Living The Red Life - From Slap to Spotlight : Will Smith's Marketing Secrets

Episode Date: July 4, 2024

In today's episode, i delve into marketing lessons drawn from Will Smith's promotional strategies, particularly in light of his recent activities. The persistence and relentless efforts seen in the marketing campaigns of Smith and Martin Lawrence for the "Bad Boys" franchise are insane. Key lessons include the need for constant promotional efforts and the benefits of maintaining a high level of visibility, even during times of controversy or fluctuating popularity. Major figures like Will Smith and entrepreneurs alike can thrive by consistently putting themselves out there and staying active in their promotional activities.The episode continues with a detailed exploration of Will Smith's recent marketing strategies. I discuss various tactics Smith has employed to rejuvenate his brand, such as a viral movie theatre visit and leveraging global promotional tours. Behind-the-scenes content is crucial and it can engage audiences by providing an insider look at the filmmaking process. Furthermore, they touch on the power of social media and celebrity partnerships in amplifying promotional reach. The podcast concludes by contrasting comprehensive marketing efforts with minimal approaches, illustrating how robust, all-in strategies can lead to more successful product launches and greater audience engagement.CHAPTERS1:12 - Introduction to Marketing Lessons from Will Smith2:18 - The Persistence of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence3:19 - Lesson 1: Relentless Effort in Promotion4:14 - Importance of Consistent Self-Promotion5:54 - Marketing Insights from Top Brands7:21 - Self-Assessment in Marketing Efforts8:47 - Will Smith’s Strategy Post-Controversy9:34 - Viral Marketing: The Movie Theatre Stunt11:00 - Global Promotion: Red Carpet World Tour12:33 - Behind the Scenes Content as a Marketing Tool 14:22 - Teasing Production Techniques15:23 - Leveraging Social Media and Other Platforms16:04 - Celebrity Cameos and Strategic Partnerships17:31 - Comprehensive Marketing Strategies18:03 - All-In vs. Minimal Effort in Product Launches Connect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedInInstagramFacebookTwitter

Will Smith, arguably one of the most famous actors in the world, and Martin Lawrence not far behind. This is their fourth run, very popular franchise, billion dollar production studio behind them, okay, and they're still out there grinding. Obviously, Will Smith had a bleep on the radar along the way, and he knows this is a great opportunity to revive his brand and really elevate his brand after all of those things that happened. I think he's really pulled together a master class in marketing, like hustling from day one, behind the scenes exclusives, consistent content, just posting clips for the last six months or so, using influencers, celebrities, and cameos in the movie. And this goes beyond, obviously, they've got billboards, they've got ads, they've done all the normal stuff. I haven't even mentioned that, right? Because that's kind of a given. And I think

one of the biggest lessons that I, you know, I want to shake some of the people I coach and some entrepreneurs I know is... My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast, and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. What's up guys, welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. Today we're gonna talk about marketing lessons

from the man himself, Will Smith. Bad Boys, new movie has come out. This is number four and it's come out with a blast. And I wanna take away some lessons that you can apply into your brand from this hit, right? This has become one of the biggest movies of the summer already. And there's some secrets inside there that I think will really resonate

with every single entrepreneur and some hard lessons that you have to swallow to move forward, okay? So let's take a step back, right? Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, they've been doing this for about 30 years. The first Bad Boys movie is very old now, nearly as old as me. However, they are still grinding. They've built brands over the years, very, very successful brands.

Obviously, Will Smith had a bleep on the radar along the way, like many entrepreneurs will, but their brands have continued to grow. And now they've released the newest movie for Bad Boys, and it's become a big hit. But what I want you guys to pay attention to are some of the lessons, and most importantly, the effort and intention that went into making this a hit, right? Now, they could have been like every other movie, where it gets released, they rely on the production studio, right, to do all the promotion. They sit back, maybe do an Instagram post and attend the red carpet. That's how most movies are, okay?

And I actually have learned a lot about what goes into TV and movie launches because my new TV show comes out in about six weeks' time and we're doing a lot of the pre-promotion for it now. I'm going on podcasts, I've got billboards in Times Square coming out soon, I've got to go on news shows. So if you want to do it the right way, which is what I'm doing, there's a lot of grind. Now if you're worth 200 million dollars or a billion dollars and you're a movie star, you might not put in the grind. But this is why I'm filming today's episode, because Will Smith did, even though arguably financially neither of them needed to. But there's some great lessons in here. So the first lesson is these guys didn't need to put in all

this effort and intention to bring out the, you know, to really promote the new release. But they still did. And I think one of the biggest lessons that I, you know, I want to shake some of the people I coach and some entrepreneurs I know, is they've been doing this 30 years, Will Smith arguably one of the most famous actors in the world, and Martin Lawrence not far behind, but after 30 years, lots of money in the bank account,

more than many of us will ever have, right? Or high net worth than many of us will ever have, they're still out there grinding, okay? And the difference with those guys versus maybe yourself is you put up a few social media posts, you run a couple of grand in ads, you tell some friends and family, and then you sit there and wonder, why has my brand not taken off? Guys, look in the mirror right now. 30 years, right will smith's been around uh for you know they've been doing this this is their fourth run very popular franchise billion dollar production studio behind them okay and they're still out there grinding will smith and i'm going to break

down what some of the things they're doing but But Will Smith is literally going and being behind the scenes in the movie theaters, watching it to surprise guests. He's teasing it on his social media. He doesn't have to do these things. He's choosing to do these things to promote the new movie. And a lot of you do a few posts on Instagram to your 2,000 followers. You run a couple of ads. You send a couple of emails to your smallest, and then you sit there and wonder, why is my brand not growing? Why don't people buy my stuff? So look in the mirror and shake yourself a little, listening to this. That is why, guys, there is no day off. There is no rest. There is no, I don't need to promote more, right? And take, you know, I learned this early on from Grant Cardone, and he reminds me of it every time I go see him.

He is nonstop promote, promote, promote. And a couple of years ago, I was hanging out with him at a private event. And he, you know, he was saying to me and a few of the other top entrepreneurs, marketers, he's like, you know, he said, my job, right, I have the guys run the company. My number one job is to promote, right? If sales are down, I got to promote. If a product's not doing well, I've got to promote, right? And he gets it, right? He's worth a lot of money like Will Smith, right? He gets it, but he's still out there promoting, right? You'll see him on his social media. He's doing a selfie video promoting a product. He's doing an Instagram post

promoting a product. He's not afraid to do it. But most of you out there that aren't making tens of millions, let alone hundreds of millions, are too afraid to promote. You think that the traffic's going to come to you. You think the people are going to come to you. You think your brand's going to become well-known. It's never going to stop, okay? Another graphic I like to use when I teach Facebook ads is I have this really cool graphic

where it shows advertising spend by billion dollar brand, right? I recommend you Google this at the end of the show. Go to Google and Google advertising spend by like large brand, right? Or Fortune 500 brand. A lot of the biggest Fortune 500 brands in the world, Coca-Cola, Verizon, Nike, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, all of these Tesla, all of these big brands, right? They're spending around one to three billion dollars on ads every year. Let me just say that one more time. One to three billion dollars a year on ads. And they're one of the biggest companies in the world with like a 90 percent household reputation, which means 90 percent of the households in America know who they are, right? You don't have that. You're not

spending $4 billion on ads, right? You're not out like Will Smith is sat in the back of a movie theater trying to, you know, creating this viral reel where you surprise everyone after that then gets millions of free impressions free. And I will get to that in a minute, right? So that should be a bit of a wake up call because, and I'm not here trying to be a hypocrite like it again it reminded me as i really you're slacking off really you're lazy what are you doing you see will smith doing this you're not you're not doing that shit right so i let this shake you up a little and go wow i am i am at 0.001 percent of where i should be in promoting my brand right and that's why i'm so aggressive in like trying to be everywhere. I call it omnipresence marketing, right? That's kind of what it's termed as in my industry. I'm on magazines. I'm going to be on billboards in Times Square. I have a new TV show

coming out on a major streaming platform. I'm already filming a second TV show. I have this podcast. I'm launching a second podcast. I have over a million followers on social media. We try and post on every platform. I'm hanging out with all the biggest influencers. I'm flying to Colombia next week to speak on stage. I did a live the week before to 30,000 people around the world. I fly from Colombia to New York because I'm getting an award for 40 under 40, right? It doesn't stop. So I'm like, go, go, go, go, go. And I'm still not doing enough. I'm still not doing enough. Right. So think to yourself, how can I do more? How can I stop sitting around expecting it to happen for me? It's now going to happen for you. It's only going to happen when you make it happen. OK, so use this motivation today and this lesson from Will Smith to never give up, never stop and know 100% of growing the brand is 100% on you, okay? Don't rely, Will Smith's not relying on the movie studio, he's not relying on the brand

name, he's not relying on Martin Lawrence, he's relying on him, right? And why? Probably obviously because some of it is to do with what happened a couple of years ago or a year or two ago and he knows this is a great opportunity to revive his brand and really elevate his brand after all of those things that happened, right? He's not sleeping on this opportunity. So I hope that first half of this episode was a bit of a wake-up call and motivates you a little, because it motivated me,

motivates you a little to go out there and do more, okay? And if you want help on branding, PR, media, marketing, ads, just Instagram me, happy to send you some free stuff. If you wanna go leave a, PR, media, marketing, ads, just Instagram me. Happy to send you some free stuff. If you want to go leave a review right now, screenshot it. I'll actually send you an entire course. It's like a master course, mega bundle, where it's got dozens of my courses in worth over $1,000 if you bought them all separately.

And it teaches a bunch of this stuff. 100% free. Just go give me a review, screenshot it, DM me, and I'll send you that. And that will actually help you get started on a lot of these things, okay? Now, let's talk for the second half, the transition into what is he actually doing and what lessons do you have? Well, first one, which I have talked about already a couple of times, is how he's going into a movie theater, right? And there's a video of this on Instagram and socials or Google, Google it.

And he sits at the back of the movie theater with a mask on. The entire show doesn't say, no one knows who he's there, doesn't say anything. Then he walks outside and everyone's talking about it at the end and then he takes the mask off and everyone realizes. Then of course, everyone freaks out.

They're taking selfie videos. Now, if you're sat there and I am sat there, this is an entrepreneur going ROI for time, right? We're always thinking about this. What's the ROI for our time? He isn't doing that because he wants to impress 200 people in the movie theater, right?

Maybe he is a little because it's a nice thing. It's a cool thing to do to have, you know, to be able to give that experience. But he's smart, right? He hasn't become this successful by not being smart. He knows that clip will go viral. That's the goal right there, right? It's called guerrilla marketing where he's doing something extreme to create a viral

effect without spending a lot of money. How much did that cost? $10 for a movie ticket, which you probably didn't pay for because when he went, they probably gave him a free ticket, which you probably didn't pay for because when he went, they probably gave him a free ticket to his own movie, right? But it's guerrilla marketing at its finest because that did go viral. If you go check now, it's got millions of views and it gives people a nice feeling about Will Smith after what happened a couple of years ago, right? So it gives that great feeling, which is part of him regrowing his brand and strengthening

his brand after everything that happened too so it's achieving two things virality for the movie and that good warm nice will smith feeling why many people followed him in the first place because he's this nice friendly you know character right so uh that's one example at its finest right and you should be looking at that and going, how could I do something like this? How could I do something where I mix with my audience or I go and show my audience I care? Think about that. Second thing they did, massive world tour. The last two or three weeks, I follow him on social media and he's been in Dubai, he's been all around the world, going to these red carpet events all around the world.

This mass media tour, every place he's gone, thousands of people have shown up. It's gone viral on social media and all the news stations in that country have picked it up. Right. So, again, it's not costing him. It's costing him his time and obviously travel costs, right, which the studio are paying for. So it doesn't really cost him anything. But he's getting millions and millions and millions of free impressions from the publicity created from social media, from people sharing it, from the news stations in the local city and probably the entire country, right? Picking all of that up so it's again it's really really strong pr and branding for effect for him without having to spend a bunch of money on it okay next thing that i want to talk to you about behind the scenes content it's very rare that celebrities do a lot

of behind the scenes content in movies even when i shot my tv show that comes out in six weeks part of our contracts are we can't leak much right so when I did I did do some behind the scenes around Christmas last year if you go back and look all of December January which were the two main shoot months I did a lot of like behind the scenes but I couldn't ever show the name so if you go look strategically every the name was blurred out or cut out of all the clips. And I couldn't say where the show's being streamed, the release date, anything like that, right? I still actually can't, which is why I haven't mentioned the streaming platform until about three, four weeks out.

So, you know, there are limitations with pre-promotion and behind the scenes, but he's done an amazing job and obviously he probably had to get permission for this but he's done an amazing job in the pre-promotion and behind the scenes of the movie and one of the most iconic behind the scenes clips he did which you can see online too if you missed it is he does this really cool behind the scenes where he shows and obviously the production firm were involved in this the studio where he shows how and obviously the production firm were involved in this, the studio, where he shows how they film the gun scenes, and he's actually got this gimbal mount attached to his body with the camera, where it, you know, it's attached to his body and extended out, and it rotates around,

and it's just, you know, it's behind the scenes footage of him shooting the scene, and then it's showing how that actually looks in the movie. And it's very rare for a movie to do that where they actually show the behind the scenes of how they film a clip and then how it looks in reality. They like to keep that secret most of the time. And again, this clip went viral. It's got millions and millions of views, free promotion because they did something a little different. They teased it, they showed the scene. And for a lot of people, it's, you know, obviously I work more in TV and production now, so I understand this stuff, but most people have never seen anything like that. They don't understand how they film those scenes. So I think a lot of people are really, you know, enticed by like, wow, that's actually how this comes alive. So he was

able to give people a hidden behind the scenes look as the name suggests and take the fans and the audience to this sort of preview right so think about how can you do that how can you let people inside and pull back the curtains like he did here and kind of give people this preview of like what's to come or how this works which they don't normally see right and this and you know and it could be how you make the makeup, taking them in the factory, right? This could be how you make the food product. This could be how you train a celebrity if you're a celebrity trainer. This could be for me how I launch a celebrity brand and all those things, right? So stuff where you can pull back the curtains and show them the stuff they don't

actually see works very, very well for him, him okay and then on top of these you know these are a few more specific guerrilla marketing examples but they've done a lot of um instagram stories instagram content and another thing that i think he's done really well off to finish today is leveraging other celebrities so a lot of other celebrities they're either friends he actually has some of them in the show, in the movie, right? Little cameos, because he knows those little cameos instantly creates promotion. So if he has a famous celebrity in just for five seconds, he's now going to get that celebrity to promote it to 100 million people, right?

And if he has another celebrity in for 10 seconds, another 50 million promotions over here. So I think they were strategic with who they had on the movie, and obviously some of it was they wanted those characters, but I believe more of it was they wanted the celebrity in it for the ripple effect and promotion that goes around it. And then I think the extension of that, leveraging celebrities and influencers and friends and affiliates,

is basically what he's done. He's called in favors. He's got everyone on board that still support him. And I think a lot of his closer friends and people know he had, obviously, a rough 18 months or two years or whatever. So they're on board to help him with this kind of more comeback movie right which i think he deserves like i you know i i mean he got hit pretty hard for what happened um and i'm excited to see how this does for him and how it revives his brand but i think he's he's really

pulled together a master class in marketing like hustling from day one behind the scenes exclusives consistent content just posting clips for the last six months or so um using influencers celebrities and cameos in the movie and then having celebrities um you know actually just promoting it as a favor and then like i said the guerrilla marketing strategies that are less normal, where he was actually behind the scenes in a show, right? Traveling the world, doing all these red carpet events, more than a typical movie would do. So just really, really good all-round marketing plan there. And this goes beyond, obviously, they've got billboards, they've got ads, they've done all the normal stuff. I haven't even mentioned that, right? Because that's kind of a given so really all-round well

produced marketing plan here and they're already seeing results I mean it's going to be one of the biggest shows of the year if it's not already and this is obviously amazing for his brand and I really think this is great for you as an entrepreneur because it shows the difference between between so it shows the difference between hey this it shows the difference between, hey, this is a normal product I'm launching. I'm posting about it a couple of times, emailing my list and running some ads versus this is a product that I'm gonna go all in on, right?

And I've done both, don't get me wrong. I'm not perfect by any means. I've done the all in product and they've always gone really good. And then I've done the ones where I just like, we launch, I'm busy, I'm doing other stuff. We launch it and the team run it and if it's a great offer it still does well sometimes but often it won't do well right so

obviously like most things in life you get out what you put in but hopefully a bit of a wake-up call for you to say I need to be more like Will Smith I'm not Will Smith famous I'm not bad boys famous I'm not Martin Lawrence famous I don't have a billion dollar movie studio behind me I got a goal in like this every single time because it's your job to promote the brand if you aren't willing to do it And go all in like he is every single time you'll never have a strong brand like he does and never have a famous brand Okay, so go all in never stop promoting And I hope you enjoyed today's episode got some lessons and a little motivation to promote, promote, promote, guys. That's a wrap. Remember, leave a review if you want access to

all those courses where I actually teach a lot of this. I would love to give you them away for free. Just screenshot, Instagram me at RudyMoreLife and I will see you guys very soon. Take care and keep living the red light. Thanks for watching!