Why A Quiet Place is a great piece of content ? (A Digital Marketing eye on silence)

Other than dominating the movie theaters by becoming the number 1 movie in USA,
getting recognized by the king of horror himself,
being the second highest domestic opening of the year.

A Quiet Place is a great piece of content and digital marketers can view this movie
not just as a successful cinematic experience but a great piece of content as well.

According to Think With Google there has been 60% Growth in mobile searches
for "__ for me" in the past two years and 80% Growth in mobile searches for "__ should I __" in the past two years.

This leads to more personal and intimate approach of marketing,
where the audience receive tailored marketing message that fits their personal criteria.

Even the B2B world is adapting this personal approach through
ABM (Account Based Marketing);
ABM is when an organization takes an individual prospect or customer account
-- these are companies, not individual people -- and treats it like its very own market,
or a market of one.

In this post I am looking at two factors that made this piece of content uniquely different.

personalized content and the way that the audience consumed the content.

Personal vs. Personalized Content

With the rise of personal search
comes a rise of personal content & personal marketing campaigns.

A Quiet Place has created a personalized not personal experience,
the actors didn't call upon the audience by name,
instead they have invited the audience to share the experience
with the small family since scene one.

The first line that the audience read is day 89
then a cut into more or less of a ghost town then another cut into a wall of missing people.

This is not personal content yet it is deeply personalized,

as you as a part of the audience is invited to write the beginning of this story,
you get to create a personalized story based on personal experience.

If you believe in aliens then that's day 89 after the invasion,
if you lean towards dystopian apocalyptic nuclear war world,
then that's day 89 after the incident happened.

 

This is an open invitation throughout the movie,
you unfold the story with the characters of the movie,
the deep silence lets you decide the danger sources,why does this family the way they do?

Being part of the story plays an even bigger role in the second point;
which how the content was consumed in the film?

Content Consumption

Neurologists identify nine or more human senses, and some list as many as twenty one.
Some of these other senses are the sense of balance,
the proprioception sense which is the ability to tell where your body parts are,
relative to other body parts.

One of the senses that was very active during the movie were the Tension Sensors:
These are found in such places as your muscles
and allow the brain the ability to monitor muscle tension,
by not relying fully on visual triggers;
the film allowed the audience to consume the content differently.

In the age of massive video content production,
the thumb stoppers, the scroll blockers and the extremely polished shiny superheros,
this movie was able to transform the experience
from visually stimulating to cinematically pleasing.

Part of telling a good story is to manage expectations,
one of the ways for digital content creators to manage the audience expectations
is through the way these audience consume their content.

If a brand is choosing to implement a specific digital tactic like live-streaming features,
ephemeral content,UGC, podcasting. How this story will be delivered,
consumed and most importantly felt by the audience is vital.

A Quiet Place created an immersive state.

Every close-up, every subtle gesture,
every facial expression meant something to both the audience and to the storytellers.

If the question brands are asking is what reaction we would like to get from the audience?

What emotion we would like to evoke producing this content?

Then start by watching A Quiet Place.

Written by: Fouad Khafaga
Twitter: @Fouad_Khafaga