A few nights ago, I became obsessed with tracking down a movie
>> Mia Feilman: Most marketing has the shelf life of a trending sound. This is Got Marketing, where we unpack campaigns, marketing news and what actually sticks.
>> Mia Feilman: Hello, friend. A few nights ago, I became obsessed with tracking down a movie. I had seen a clip on Facebook for a historical fiction film starring a young Keri Russell, and that is right up my alley. I went to the comments and figured out that the movie was called the Magic Of Ordinary Days. But despite subscribing to what feels like every streaming service known to humankind, I couldn't find it anywhere. Not on Netflix, not on Disney, not on Stan, not on prime, not on Binge. I even downloaded Tubi. And then I tried to download Paramount plus, but got blocked by an iPad software update. So eventually, after a ridiculous rabbit hole on Google and a website called dailymotion, I managed to watch it. The movie was excellent. But we're going to talk about that a little bit later. In my Google searching, I discovered it was a Hallmark movie, as in the cards. How on earth did a gift card company end up making movies? And, um, what does that have to do with marketing? Well, as it turns out, quite a lot. One of the things that struck me was how hard this movie was to find. There is clearly still demand for it. People are searching for it, people are still talking about it. Facebook clips are, uh, circulating. I wanted to watch it and was happy to pay to watch it, but the official distribution channels had essentially disappeared. As marketers and founders, we are obsessed with generating demand, awareness, traffic, leads and reach. But sometimes the problem isn't demand. The problem is access, because the market for this movie still existed, but the distribution didn't.
Hallmark is one of the most successful entertainment brands in America
And I think many businesses have the same problem. Customers want what they're selling, but they're hard to find. The website is confusing, the messaging is unclear, the offer isn't obvious, the sales process is clunky. So before we spend money generating more demand, it's really worth asking, can people actually access what I'm already offering? When I started reading about Hallmark, I came to the realisation that Hallmark doesn't really sell gift cards, it sells emotion. Just like mattress companies shouldn't sell a mattress, they should sell a good night's sleep. Hallmark sells connection, relationships, tradition, hope. And the cards are, uh, just one delivery vehicle, but there could be others. So it makes sense that Hallmark went into ornaments and then gifts and then Christmas specials and then television series and then movies. From the outside, it can look like a strange expansion strategy, but emotionally, it's actually incredibly logical because they're not asking, what should we Sell. Next they're asking, what else would people who already love Hallmark also love? Which is a very different question. I think one of the biggest mistakes businesses make is expanding based on operational logic what makes the most sense, rather than customer logic. A new product may make sense internally, but it may not make sense emotionally for the customer. Hallmark's product portfolio looks random until you realise it's all serving the same emotional territory. My favourite discovery in all of this was that Hallmark knows its customer so well, like, exactly who it serves. And I found an interview on the New Yorker with a Hallmark executive who was furious that the word suck had appeared in one of their movies. Now, suck is not exactly a swear word. It's not even that particularly controversial. But they edited it out. Now, you can laugh at that, and I certainly did. But it's also fascinating because Hallmark knows exactly the kind of world it's creating and the emotional experience that they're creating. And they are incredibly disciplined about protecting it. In the same article, I also read about Hallmark's commitment to pet adoption. Apparently, it's one of the only causes that they actively promote in their television and films. Pet adoption regularly appears in storylines. Local businesses appear in storylines. So does community. Hallmark knows exactly what it stands for. And it's not trying to be prestige television. It's not trying to win Oscars or create edgy content. It understands that there's a large group of people who want storeys about kindness, hope, community, relationships and ordinary people doing ordinary things, and that no one else was really making those kind of storeys and those kind of movies. While the rest of the entertainment industry seems obsessed with chasing bigger, uh, louder, more shocking storeys, Hallmark has built an empire around storeys where the stakes are, uh, remarkably small. Like a local business being under threat or someone returning to their hometown, a family reconnecting, a relationship developing. It's not exactly Game of Thrones, and yet millions of people watch. In 2024, Hallmark finished as the most watched entertainment cable network in the United States. And Hallmark produces roughly 100 original movies per year. Their Christmas programming alone attracts tens of m millions of viewers every season. So I discovered that Hallmark is one of the most successful entertainment brands in America. Despite being almost completely absent from conversations about what makes great entertainment. Which makes me wonder how many brands are ignoring profitable opportunities because they're too busy chasing culturally relevant ones. Marketers love to talk about disruption and innovation and what's next. Meanwhile, Hallmark is over there making another movie about a woman returning to her hometown bakery. And audiences are, uh, absolutely eating it up. I think that predictability is highly underrated. One of the criticisms that I saw online in my deep Reddit rabbit holes I fell through is that Hallmark movies are, uh, predictable. And that's true, they are, you know roughly what's going to happen. You absolutely know the emotional tone, you know how you're going to feel.
>> Mia Feilman: And.
>> Mia Feilman: But I think many of us misunderstand this because Hallmark fans don't watch despite the predictability. They watch because of it. The predictability is the product. The customer knows exactly what they're getting and that's what they want. So imagine that a brand becomes successful not because it constantly reinvents itself, but because it consistently delivers the same emotional experience. There's a lesson there for every business owner who feels pressured to constantly chase the next thing. Consistency is so much more valuable than novelty. But there was a bigger theme about this movie that really got me thinking.
I've spent my career around big numbers. When I was senior brand manager at Maybelline
So, uh, like I said, the movie is called the Magic of Ordinary Days. And the title has been rattling around in my head ever since. Because while I am, um, incredibly proud and satisfied about the life that I have built, I'm also incredibly ambitious and have been chasing more and want more. I've spent my career around big numbers. When I was the senior brand manager at Maybelline New York, we were a hundred million dollar brand and my marketing budget was over $20 million. But I remembered today actually how I was feeling when I worked at Maybelline. And I remember that at the time I felt that those numbers were soulless. They were just numbers on a balance sheet because I hardly ever met any customers whose lives were made better through Maybelline products. But in my work now, I get to see that every single day. So while the budgets were huge, the reach was huge, the campaigns were huge. I mean, we had Victoria's Secret models as our ambassadors. When you spend enough time in that environment, it's easy to start believing that impact is measured by scale. But then I left and I started working with founder led brands and small businesses. And I run a podcast and I've built communities and I work with businesses that serve hundreds of customers rather than millions of customers. And those numbers look so much smaller. But that doesn't necessarily mean that my impact is A conversation with a customer can change their business. A community can help someone feel less alone. A local business can survive another few years. A podcast episode can land at exactly the right time. The scale may be smaller, but the impact often isn't. If you're listening to this and thinking,
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The central theme of this movie really became about enoughness
So the central theme of this movie really became about enoughness, which is something that I have been grappling with for many years. So let me tell you a little bit about the plot of this storey, because I think you should absolutely watch it. So the movie is set in 1944 and Keri Russell's character Livy is a graduate student studying archaeology until she falls pregnant out of wedlock. Her father decides she will marry a farmer to legitimise the pregnancy. And so Livy must reconcile with giving up her career ambitions for a quiet country life. But there's so much beauty in that too, right? But is it enough? Enoughness takes up a lot of space in my brain. I live a very comfortable life. I have built a really successful business. I get to spend a lot of time with my kids. I get to work out a lot. I take my children to sport four days a week. That is a beautiful life. But is it enough? And this is a bigger, uh, issue with many Australians, because Australians have never been more prosperous. But we also seem to be eternally dissatisfied. My husband reminded me that when he was growing up, he only had two overseas trips his entire childhood. And that was very normal. And amongst his friends and his family friends. Now, if we don't get to go overseas every year, we somehow think we're failing at life. I also read an article today that reported that Madonna, yes, the Madonna material girl, Madonna, has fallen out with Universal Studios over a biopic film of her life. According to the reports, the budget just wasn't big enough for Madonna's huge life. And that is a direct quote. And all I could think was, if we choose to pursue more, if I choose to pursue more, will it ever be enough? Because it doesn't seem to be enough for Madonna. Instead of having lived this extraordinary life that now someone wants to make a movie about it and that probably only 100 people on Earth would get that honour, it doesn't seem to be enough for Madonna. She also wants it to be a big budget film. By the way, if Universal Studios is making your film it's big budget by everyone's measure.
Hallmark understands that not everyone wants extraordinary marketing
At this point, I feel like I'm rambling, so let's come back to some marketing. What Hallmark does that most brands don't do is understand that not everyone wants extraordinary. Not everyone wants disruption. Not everyone wants bigger, uh, louder, faster, uh, AI powered, AI generated. Some people want familiarity, optimism. Some people want storeys about kindness, community, second chances. Chad Michael Murray Hallmark has found its audience and then spent decades serving them relentlessly. And they built an empire in that process. And, uh, look, it is so easy to dismiss that as cheesy, but it is so much harder to dismiss the results. Because while the rest of the world is chasing the next big thing, Hallmark is proving that ordinary isn't boring. It's exactly what people are looking for.
Thank you for listening to Got Marketing. You listened all the way to the end
Thank you for listening to Got Marketing. As always, if you've got a favourite Hallmark movie, send me a message and let me know what it is, because apparently, that is who I am now.
>> Mia Feilman: Thank you.
>> Mia Feilman: You listened all the way to the end.
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