Friday, April 12, 2013
Info You Can Use: Pixar Pitch
Butts In the Seats: Yesterday I linked to a recent post by Barry Hessenius about gatekeepers and he mentioned that Hollywood had developed a pitch system where people without the connections to get a real meeting were afforded a short time to pitch an idea.
Apropos to this, Daniel Pink made a short video about six new pitches for selling yourself, ideas, etc.
He talks a little bit about how email subject lines are really pitches and makes some suggestions about rhyming pitches (which I can see will be effective you if you don’t go full Seuss). He also notes that questions are much more active and engaging than making statements.
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4 comments:
The Pixar Pitch. That in itself is quite a catchy name. It's true that in most previews for Pixar movies, this generic pitch can be found without looking too hard, and at sometimes seems a little hackneyed and transparent. Yet it is definitely a wonderful starting block. If you don't know how to connect to an audience or come up with a good idea, this is a good way to organize your thoughts and make your jumbled thoughts coherent. Questions, too, are wonderful at bringing out the true spark of an idea, and at connecting with people because they inherently make people think about themselves.
I really like idea that there are different ways to pitch ideas than the standard elevator speech. The danger with the Pixar pitch, however, might be giving away too much. It depends on the story you're telling, but often when yo pitch something (particularly when advertising) you don't want to give away plot twists or the ending, so this method is imperfect. In those cases, the first parts of this must stand on their own.
Re: Brian, even Pixar keeps most of the complications hidden away (all we knew about Finding Nemo before the fact was that it's a journey for a father to find his son set in the ocean around Australia, and the implication that it would work out), but they give away enough to spark interest (which does include some rising actions). I feel like in your creative pitches, you need to feel comfortable with giving away the ending of the story, because the people you're pitching to are looking to buy the story on the merits of all its elements (beginning to conclusion). It really depends on who you're pitching to - in a preliminary pitch, maybe you want to cloud some secrecy, but need to give a vague sense of where you're heading, whereas in followups or in big-wig meetings, you just need to get to the point and explain where you're going.
More and more, the way to hook consumers and others is to focus on interactivity. The most interesting part of this article to me, is the use of questions in order to focus and engage. It's the balance between being general enough to allow for participation, but being direct enough to not lose attention.
This pitch struggle extends to all marketing and angle of user platforms. We are a generation that wants the freedom to maneuver one-time deals and create our own products, but have information handed to us in small easy condensed packages. Clarity and control.
How do you motivate the user and consumer to engage. Is it rhyming? There seem to be waves of audience driven or created works, but we would also love to sit back and disengage. Do you have to appeal to only one of those sensibilities or is there a way to straddle the line?
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