Simple Messaging Wins Deals: James Cameron and Alien$ shows how simplicity goes a long way toward winning deals.
Aliens: An “Equal Sequel”
It’s no secret that I’m a sci-fi fan, and one of my favorite franchises is Alien. I love everything about it (well, maybe not Alien3). The old-school yet futuristic design aesthetic, the computers that make weird beeping and whirring sounds for no apparent reason, and, of course, the absolutely terrifying Xenomorphs (aka the Aliens). 8 feet tall, acid for blood, experts at hiding, and the whole “bursting out of someone’s chest” thing – you’d be hard pressed to find a scarier creature.
There are 3 people who arguably made the franchise what it is today: Ridley Scott, who directed the original Alien; Sigourney Weaver, who played Ellen Ripley (garnering an Oscar nomination, which is more-or-less unheard of in sci-fi and horror), and James Cameron, who wrote and directed the sequel (Aliens).
Aliens came out in 1986, about 7 years after the first movie. It’s one of the first few sequels to be as good as, if not better than the original (it has a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, just a few points higher than the original’s 93%). And while James Cameron is a household name now (basically all pop culture in 1997 was connected to Titanic), he was still up-and-coming in the early 80s, finding success with The Terminator and Rambo: First Blood Part II.
Looking back on it now, making Aliens was a no brainer — the first Alien made more than $100M with a budget of $11M. But it wasn’t quite so easy. Somehow 20th Century Fox considered that $100M a loss (I’m no accountant, but I don’t understand how making more than 800% your costs is considered a loss), and the sequel was only approved when Brandywine Productions (the producer of the original Alien film) sued to get a larger share of the Alien profits, and Fox agreed to finance the sequel as a way to settle the lawsuit.
Cameron’s Simple But Effective Pitch
The Alien sequel was originally called “Alien II,” but Cameron got studio executives, a difficult group to convince of anything, to go with a different name. And the way he did it was…wait for it…legendary. In his words:
It just popped into my mind in the moment... I was sitting with the three producers, and we were in the office of the then-head of 20th Century Fox. And I said, ‘Guys, I got an idea for the title. And it goes like this.’ And I wrote, ‘Alien’ in large block letters. And I put an S on the end. I showed it to them. I said, ‘I want to call it Aliens, because we’re not dealing with one. Now we’re dealing with an army, and that’s the big distinction. And it’s very simple and very graphic.’ And I said, ‘But here’s what it’s going to translate to.’ And then I drew the two lines through it to make it a dollar sign. And that was my pitch. And apparently it worked! Because they went with the title. They never questioned it. (Cinemablend)
What Can we Learn From James Cameron’s Aliens Pitch?
As I read this story, there are two things that stand out to me. The first is the pure simplicity of the visuals. He didn’t have a bunch of slides talking about “leveraging the success of the first movie.” He didn’t have slides at all. He had a whiteboard, wrote one word, and then made a slight change to land his point. That’s it.
So many sales presentations have complex visuals. Big words, logo slides, “our founder story,” put together by people who, frankly, never have to present it to a prospect or client. Those presentations often hurt presenters, because they distract and confuse the audience. Audiences read the points on the slides and don’t actually listen to the presenters, making it hard to actually hear the points being made. Worse, many of the points are irrelevant to the audience — audiences want to hear what’s in it for them a lot more than they want to hear about how many offices you have.
That brings us to the second thing that Cameron did: he focused on the things studio executives care about. From their perspective, what matters more than anything else is the margin. How much do they have to invest to create the movie, and how much will they make when the movie is released. Those factors notoriously drive decisions more than creative decisions, which can create tension between a creative-focused director and a money-focused producer/studio. His pitch was simple: We’re now dealing with an army of Aliens, and this movie will make you more money.
Simple > Complex
The next time you’re working on a pitch, remember the story of Alien$. Sometimes a story and a whiteboard can be a whole lot more impactful than a fancy-pants (technical term) pitch deck. It puts the focus on the presenter, which is exactly where I want it. Can that be nerve-racking? Of course. But a simple conversation is always more impactful than hiding behind slides. Besides, if your slides are complex, that means your audience can probably figure out what you’re going to say before you actually say it. Which means that your presentation could probably have been an email.
One more thing to consider — James Cameron is known for pioneering techniques to create some of the most visually stunning movies in our time: Terminator II: Judgment Day was the first movie to feature a partially computer-generated character (The T-1000, played by Robert Patrick); Avatar was a ‘s3-D masterpiece when 3-D movies were expected to be more of a thing than they actually were; Titanic included footage from his actual submarine (fun fact, he made Titanic not because he wanted to make a movie, but because he wanted to dive to the shipwreck). Yet, he sold one of his best movies with a whiteboard. If stories and whiteboards are good enough for an Oscar winning director, they’re certainly good enough for our sales meetings.
Share Your Thoughts on Simple and Complex Pitches
What do you think? Have whiteboards worked for you (or not)? Let me know in the comments!
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