{"id":18708,"date":"2026-04-11T18:26:47","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T18:26:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/?p=18708"},"modified":"2026-04-11T18:26:47","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T18:26:47","slug":"movies-of-marketing-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/movies-of-marketing-madness\/","title":{"rendered":"Movies of marketing madness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Since last week I shared a list of my favorite documentaries for marketing &amp; copywriting.<\/p>\n<p>And related to that are some of my favorite movies for business &amp; marketing:<\/p>\n<p>* Corpse Bride &#8211; I mention this movie a lot in my Markauteur book, as it&#8217;s a power lesson in craftsmanship, infotainment, filling your work with nuance, and how to tell a tight, pithy story which still amazes me to this day<\/p>\n<p><em>* <\/em>The Founder &#8211; about Ray Kroc<em>, <\/em>all kinds of inspiration for how to think bigger, and solve problems, and especially how to approach figuring out what business you&#8217;re really in, which can radically change everything you ever do (has for me)<\/p>\n<p>* Batman Begins &#8211; for sales copy\/email\/merchandising pacing, much like Gene Schwartz taught watching Lethal Weapon<\/p>\n<p>* Sideways &#8211; watching movies about personal relationships &amp; humanity is good, because at the end of the day that&#8217;s what marketing\/sales\/merchandising is&#8230; also shows how a single line in an indie movie script can ruin an entire niche for years (merlot wine sales tanked after it came out)<\/p>\n<p>* Rocky Balboa &#8211; chock-full of underdog success wisdom, inspiration, going after what you want, and the impact that has on those watching you<\/p>\n<p>* The Social Network &#8211; I always get at least an insight or two for our software companies whenever I watch it<\/p>\n<p>* The Matrix &#8211; back in 2009 I listened to Glenn Livingston interview David Bullock, and David talked about watching it repeatedly to keep his mind nimble &amp; open to ideas and possibilities for his marketing tests, and he had a point, people in marketing are always letting some idiotic goo-roo&#8217;s rules hold them back<\/p>\n<p>* Trading Places &#8211; surprisingly useful for business &amp; trading considering its essentially a screwball comedy<\/p>\n<p>* Once Upon a Time in Hollywood &#8211; the Al Pacino scene is one of the best examples of persuasion via using Vision I&#8217;ve ever seen<\/p>\n<p>There are more.<\/p>\n<p>Like Rear Window (more persuasion via Vision), Top Gun: Maverick (how to properly use fan service, something most marketers don&#8217;t think about at all), Paranormal Activity (perfect sales letter &#8220;template&#8221; &#8211; sets up horrifying problem begging for a solution), etc.<\/p>\n<p>But the above should fill up a movie night or two..<\/p>\n<p>While I\u2019m at it, I might as well mention this too:<\/p>\n<p>The paid Email Players newsletter.<\/p>\n<p>Not a movie, but a print newsletter.<\/p>\n<p>More on that here:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.BenSettle.com\/alt\"><strong>www.BenSettle.com\/alt<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Ben Settle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since last week I shared a list of my favorite documentaries for marketing &amp; copywriting. And related to that are some of my favorite movies for business &amp; marketing: * Corpse Bride &#8211; I mention this movie a lot in my Markauteur book, as it&#8217;s a power lesson in craftsmanship, infotainment, filling your work with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,19,8,20,14,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-18708","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-business-building","7":"category-content-creation","8":"category-copywriting-and-sales-letters","9":"category-fiction","10":"category-sales-marketing","11":"category-writing"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18708"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18713,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18708\/revisions\/18713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensettle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}