio is readying a direct marketing movie for the Christmas season. Did you know that every time an inbound call center phone rings, a list broker gets his wings?
To respond to this column, please contact rlevey@primediabusiness.com
