I’ve spent the last few weeks talking about brands and film quite a lot – on panels at the Cannes Film Fest, with filmmakers hoping to break into this space, and with clients refining their approach. In the case of the film world, I keep hearing some variation of – brands are going to save our field, and I often have to correct this as being wrong. As I’ve written before, that’s not how brands work. Most of them do not want to hear your pitch and lean more towards commissioning work. But that doesn’t mean filmmakers can’t learn from brands. I realized that in the past few weeks, I’ve also kept coming back in conversations to three lessons we can learn from brands, but it’s more about focusing on your brand, and building it. I think all of this is useful to think about whether you’re a filmmaker thinking about how to stand out in today’s attention economy, or an existing or launching film company, or even a brand moving into the film space.

One – how the best brands have built their brands over time, and have a clear, defined brand that is distinct and recognizable from their competitors. Within my world of brands and film, my go-to example is Patagonia vs The North Face vs REI Co-Op Studios in film. If you are a filmmaker pitching them, you might think all are fair game for your outdoor film. But look closely, and they’re very different. Patagonia will make a film about a surfer, but they’re focused on how that surfer is using their fame to bring attention to an endangered surf break, and the climate/sustainability angle is as important as the surfing. The North Face’s version – if they even touch surfing vs mountain climbing, will be focused on the surfer, the endurance and grit behind the sport, and will probably be a cross-over of multiple endurance sports. REI won’t even make that film. They’ll make one about kids enjoying Prospect Park, because they just want you to get off your butt and outdoors. With apologies to my friends at all three companies for the oversimplification, you get my point. None of them are pandering to any audience, what they’re making is genuine to their brand and it earns an audience because everyone intrinsically understands their brand. We’ll dig into this more in a second, but contrast this with almost any other film related brand, much less an individual filmmaker’s approach – and be generous here, as I know this isn’t a perfect correlation – but you can start to guess at how building a brand can be important. 

Oh, and if you’re at a brand wanting to be the next “Patagonia of X vertical” you need to also be that focused on your brand, and also trust that no one will buy a jacket because they saw a Patagonia film, but they’ll damn sure feel better wearing that jacket knowing you made that film, and that’s a sale you can’t easily measure. Focus on the brand values, not the sale, or the performance metrics, and the wins will come more easily.

Two – that very few film companies – and even fewer filmmakers – have built a brand. You might think this is obvious and why would they bother? Well, think of the few exceptions and you can see the value. There are probably only a dozen brands in the film world (old and new) – Disney, Miramax, TCM, A24, Sundance. You could be generous and add Will Packer Media, Killer Films. But not many others. You can also make the case that certain filmmakers, most auteurs, built a brand – Spielberg, Hal Hartley, Beth B., Tyler Perry,  Ava DuVernay, Stanley Nelson and Firelight Media, Ken Burns, David Attenburugh, John Waters. None of them would ever be so crass as to say they were ever building a brand, but that’s what they’ve done. 

On the other hand, no one could argue that Neon has built a brand – even though they’ve made better films than A24 by miles. They might even be truly worth more at the end of the day monetarily to their investors, but culturally, A24 won that battle for now, because they invested in their brand. As an aside, my hunch is that Neon will win the longer war based on a slow build of their brand on sustained quality, and as A24 becomes something too big for its own britches, but that’s to be determined. Similarly, no one can seriously say that Tribeca or SXSW is a brand compared to Sundance. If you disagree with these examples, just go home to wherever you came from in Middle America (most of us), and ask your friends and family - who can name a film from one of these places (?), and you’ll understand a true brand vs. one that only works within a given industry. Underground, cult brands excepted, these are easy to figure out with the - has my Aunt Pat heard of them(?) test.

Three – maybe our problem in indie film isn’t (only) that filmmakers and film companies don’t know their audience, but that they haven’t built a brand. I realize all of this may be anathema to the artistes in the room but hear me out. As b-school as it might all sound, we all know good brands. Even if we profess to hate them, we know a good brand when we see it – per the above, whether that’s A24 or John Waters. They never pandered to some audience; they remained true to their artistic vision, but they still built an audience because they slowly built an identifiable brand – even if John Waters wouldn’t call himself a brand (he might, let’s ask). It has been noted in many places that the “creator economy” is better at building an audience than the indie filmmaker (lack-of-)economy. They’re also building their brands. I think the average wanna-be indie auteur has a taxonomy in their head of what makes a true artist, and it doesn’t include thinking about their audience. But they all want to be a brand like Tarantino or even Kathryn Bigelow. Focusing on how that is an artistic brand might bring us closer to understanding what an audience wants?