What LOTR teaches us about marketing

0:08Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the factory floor. Uh, today we are going to be talking about something quite amazing. I am joined by Corey and Zach. How are you guys? >> Thumbs up in the chat. >> Bueno. >> See, see. Bueno. Uh, okay. Okay, so we are going to be talking about something that I think is pretty near and dear to each of us, which is uh the fantasy world of Lord of the Rings. Uh but we're only going to do that through the context of what we can learn about marketing and branding and design and I'm going to say world building, which is kind of the I feel like the lynch pin. So I don't want I don't want to spoil it. Um, but the reason we're talking about this is because the 25th anniversary of Lord of the Rings, I

0:53think, is it the whole series or the fir the first one? >> No, just just the fellowship. >> Yeah. Right. Cuz 2001 um it's in theaters now and uh Zachary over here went and uh saw it in theaters and I'm sure his creative brain was just flowing with creative juice. So, we're going to talk about that juice today. Um, no. I I guess I wanted to ask Zach like was there a particular moment or thing that when you were watching that you were like that happened and I was like h all this stuff started to click. Well, I'd had the thought before um when watching the movie particularly about the the types of cinematic tricks they use to keep interest and I'll get into that because it's one of the points. But then as soon as I

1:39realized that I was like, "Oh, there's a lot of other stuff in here. maybe I should pay attention and try and keep mental notes of other things that we could take away from it. And I did. So, they're all in here. >> Okay, sweet. Um, okay. Well, let's uh let's get into it. I I just want like my first thought when you had mentioned this was when you talk to somebody about a particular franchise that they like and they're like, "Well, have you read the book?" And I'm like, "No, I haven't read the book." Or, "Yes, I had read the book." And those people tend to be the largest of fans of franchises. And with with really good franchises like Lord of the Rings, the people who love the book also love the movies, they love the

2:19games, like they love everything because maybe they started at the at the, you know, the source material. Um, but it's almost like the more you can engulf yourself and enwrap yourself in the world that is that thing, the more you enjoy it. And I feel like there's probably a lot of things that translate that into marketing. Like if you're, this is kind of a dumb example, but like the more context, the more information that you have on your website, the more of a story you can tell, the more uh information that is explained about what the company is, what the product is, you know, that all kind of feeds into that. Did you read the did any of you read the Lord of the Rings books? Yeah, >> I did not

3:07>> because I had already seen the movies and it was really difficult for me to read the book and feel excited about it. By contrast, reading Harry Potter when I was a kid, I read those before I saw the movies and so I was actually engaged. Same thing with Dune, you know, I read Dune before I went and saw the movie. Um, which I think made it I I can't read a book that I already know how it ends. It's just I don't find it exciting at all. >> Right. >> Um do you think that this topic is part of what contributes to the like it still holds upness? Like you know how people are like oh that that movie still holds up or oh that one's aged like like milk it looks terrible. Um I feel like that same idea

3:53kind of fits into this discussion. Am I crazy? >> No. >> Yeah. like the the timeless principles, the essence basically. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. The through line. >> I have some very specific things in here that are like that's a good idea for like a good concept or principle for a designer or marketer to adopt. It wasn't necessarily about the film making and the um gravitas of making a really good movie. >> Okay. Well, then what's what was your biggest takeaway? What was the number one thing then for you? Well, why don't we just go through the points because I have them listed out individually. >> Go through the first one. >> Uh, okay. So, the first one is this is a marketing one that I took away, which is

4:39more context equals more belief and investment. This is similar to something that Corey repeats often, which is long form copy and more in-depth copy tends to convert better. And I realized this because the version that I saw, and I didn't know this till I got there, was the extended version. And I hadn't seen the extended version of Lord of the Rings in a long time because it is an investment. But there's a lot of really good information in there that you then you get a better understanding of the world and you can really lose yourself in it. There's things like I think they cover a lot more in depth the moral weight of the ring and how coveted it is partic like there's a scene where Boramir tries to actually take it off of

5:24the um the pedestal when they're in Rivendell and Gandalf calls on the black speech and makes him go away. And so you get these moments like that where you really understand how heavy someone like like that is the the core villain that they are facing. Uh there's some things that are given like some solutions that are given to or just like a you know the equivalent of features that are given to members of the fellowship that didn't have previously like the light of alendial which is given to Frodo which is covered a little bit. There's uh Aragorn's knife that he uses to um later on in the movie a new bow for Legololis and that's not covered um unless you watch the extended edition or even things like

6:09how does Gollum get from Moria to finding uh Sam and Froto in the next movie that's covered in in this one because he floats down the river with them. So the marketing parallel here is that you I think that you uncover a lot more than you anticipate than by going deeper than omitting some information. It it's important to convey it in a way that still doesn't like take you off base from the core story, but you can uncover a lot more with um with the extended world building. It's also why you get things like, you know, why we exist sections. people, a lot of founders think that that's kind of silly, but we think they're really important because it adds an emotional investment and some of the background to

6:56why you are a good person to trust solving this problem. >> Mhm. I I feel like maybe another way of putting this is assume your audience is smart. A lot of people assume their audience is dumb and they try to dumb things down and simplify and make it shorter and make it easier to understand. And it's not that you want to make it overly complex or like, you know, hard to understand so that only a certain elite type of person could, you know, whatever. But assume that they're smart. Don't try to dumb things down or spell it out for them. Like give them everything that they need in order to paint the full picture of what you're what story you're trying to tell them. >> Yeah. there. This is so funny because my

7:38my wife and I are watching through the office right now and there's a scene in season 8 when Dwight is like about to launch the saber store. Do you guys remember this? >> And he's like fighting for the VP job and he's like giving this presentation in front of everybody and he's like sick and he's just flying from the cuff and he doesn't know what's on the slides and he's like consumer hab retail consumer habits and he's like all the thing you need to know is that consumers are mindless lemmings. They don't know what they want. And then he like clicks the slide. It's like consumers are well informed and consumers are smart and he's like they next line and he just like moves on to the next one. So it's

8:12funny when you said that that was immediately what I thought. Um and I think that is true they are like obviously smart. One thing I um I was thinking uh Zach when you were talking about um about like kind of the depth and how far you go into something can help convey the value of that thing. Um, I I feel like this is potentially a pitfall for people with like fairly complicated products. Like you don't want to try to explain every single deep dark intricacy of your product on your site if like there's a lot of products where all the information that is available about that product doesn't even really fit on the site. And it's kind of like that's your uh your book, you know, version. And then if you move

8:59a step up, your marketing website can be like your movie, which is I'm taking all the core most important things and all the context that's the most important for the storygoer to understand and presenting that on on the site or presenting that in your marketing material versus like having what's that the book? What's like the history Lord of the Rings history book? >> Simmerian. >> Yeah. Yeah, >> simmerelion is not um doesn't add to the more context is be is more belief so much when you're doing taking things for I guess from a marketing standpoint I guess right is that >> it's just like pure exposition versus storytelling. >> Mhm. Exactly. >> Exactly. Yeah. >> Um okay, Zach, your next point is

9:43abstract versus literal. Walk me through it. >> This was one of the this was the moment where I started taking mental notes. Um because I thought I didn't recognize how attentive Peter Jackson was when he was choosing the shots and then the rhythm that's created between them as far as jumping back and forth between what I would put into two buckets of abstract shots and then very literal shots. So, an abstracted shot would be something that's like not really, it's not like they're focusing on a character kind of like the way that we are now where it's the talking head and you can actually see there's not really anything going on that's of significance, but it's instead zooming in very close on things like the

10:26scene that I remember in particular is at um Weathertop when the hobbits are being uh surrounded by the ring rates and it zooms in on the ring's armor and his gloves, his armored gloves as He's clunching his sword like this and it's just his hands and you get this feeling of like, oh, he's a very bad person. And you don't even have to see his face. You can't see their face, but you can't you don't even see the whole figure and you understand that they're they're bad. But then it goes back and forth between looking at the hobbits where you could see all of them together. There's a full picture versus something abstracted. And it repeatedly jumps between those kind of rhythmic shots. And this is something

11:10that we do all the time in design. It's like this is why you vary your column amounts between sections so that you have visual interest. And it's a I think it's a good reminder of vary up your like the whole canvas. You know, focus on something really big and then a bunch of other things that are really really small visually. This is why we tend to move between like we'll have four columns all with icons and text and we'll have a big picture above it that helps describe what a product is and creating that visual rhythm is done through a similar means of having stuff that's really narrow and in focus and things that are somewhat out of focus or a little bit bigger. >> Do you feel like Corey do you feel like

11:54that idea maybe has a through line into copy potentially like bigger? Oh yeah. >> Broader sweeping understanding versus like very tight and narrow like problem problem A plus problem B equals solution C. Like is there a contrast there? >> Oh yeah. I mean and like good copywriting just good writing in general has a lot of rhythm and cadence and variability in it. Think about the difference between reading through like an instruction manual when you're putting together your IKEA furniture or even like I don't know a Lego set or a lamp or something versus you know reading a Hemingway book for example. Uh there's techniques where you know you're you're layering in a couple words, a short sentence, a long

12:42sentence, a short sentence, a couple words. And now it kind of creates almost like this wavelength where when you're saying it, it sounds poetic because it does have a certain rhythm and cadence to it. Now, we're not necessarily like counting syllables or um like rhyming every other uh every other line, but there is a rhythm and a flow to >> the copy. And especially the way that you're writing that on the website. Um, this is one of those things where it's like you don't want to go overboard and go into the clever over clear territory. We want to steer towards the clear over clever. Um but on the website the same way that you present that uh visual interest and complexity where you have the variability of different sections

13:31that should be represented in the copy as well where like hero section one big statement or question right below it. Now we have two contrasting columns. Then we have a couple like peppered back and forth. Then we might have a how it works section where it's, you know, >> long form. >> Something something short, something long, something short, something long, something short, something long, so on and so forth. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. It's about attention. Sorry. Go ahead. Sorry. >> No, that's good. >> Uh, what was your next hit? I think the third one, the contrast without red. >> Yeah. So, one of the things that I've realized as we've been designing a lot of websites is we we're big fans in that

14:11primer section of, you know, how your life sucks now and then how your life can be better. Um, or if you're doing some like competitor comparison and I think that the the default that most founders will go to is just make that all red X's, just red X's all over the place. even though red is completely outside your color palette and it's going to make your that particular section of your site is going to look really ugly and we had tried a bunch of different versions of this. setting that we started in the same camp of you know red being that color to show alarm and negativity and then we moved to trying to use a brand color that was contrast to something like you know with audience tap I tried putting negative things in

14:53orange and then positive things in purple but then that kind of created some problems because we were using a brand color of theirs to show negativity which I didn't want to do and then I came up with the better solution which was what if I just remove the color entirely from the bad version and have it be neutral. And I think that this is also emphasized in the Lord of the Rings, how you can show the enemy without having to be glaringly red. Instead, you can just make things void of color. And that is that creates the amount of contrast that you need between your brand colors and something else to convey the difference. And I noticed this same thing with the hobbits. They get ambushed by the ring rates. The

15:36hobbits are all wearing very warmly earthy folksy colors and all the ring wraiths are in black. So if you can just remove the color entirely, whether that's making it all white or gray or black, whatever kind of neutral is going to work with your brand colors, that's a better way to show negativity without being like, you know, the kind of scam type website design. Just red X's all over the the place. >> It's kind of a trope at this point, right? >> Trope. Yeah. You know what's so crazy is it's like really full circle because I'm just making this connection, but it feels so obvious to where like we've we've talked about how we've based some of our methodology and like our website formula and copyrightiting style on old

16:21uh 2000's infomercials, you know, right? When that same kind of template and formula of all the different things in the sequence especially. And it just clicked for me that a lot of times in those kinds of old infomercials when they would show the old way of doing things, it would often go to black and white. And I was like, "Oh, yeah." Like I totally forgot about that. >> Dude, you're right. Yeah. I cuz I remember that. It's a Wasn't there a necklace one? >> And I I I remember that. I also remember the egg one, too, where it's like it's a black and white >> footage of someone just cracking an egg. >> No freaking way. That's so cool. It also has a kind of a another >> uh another meaning or another angle to

17:05it could be like black and white especially with our generation is associated with like old times sort of the old way yeah the old way of doing things antiquity um >> you know lack of technology especially right so um I feel like that there's another that's another parallel or another way you could think about it >> I love that I remember the non-stick pans one where you're like oh these just like things slide off and then it shows someone like trying to clean their pan in the sink in black and white >> all over the place. >> It's so good. I love that. Um, okay. Let's talk about villains. Uh, the repeating villain theme. What the I I am intrigued just by the title of this one, so I want to hear it.

17:44>> I'm actually going to lump four and five together because they're they're both about villains. We're on a we're in the villain track right now of, you know, making them devoid of color. Um, points four and five are a repeating villain theme. and then introducing your villain early. So, I'm going to start with introducing the villain early because I think that that will tie in to point four better. It's actually better to tell the story going to the end and then going back to the beginning to only >> um so introducing the villain early. This is one of the things that we know is super important in all story and it's also important in marketing. You have to give people a reason to want to make an

18:28action and the only thing that causes that is pain. So pain is u it could be actually having a frustration or it could be the presence of a ominous lurking danger. And Lord of the Rings does this really well by showing you and walking you through the entire story of Sauron and him, you know, losing the battle, but then the ring still lives on and exists. So, you know that there is this looming threat going on all over the place. They do a really good job there. They also do a really good job um with Lerts, who is the leader of the Rukai, the you know, the the big baddy. He's the only one they focus on. He never he sorry he says one word no more words. He's very man very few a couple things. Yeah.

19:15>> Yeah. He says Sarroman and then find the halflings. >> Yeah. >> Exactly. >> So you know he you watch him literally get born and as soon as he's born he straight up kills somebody like he kills one of his um >> homies. >> Yeah. His orc dummies. And so if he hadn't been introduced like that, it wouldn't have been as big of a deal for Aragorn to defeat him when they uh when they fight the final, you know, the final battle in Fellowship of the Ring or for him to kill Boromir. So you have to introduce your villain early in order to give people a reason to be invested and want to see that villain vanquished and then it's a greater satisfaction when they are. You can compare this with Rings of Power because in Rings of Power

20:04there's this uh like one of the final battles where this giant orc comes. What's the the black elf's name? >> I don't know his name. Adar. Adar. No, that's the that's like No, no, no. That's He's the bad guy. Adar is a bad guy. >> Okay. Well, anyway, so Black Elf gets like backs up into this big big orc and then the orc just throws him and you're like, who cares? Because I don't know who that orc is. He's just some random orc on the battlefield and he just should have snapped his neck like from behind him. I have no investment in seeing this orc be defeated. Uh but when you introduce them early, then it's way more satisfying when they are defeated. The other thing I would suggest in this is having some kind of grander theme

20:49that you could tie your villain into, which is what is repeated throughout this movie is the battle between nature and industrialization. You see this with things like Arwin calling in the river to defeat the ring rates. The Urukai are bred unnaturally um unlike everybody else. There's the ants versus the machines. the um the eagle comes and rescues Gandalf from the iron tower in Eisenard. Um Eisenard deforests the entire you know area around them. So there is a bigger battle that's going on that you don't even realize is being won in small fights all throughout the the movie. >> Yeah, it's so good. And the like vision of like hell in the future is when Sam sees that the Shire just basically

21:39turned into this industrial. >> It's Froto who sees that. But yeah, >> or whatever. Sorry. He sees Sam in the vision. Okay. I got mixed up. >> Yes. >> I have to you. I hate you. Um No. Yeah, I totally agree. Sorry, Cory. You were going to You had You looked like you were waiting. Yeah, I was going to say maybe um it reminds me too of uh often times in the storytelling there will be like an exterior villain enemy like you know Darth Vader or uh Sauron or Sauron or the rain. >> Yeah, Thanos, right? But then you often also have an inner demon, an inner villain inside the protagonist that kind of mirrors uh that kind of represents the outer villain, right? So like Harry Potter, >> he's the last horcrux. Yeah. He has part

22:28of Voldemort. Luke is afraid of becoming like his father. >> Um you know, there's a lot of you even Frodo at the ring, right? he ends up kind of giving in to the temptation of the ring and wanting to >> uh wanting to indulge in it, right? So >> you have like the ring is this representation of power >> and Sarmon is you know the the powerful force um in a very similar way and in a way that's much less cool in marketing. um uh you know, you might have the exterior villain of a competitor or some force um some law, some thing that you kind of paint as the bad guy. >> But then there's also like, hey, within your organization, you need to fight mediocrity, you need to fight uh email overload, you need to fight um

23:24>> creative stagnation, you know, whatever it is, disorganization. >> Exactly. >> Exactly. And so there's kind of like two versions of that, two enemies. And when you bring up both of them and you can kind of tie those together, I think that's when it becomes a powerful story. It's not just like we're not just helping you slay the dragon, we're helping you slay your own inner demon, too. >> Yeah. Right. >> Yeah. It should be treated much less like a murder mystery. Like who's really bad here? It's like, no, it's obvious from the start that this is the the the thing that we're all fighting against. Like I there's, you know, plenty of movies where it's like we don't know who did it and then at the end you kind of

24:04reveal that. Um that's not the vibe we're going for. Like you'll even see that kind of I feel like with a lot of the sites that we build and a lot of the marketing material that is created by us is like early on homepage, it's like problem solution type verbiage, before and after type verbiage. Uh it's that's super good. Uh, I think you had one or two more points, Zach, before we >> I do. I have two more. So, I'm going to go to number seven and then I'll come back to number six because I didn't order these properly, but go through. Uh, my next point is that uh you get differentiation through like a cultural context. So even within your own market, let's say that you are like an ESP, uh there's not a whole lot you can do

24:53like that would make you palpably different from all your competitors. Like you you run into this problem where like your competitors do a decent job at having a similar product to you. So the way that you have to differentiate is through details. And I think that a good way to do this is also through through personality. And what made me think of this in Lord of the Rings was all the good guys are united on the same front of, you know, beating the bad guy, but they all go about it in a very different way. And some people, I think, resonate more with different cultures and races within this movie than others. And I have some examples like Gondor and Rohan are both um cultures uh kingdoms of men, but even

25:39they feel very different. Gondor is very minimal in its presence. It's very noble and regal. There's a lot of stone. Navy is its main color. It's very institutional. It's a legacy brand. It's the one that you go to. It's like we've been here forever. We have all the records. We have this giant castle of Minister. Compare that to Rohan, which has a little bit more of a heritage type brand. It's from a rugged and human and it's derived from these Celtic knots. There's colors that are different. Um, and they have this, you know, different spirit about them that is really unique. You know, they're the ones that chant death before they charge into battle and they're just going for it. So, it's a it's a different type of personality.

26:20And you have even greater contrast with things like the dwarves where their personality is very logical and industrial and precise. And you see this with the way that like their armor is made and their weapons and the the geometry the heaviness and the um you know they're very dense and thick kind of like you know it's one of Gimley's uh flaws as a character and you have the elves that are very organic and flowy and luminous and there's this element of luxury and refinement where you know even like their fighting styles Aragorn is very I'm going to get in and cut like that's just that's what I'm going before where Legololis is doing like twirls. It's almost like ballet when he fights. And then you have the hobbits

27:03that are, you know, the folksy lifestyle everyman type uh brand of people. These are all good guys doing the same like on the same mission. There's still a lot of difference and resonance between them for different types of people. >> I love evaluating the brands, the Lord of the Rings brands. So yeah, I'm just like thinking about all the visuals for all those and it's it's awesome. Did you identify with one of them when you were a kid? like, "Oh, Gondor's sick." >> Uh, everybody wanted to be legless when they were a kid. >> Not me, dude. I want to be >> He's one He's the one that slides down stairs on a shield and it's just, you know, taking out orcs, man. Like, dude's a badass. >> I had a personal affinity for Gondor

27:47myself for the race of men. That wasn't Riant. But anyway, >> that's super super nerdy dive in on that one. I don't expect there to be much follow-up on that one. Okay, give me number six. Wrap it up. >> This is actually point seven if we're going chronologically, but >> Okay, you were the ones who told me we were out of order. >> Oh, no, I know. I know. I saved this planet for last because it is my core ethos, which is great brands aren't created, they're stolen. And what that means is that it's the things that you experience and your ability to interject that into your product that will make it magnitudinally different than everybody else. You see this with the way Tolken tells his story. I have some very

28:28specific examples of things that Tolken experienced that influenced his writing. First, um, places, you know, uh, if you have ever been to Louder Bronin in Switzerland and if you stand at it at certain points and you look down and then you see this image of Rivendell in the movie, it's almost identical. like you get the idea of what he was going for when you read about it and when you see it in a movie, what he was trying to reminisce about when visiting a place in Switzerland. Same thing with the mountains. You look at the mountains in the Swiss Alps and there's no difference between the way that they look and the way the mountains look in the Lord of the Rings movies because it had such a profound impact on him, the topography

29:16of that environment. There's even things like the British class system where you have these like different representations of people groups that are represented through the different races of Tolken's stories like the the nobility um the lords the the generals the peasants the common folk the all the different people represented by the characters in his his books and in his writings most specifically you can even see like Sam Wise Gamji is the epitome of a world War I soldier who all they wanted to do was have a family be in a pub, eat good food, and yet they're called to go fight Germany in the trenches and do this like find a version of themselves they didn't even know was there or possible. So

30:06there's a branding parallel there and a marketing parallel there where your experience matters and the way that you see this problem to be solved and how you want to solve it. The perspective you have and the emotional resonance that comes with that is invaluable as far as differentiating your product. So use it because if it works for movies, it could work for you too. >> I think that's a good way to end. >> Bars. Um, okay. Last thing before we go. Um, other than Star Wars, what is another movie or franchise that we should do a marketing deep dive on? Dune. >> Dune. Marty Supreme. >> Dune. Game of Thrones. Breaking Bad. Um, >> Breaking Bad would be interesting. Like >> that would be a really good one.

30:57>> Yeah. Salesled salesled approach versus uh >> Harry growth. >> Harry Potter is also a good one. >> Dude, Breaking Bad is a great PLG uh PLG um story. Cocaine, the original PLG or no meth. >> Meth. His was blue, dude. It was the purest. That's ultimate PLG. >> Interesting. >> Growth loop. People are like, "What is that blue meth you have?" >> Okay. Yeah, I think Breaking Bad is probably the next best one. >> All right. >> All right. Uh, thank you for joining. We will see you on the next episode. And peace out. >> Peace later.