Last December I came across a book on marketing called “Six Pixels of Separation” by Mitch Joel. I flipped through the chapters and was amazed to discover I was doing about 60% of what the book recommends. It wasn’t until last month that I finally picked up a copy. I plan to use the book as a marketing bible that I will follow for the rest of the year and we’ll see what happens. Like ‘Julie and Julia’, I’ll be using Mitch Joel’s cookbook on marketing to decipher the secrets of “integrated digital marketing, social media, personal branding and entrepreneurship”. Chapter by chapter, I plan to follow Mitch Joel’s Pixel Brick Road and see where it leads.
The book is based on the premise that “we no longer live in a world with six degrees of separation. In fact we’re down to only six pixels of separation...” How many pixels separate me from everyone else is still to be determined. I used to believe that all you had to do was make a film and send it to film festivals. Then, you wait.... I’ve done a full 360 degree turn on that type of thinking in the last few years. I have now come to accept that every film I make is a product that I have to market in any way possible. That in fact I am not marketing a film, I am marketing myself. I am my own product and I must promote myself so that I can continue to produce more work. (At this time I would like to apologize to my family and friends for some of the silliness that is to follow in the coming months....but you have to do what you have to do.)
Last years experiments in blatant self-promotion lead to my film finding a distributor and to my films actually being invited to festivals. In this radical shift towards marketing I’ve had to leave behind some of my shyness, though I always carry a part of it with me. In many ways my new film ‘Measuring Tape Girl’ is about overcoming an inability to communicate due to shyness and finding self-acceptance. Even though I’m not on Oprah I’d like to let everyone know that I accept myself as I am and that I am working to overcome the last fragments of shyness I have left in me. Exactly where the thoughts and words of this marketing wizard will take me is difficult to predict. I’m not sure where this pixel brick road will lead me. The only thing I do know is that it is leading me in a new direction: Forward.
