Don’t Kill the Messenger welcomes renowned advertising executive and producer, Tony Sella

One of the most insightful points Sella makes is about the delicate relationship between trailers and the films they promote – wisdom gained from decades of audience testing:

“For good movies, your trailer has to be better for a great movie. You can’t have a good trailer if the effect you have from the trailer isn’t as powerful as the movie itself. But the effect of three minutes of the opening, that trailer was far more powerful and engaging than a literal story. You can make trailers that are better than movies, but if you have a great movie, you have to have a great trailer.”

This philosophy guided Sella’s approach to marketing films of varying quality throughout his career, from smaller films like Phone Booth to blockbusters like Independence Day.

Sella’s work on Independence Day revolutionized movie marketing, particularly with the iconic Super Bowl ad showing the White House explosion, a moment that changed how films are promoted during major sporting events:

“We had built the campaign back to: enjoy Valentine’s Day, it may be your last. Enjoy President’s Day, it may be your last. Whatever it was. Whatever came before. Enjoy the Super Bowl. It may be your last.”

This kind of thinking allowed Sella and his team to “hijack” major cultural events and turn them into promotional opportunities for their films, creating a template that major studios still follow with superhero movies and other tentpole releases.

Throughout his career, Sella has relied on audience research and test screenings to refine his approaches, but with a critical eye on how to interpret the data:

“Research is as good as the questions you ask,” he emphasizes.

This insight was particularly evident in his work on M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening with Mark Wahlberg, where qualitative research revealed that audiences would respond to marketing the film as “M. Night Shyamalan’s first R-rated film” – a strategy that helped the film open to $34 million despite mixed reception.

Similarly, for Kingdom of Heaven, Sella’s team discovered through audience testing that using Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” in the trailer dramatically improved audience response, though music rights issues ultimately prevented them from using it.

When reflecting on his extraordinary career spanning nearly 1,000 films, Sella distills his philosophy into three essential qualities that apply to all aspects of filmmaking:

“It’s always been my philosophy that the most important thing in creatives is passion first, talent, and taste. And none of them can be acquired.”

He also offers this wisdom about making every film an event for its intended audience:

“Your ego is not your amigo in this business… Phone Booth can be its event, Avatar can be its event, and it takes the same amount of creative effort.”

Some of Sella’s most impressive work came in transforming films that might otherwise have struggled into major successes. When discussing Taken with Liam Neeson, he reveals how a single line of dialogue shaped an entire campaign:

“When I saw him say, ‘I have particular skills,’ it wrote itself. That’s my campaign. And then we repeated it in the poster. It’s a silhouette graphic, but reemphasizing that and, and the whole concept was this. Like you got it. Like how much trouble would you be in if you kidnapped James Bond’s daughter? You’d be in a lot of trouble.”

For Bohemian Rhapsody, which went on to gross nearly a billion dollars and win multiple Oscars, including Best Actor for Rami Malek, Sella’s intuition led him to create a trailer that initially didn’t test well but ultimately helped drive the film’s success:

“Nothing was testing, and it didn’t test. And we got all kinds of things back. Like, well you should show this and you should show that and you should show this. And it was pretty interesting. And so we made this freaking teaser and we said this is great. And we mashed up all the songs, four or five songs, and they’re like, you can’t do the Queen songs.”

The team followed their instincts rather than just the test numbers, attached the trailer to Deadpool 2, and it generated 88 million downloads in 24 hours.

During this engaging discussion, Sella showcases the creative intuition that made him a marketing legend while acknowledging the collaborative nature of his success. His story offers invaluable insights for anyone interested in film marketing, creative problem-solving, or the art of connecting with audiences.

Don’t miss the full conversation on “Don’t Kill the Messenger” to hear more about Tony Sella’s Hollywood journey and insights into his groundbreaking films.

Don’t Kill the Messenger, hosted by movie and entertainment research expert Kevin Goetz, brings his book Audienceology to life. This bi-monthly podcast takes a peek behind the filmmaking curtain as Kevin talks with famous filmmakers, studio executives, stars, and other creatives about movies, filmmaking, audience test screenings, and much more.