On Why Marketing Should Not Be Factored Into the Work Itself

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... well, now you're just being spiteful.

Ah, yes, Collateral Beauty. You know, I was a bit interested in this 2016 Christmas-slotted film: sure, some may have seen it as “pretentious” (a word I hate using under any circumstances), a tad too melodramatic, and, worst of all, Oscar bait, but, hey, the key plot caught my attention.

As it turns out, I choose the right decision in not going out to see it in theaters as soon as it released, as Collateral Beauty has been turning out to be one of the worst films released thus far this year (and there aren’t that many films coming out before the turn of 2017 to act as replacements). The key question on everybody's minds: what went wrong?

Well, to put it simply, a lot of the flak this movie is getting stems from its marketing campaign: although I won’t “spoil” it here, do know that the true, somewhat cruel story this film has was completely lied about in trailers, posters, clips, you name it. However, I do want to make a defense for this work: as much as I think that the movie itself is most likely (to say the least) bad, any and all pieces of art should not be criticized for their advertising eludes. In more cases than not, marketing strategies are completely out of the hands of the original creators, leaving the fate of commercial success left up to wholly different people.

Now, if you’re directly targeting the media promotion team, that’s perfectly fine (and if they did, in fact, lie, they do deserve some criticisms), but never take it out on the original artists. The film can be good, the film can be bad, but marketing strategies are never made by the original creators themselves.