I don’t know who wrote the screenplay for Men In Black or who arranged the main hit song, but I can tell you why the project worked.
MIB was an amazing Blockbuster for many reasons. There was this great star character some of us knew from the show Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. That show about a family of color living in a colonial mansion overcame social boundaries and set the scene for a different political environment, which allowed someone of color to come into the limelight, quick example of building block marketing.
The way to measure if a short or long term marketing campaign is working is by measuring target market response. Before marketing anything, be it political agenda, piece of music, sandwich like Subway, intellectual property like a program etc., teams have to consider the target market. They must answer the question, who all is going to respond the way needed and how will that response be controlled to achieve goals?
One way to predict future performance of a market is by using building block marketing. The MIB movie is a clear example of building block marketing, a term I use to describe mainstream building blocks of marketing previously set in place by successful branding, image promotion, and advertisement.
In order to market a story, a market must preexist. MIB makes an entertaining claim that there’s aliens among us. Selling MIB tickets meant determining what market would be most intrigued with alien patrolling based on their interests and lassoing that group and more groups in.
Facts point to the direction of something else existing in our universe.
Genetic research from from the 90s even furthered the worldwide belief that there is otherworldly existence. Men In Black was able to build on that public belief in a way that brought imaginations to life.
Casting Will Smith, the popular Fresh Prince of Bel-Air character was an obvious and “perfect” choice, especially with having the building blocks of prior acting as a cop, Bad Boys and with invader aliens, Independence Day.
The Secret Service get up as a costume was another building block for the MIB typeset. Their black suits made it believable that they were actually part of a secret government agency patrolling aliens. The projected response indicated a strong likelihood of the target market accepting the Men In Black movie.
Men In Black craftfully used media as marketing building blocks. Popular music has a strong root in the emotional pull from the American public. Memory, like music, plays forward into time. When we remember music, we recall the rhythm. So even when we’re not listening to a song, we can still remember how it goes without hearing it.
Hearing a remix of a popular song brings to memory the version remembered, but then creates a unique memory for the new version. Playing on this phenomenon adds familiarity to the new work, raising the likelihood of organic popularity. Accomplishing this, as Whitney Houston did with I Will Always Love You, takes talent.
The Men in Black song made famous by Will Smith/Fresh Prince was a remake of another song. Part of the chorus lyrics go, “Send me forget me nots, if you want me to remember”. And if you’re a fan of the MIB movie(s) you probably remember the little “flashy thing” that Agent J was captivated by and somewhat a conscientious objector to using.
In the movie, Agent J expresses how he didn’t really think it was right to use the “flashy thing” to just remove part of the civilians’ memories about alien encounters. This is where fiction meets reality and the question of right to memory rhetorically stirs the audience. In a fictional world, conscientious objectivity adds a real feel to the entertainment ride.
Memory in Hollywood and real life is the nucleus of worthwhile existence. Memories define who we are. More importantly, memory is our guide to time measurement and the fact that we must recall memories proves that time travels forward. The retrieval of memory is our ability to connect our current experiences with relative experience.
The idea of sending forget me nots, supports the entire concept of the movie on a subconscious level. The sense of smell is probably the strongest reminder that brings memory cells into conscious focus. The lyrics to MIB flow along a similar beat, but instead of requesting flowers for memory they assure you remembering may be a battle.
Marketing can plant definitions that result in an intended outcome, an unintended response or a predictable response, which is what occurred with the Men In Black movie. Responses are subjected to variables, which means movie marketing must compete with other movies symultaneuosly marketing that may distract or deter from individual project marketing successes.
Marketing can mathematically trigger a response on a macroscopic level. Social triggers evoke a response if a large population has a strong memory of catastrophic proportion, which also brings up emotional memories built on overtime. And usually, for those that were actually traumatized, that marketing can be retraumatizing. Social responsibilities remain an issue of negligence in marketing.
Building on social marketing building blocks that were already successes of others is not the same as plagiarism. Plagiarism is where a person or group of people steal ideas, concepts, specific titles or details and descriptions from another writer without permission or agreement.
Plagiarism is a type of forgery similar to stealing someone’s mail and taking information unintended for the thief. This is unfair competition, because the work belongs to someone else. If published, the tapestry becomes public deception. Chronic thievery of artist/writer work stems from forged access to such works through technological means, but many publishing houses also take advantage of submissions and will run off with original themes.
Social Equity law would call for ethical review of artist works and artist payment from submitted pieces. It will also limit government technological access to email, cloud storage, calls, messaging and social media networks to only be used for necessary threats and not for the private use of former office holders. If made law, Secret Service will also have to disclose their name to civilians and have a traceable chain of command, like all other officers of the law.
Social Equity Bill 