The Coen Brothers are my favourite film-makers, I can watch most of their films again and again.
But even the very best make a mistake and we can learn from that.
One of their best films was a remake, so was one of their worst, so what can we learn by comparing them?
Well one thing we can learn is how to pick your competition.
The remake will always be compared to the original, so think carefully about what you want to be compared to.
Their best film was True Grit, this was a 2010 remake of the 1969 John Wayne film.
The John Wayne film was bad, it co-starred Glenn Campbell, it was corny, everything about it was artificial, the language, the wardrobe, the locations, the script.
So it’s a good film to be compared against, because it’s so easy to be better.
And the Coen’s version was much better: the casting (Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin) the acting, the script, the wardrobe, the locations.
The Coen’s were smart to pick a bad film to remake, almost exactly the opposite of what they did with their 2004 version of the 1955 film, The Ladykillers.
This was a film that didn’t need remaking, the original was made at Ealing studios and they made great comedies.
It starred Peter Sellers and Alec Guinness, and was an eccentric, charming, funny, particularly English film, it was a film you wouldn’t want to be compared against.
The Coens remade their version in Mississippi with Tom Hanks, it had a bigger budget and better lighting but it wasn’t funny, so it looked bad by comparison with the original.
If even the Coens can get it wrong, we can learn why it’s really important to consider who you pick as your competition.
Picking on someone bigger than you is nearly always a good competitor to choose.
But most marketers are frightened to do it in case the bigger guy answers back with bigger resources, they don’t understand this is exactly what you want to happen.
Hertz owned the rental car market in the consumer’s mind, Avis weren’t even on the consumer’s radar.
So Bill Bernbach chose to compete with Hertz with the campaign: Avis – We Try Harder.
Everyone knew who Avis was referring to, and it hurt Hertz’s morale so much that they responded with a huge campaign knocking Avis.
But all this did in the public’s mind was cement Avis as Hertz’s competition, Hertz must be scared of them otherwise why mention them in their ads?
Contrary to what timid marketers think, it’s great when you can get your competition to spend their advertising budget answering you back.
Steve Jobs was really smart when he did the “I’m a Mac – I’m a PC” campaign.
For years he ran dozens of commercials directly knocking PCs, he didn’t have to mention Microsoft, everyone knew that’s who he meant.
Eventually Bill Gates couldn’t stand it and Microsoft ran an anti-Apple campaign, doing exactly what Steve Jobs wanted, spending Microsoft money talking about Apple.
It helped build Apple into one of the biggest, most famous brands in the world.
Similarly, Pepsi have always been number two to Coca Cola.
So the natural place for them to take market share was from Coke.
They did this with an advertising campaign: The Pepsi Challenge.
For years they ran commercials about people preferring the taste of Pepsi to Coke.
Eventually Coke cracked and introduced an improved recipe called New Coke.
That was as good as admitting defeat and Pepsi gave all their employees worldwide the day off in celebration.
It’s usually in number two’s interest to attack the status-quo, but it’s in number one’s interest to ignore that and preserve the status-quo.
That’s why one of the most important things in advertising is choosing your competition.