The scenes from the original “Top Gun” have become mainstays in Americana culture. After an almost 40-year break, its sequel, “Top Gun: Maverick,” recently passed the $700-million mark in North America and $1.4 billion worldwide, edging out golden-age Marvel fare “Black Panther” as the fifth-highest-grossing movie ever. This success wasn’t an accident; the film was backed by a unique marketing strategy that showed business acumen.
As someone who has worked in marketing and media for more than a decade, it’s hard not to see the connections everywhere I go. That was never more true than when I sat down to watch “Top Gun: Maverick” with my son a few months ago. I loved “Top Gun” when I was young, but when I watched the new installment through the lens of a marketer, it was hard for me not to notice the lessons I’ve learned during my career reflected in this movie’s marketing campaign.
Here’s how you can craft an effective marketing campaign to hype and excite audiences with lessons from Hollywood:
Patience Pays Off
Breaking the mold from cash-grab sequels and tiresome reboots, the release of “Maverick” seemed to show patience in Hollywood while still staying true to the original, riding a wave of ’80s nostalgia. Kids are wearing styles we thought we’d never see again, and parents who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s are eager to relive their childhood. “Maverick” was timed as a throwback summer blockbuster for a Gen X crowd with kids, fond memories and disposable income. It also took advantage of a populace eager to return to theaters after Covid-era restrictions. Covid pushed back its release date, but the movie didn’t move to a streaming platform to keep its debut timeline, waiting instead for a theater release.
Patience pays off for any team behind a product — or movie. This success can and should be a key takeaway for both marketers and their clients. Without patience, there are many opportunities for missteps — whether it be bad data, skipping key steps or just sloppy work. A rush job is almost never a good one.
Masterful Marketing
The marketing campaign kept the feeling of the old film alive and made that fact evident to an audience often faced with bland remakes and uninspired sequels. Seeming to promise a return to the blockbusters of the ’80s, the first trailers and movie posters captured that by being both reminiscent of the first film and delivering a new experience. Instead of allowing Covid-induced release delays to let the movie fade into oblivion, the campaign let the fan base know it was still out there through a slow trickle of ads, toy releases and interviews with the cast and crew. Audiences weren’t inundated with marketing material to the point of exhaustion; instead, the result was a slow burn of marketing that didn’t leave audiences feeling letdown by the delays.
How can you deliver anticipatory delight? Most importantly, how can you provide a product or service that is everything you promised and more? Avoid the “shiny object.” Don’t chase an easy release and don’t force campaigns on your audience. Instead, wait and spend time carefully balancing between people forgetting about your product and dropping breadcrumbs. If it makes sense for your brand, don’t chase the shiny object. Build anticipation and then, most importantly, deliver the goods.
Made of Marketing
A good marketing campaign can only do so much. A product — or movie — must be good to have sustained success. I believe the key behind “Maverick’s” success is that it’s unusual. It’s an obvious sequel, but the time between the original and the latest installment is well beyond the average gap of two to four years. It’s not a reboot with a new cast, either; part of that is probably due to Tom Cruise’s apparent immortality, but the fact remains that when a movie is almost 40 years old, history tends toward a complete remake. But the marketing campaign came up with something fresh, new and exciting. Audiences seemed to respond to this.
All of this is to say: Don’t get complacent. A lot of marketers settle into strategies that worked without pulling lessons and tools from the past and building something new. Devote yourself to making a great product and, not content with that, craft a masterful marketing campaign that requires patience and expertise to pull off. In other words, don’t get complacent. If you want to put together a good marketing campaign, you can’t get complacent, either.
These days, audiences are fickle, but they’ll respond to fresh ideas as long as they’re executed correctly. Marketing leaders need to hit that absurdly small target in a big way, set the stage through a masterful marketing campaign and seal the deal with a great product or service. From my perspective, marketers could learn a lot about how to market a product from Hollywood.
