Remarkable Content with Ian Faison 500 Days of Summer: B2B Marketing Lessons from the Hit Indie Movie with Infobip’s Integrated Marketing Manager, April Weber
Your audience is like a fickle love interest. We’re going to show you how to romance them.
That’s to say that your audience could be at any place in their buyer’s journey. So it’s important to meet them wherever they are and woo the heck out of them.
So in this episode, we’re going straight to the heart of the matter by talking about B2B marketing lessons from
500 Days of Summer
with the help of our guest, April Weber. April leads integrated marketing at Infobip. Together, we’re talking about how to meet the customer wherever they’re at in the non-linear buyer’s journey, the importance of presenting your products honestly, and incorporating real stories in your marketing. So brace your tender heart for this episode of Remarkable.
About our guest, April Weber
April Weber is Director of Integrated Marketing at Infobip, having joined the company in 2022 as CX Expert. Prior to joining Infobip, April served as Director of New Demand Solutions at INFUSEmedia. She has also held marketing and demand roles at companies like QuinStreet and HID Global.
About Infobip
Infobip is a global leader in omnichannel engagement powering a broad range of messaging channels, tools and solutions for advanced customer engagement, authentication and security. They help their clients and partners overcome the complexity of consumer communications, grow their business and enhance the customer experience – all in a fast, secure and reliable way. Over the last 15 years, they’ve grown into an Engineering Powerhouse with 70+ offices in 6 continents and over 3,700 experts, aiming to change how the world communicates.
About 500 Days of Summer
500 Days of Summer is a love story about a relationship that lasted 500 days with a girl named Summer. And the story plays out in flashbacks to memories of the relationship. The main character, Tom, meets Summer after she becomes the new hire at his job, a paper greeting card company. They start seeing each other, but Summer says she doesn’t believe in love and so it’s casual even though Tom wants more than that. They end up arguing and breaking up and Summer quits her job at their company. The next time they see each other, Tom notices an engagement ring, which raises all the questions about why she wouldn’t want to settle down with him, but felt true love with someone else. When Tom does meet someone new, he finds out her name is Autumn.
The movie came out in 2009 and stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Tom and Zooey Deschanel as Summer. It was directed by Marc Webb from a screenplay written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, and produced by Mark Waters. It’s an indie movie that premiered at Sundance, and was picked up by Fox Searchlight Pictures. It’s generally considered a sleeper hit, and brought in $60 million worldwide. It had had a $7.5 million budget.
What B2B Companies Can Learn From 500 Days of Summer:
- The buying journey is often non-linear, so meet the customer where they are. Ian says, “People want that extremely organized fashion, and other people don’t. You as the marketer need to plan those different pathways and journeys, and to be able to tell stories in the moments that matter.” It’s like how in 500 Days of Summer, the story is told in flashbacks to Tom and Summer’s relationship. In the beginning, the viewer needs to see the positive parts of their relationship to understand Tom’s attachment to the relationship. And then as the story goes along, we see the disconnects and the miscommunications, the more negative parts of the relationship. That’s how the viewer understands that Tom is falling out of love with Summer and healing from the breakup. So as the marketer, you need to highlight the moments that matter for your customers and meet them where they are in their buying journey.
- Present your products honestly and transparently. Over-hyping your products in marketing is misleading, and ultimately leads to disappointment where customers aren’t likely to return. April ties this back to 500 Days of Summer when she says, “Tom idealized his relationship with Summer. We fall into that trap when we're over-hyping our products or solutions to potential clients, when honesty and transparency are crucial in building trust.” So though it’s tempting to play up your products to get higher engagement and sales, don’t do it. Present their real benefits and you’ll earn audience trust.
- Incorporate real stories. 500 Days of Summer was inspired by a real relationship screenplay writer Scott Neustadter was in while studying in London. April says that “because it was a real story, it was relatable to me. We should be doing the same thing. We should be doing this with our clients, with our content. It adds a human touch. It resonates deeply, I think, when you can actually incorporate real stories behind it.” So add that human touch to your marketing by including real stories in it. It makes your content more relatable and more human.
Quotes
*”We should always focus on emotional connections and relatable storytelling, whether that's B2B content or B2C content. To make an emotional connection with your audience no matter who they are.” - April Weber
*“500 Days of Summer made us laugh. It made us feel sad. And it definitely makes you reminisce about your own experience, which is a great way to have any kind of content. If you can get in all the emotions at once, that's awesome.” - April Weber
Time Stamps
[0:55] Meet April Weber, Integrated Marketing Manager at Infobip
[1:40] Why are we talking about 500 Days of Summer?
[4:13] What is April responsible for at Infobip?
[5:14] What is 500 Days of Summer about?
[10:32] Why is 500 Days of Summer remarkable?
[12:28] What marketing lessons can we glean from 500 Days of Summer?
[32:58] What’s April’s content strategy at Infobip?
[38:44] How does April think about the ROI of content?
Links
Connect with April on LinkedIn
About Remarkable!
Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both non-fiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com.
In today’s episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Senior Producer). Remarkable was produced this week by Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK.
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