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I would imagine most readers of Comtech News have seen the 90's classic movie known as Office Space.  The movie is one of the true cult classics of all time and tells the story of three men working for a software company going through a down sizing.  It is a story of incompetent management and the typical life of everyday 9-5 employees.

Built in are several sub plots including the total beat down of a hated office printer, a virus used to embezzle company funds and a bit of a love story.  Over all it is just a pretty good comedy with a lot of "everyday people" feel to it.  Watching it anyone who has ever been in a typical corporate America job can spot parts of their life.  This "every person"  connection is to me the reason why the movie has enjoyed such a cult following despite a lack luster performance in theaters when it was originally released.

If you have never seen this movie I highly recommend you rent it some evening and just sit back and enjoy a few hours of laughs. So what does this have to do with a lesson in marketing?  Well, one thing that seem to happen to any popular film today is fans do their own trailers, tributes or spoofs about them and post them on YouTube.  I found a pile of Office Space "recut" trailers on YouTube and want to share three of them with you.  They are all surprisingly well done and can teach us a lot about marketing and how powerful positioning can be.

The important things to understand as you watch these three clips are….

• All the clips are actually from the movie
• The only outside additions are a few sound effects, some text, background narration and music
• Many of the "clips" that make up the three versions are the same in all three

So here we go…..

The first video presents Office Space as a Slasher/Thriller.

The second video presents Office Space as a Life Melodrama - With a Very Cool Background Track

 The third video presents Office Space as a Crime Mystery Thriller

Now if you watch all three trailers you will get three very different views into what this movie is actually about.  None of them are really what the movie was meant to be but with a bit of polishing all three could be shown to people who have never seen the movie before and would be believable as movie trailers.

Now this is where it gets really interesting!  The Slasher/Thriller trailer is well done but over the top, it really is nothing like the actual movie and if you used a version of it to promote the movie I dare say those who went to see it would feel misled.  If you have seen this movie though you will realize something pretty damn cool.  The Second and Third trailers actually present the movie quite accurately!  They have two very different views into the story but with just a few tweaks I think you could actually have used either one to promote this movie and the people who went to see it would have gotten exactly what they expected.

How can this be possible?  As a marketer you have to understand that the mind sees to a large degree what it wants to see.  The movie itself is truly a few stories wrapped together.  It is definitely the story of three men who learn about what is important to them and find their own version of happiness by the end.  Each must find their own way and decide how to live life in the way that is best for them.  Equally there is the story of three men who feel manipulated and used by a corporate system, they hatch a plan to embezzle money from the company, the plan goes bad and they all face the fear of going to jail along the way.

The second and third trailers simply focus on these two different sub plots and I submit that if a viewer saw this movie for the first time after being primed to expect a criminal mystery or life changing drama that is exactly what they would see.  This tells us a very deep lesson about marketing.  Not only can marketing effect how a customer perceives a product prior to purchase but how they perceive it even after they buy and use it.  So when you position a product or service you have to take this into account.

Most of the time marketers do think about this from one angle.  They don't want to emulate trailer number one (that is why I included it) and promise something they can't deliver.  That creates unhappy customers that don't buy again.  Yet how many think about this from the other side.  How can you market and position your product so that it positively effects the perception after it is purchased?  How do you market a product or service to attract a specific type of customer that is easiest to satisfy or represents a win fall opportunity or new vertical market?  How can you do this in such a way that your new customers get exactly what they want even though they were not the original audience the product was created for?

I find it quite interesting that a simple spoof of a classic cult movie can create a new paradigm on marketing for those who want to see it.  So there you go a lesson in marketing where it was never intended to be seen, this post in fact is not just a description of the process but the process itself in action.

~ Jack Spirko

Technorati Tags: office space, youtube, video marketing, online marketing, business, product positioning, viral marketing, branding

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