The annual marketing strategy that solidifies your category’s leadership position

Ditch last year’s template for a strategy that creates demand and makes the cash register sing.

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Dear Friend, Subscriber, and Category Pirate,

A major problem with most marketing strategies is they start with last year’s plan as the template.

But legendary plans are about creating a different future, not continuing the past. And the most successful ones revolve around a Lightning Strike.

The Lightning Strike Strategy

A Lightning Strike is a way to align and synchronize your marketing efforts.

Paramount Pictures recently deployed a Lightning Strike to promote its latest horror film, Smile. One week before the premiere, Paramount hired "smilers" to show up in public places (like the Today Show and several Major League Baseball games) wearing bone-chilling smiles and neon t-shirts with a single word—smile. Images and videos of the “smilers” quickly went viral on social media.

Pop Base @PopBase

The #SmileMovie had actors infiltrate MLB games and hold creepy smiles the entire time as part of the film’s promo campaign.

Horror movie fans reshared the posts, along with their fascination and excitement about the film using the custom (and creepy) #SmileMovie emoji.

Smile Movie @SmileMovie

Give me a ❤️ and we'll give you a 😁. #SmileMovie

The result: hundreds of thousands of likes, comments, and shares across Twitter. Coverage in dozens of media outlets like CNN, Entertainment Weekly, Collider, and Sports Illustrated. And earnings of $100 million at the global box office in its first two weekends. As of writing, Smile is currently the #1 movie in the US—and it's the only horror film of 2022 to stay in this position for two weeks in a row. For a movie that reportedly cost $17 million to produce, the ROI is exponential.

This is the power of a well-executed Lightning Strike.

Keep in mind, a Lightning Strike is not an effort to try to market to “everybody.” Your goal should be to create the Comic-Con for your category—physically, virtually, whatever that means to you (and for your Supers).

To execute your own Lightning Strike, let’s walk through the main pillars.

The 3 Pillars Of Every Lightning Strike