Picture this: you’ve been working on a highly anticipated movie for almost two years. You’ve invested upwards of $25 million into the third, bigger-and-better rendition of a classic story. Over a year later, it’s test screening night, and you’re ready to show the world the project you’ve poured your time, money and heart into.
At first, the audience reception is everything you hoped it would be. The jokes are landing, the imposing music fills the room, and with it comes a bright, electric atmosphere in the air that’s rare in the stuffy cinemas of the 80s. It looks like you’ve achieved exactly what you set out to do: The audience is completely on your side.
Right up until the final 23 minutes.
Your main character just died. The room goes cold. The laughter stops. And when the lights come on and people spill out into the streets of San Jose, you can see it on their faces.
You lost them.
This is exactly what happened to Director Frank Oz when he held the first test screening for Little Shop of Horrors. Did you know there’s a version of the movie where everyone dies at the end and Audrey II takes over the world?
Yeah… neither did we.
In fact, most people have never seen or heard of this alternative ending, and that’s because the film’s test audiences hated it. The original ending was so poorly received that Frank Oz went back and reshot it, giving us the much happier ending we know today.
In hindsight, refilming an entire movie ending at the eleventh hour might seem a tad dramatic. But what would you do if only 13% of your customers said they would recommend your product?
Here’s why that ending never made the cut, how changing it helped cement this movie’s success, and what the whole thing can teach us as business owners and marketers:
The problem with always sticking to your roots
In 1986, renowned filmmaker and puppeteer Frank Oz took on the screen adaptation of the Off-Broadway musical Little Shop of Horrors. There really couldn’t have been a more perfect fit for the job. Oz had already built a hugely successful career around dark, quirky comedy and was best known for his work with Jim Henson and George Lucas through The Muppets, Sesame Street and Star Wars. For an already beloved musical featuring a puppet villain to work on the big screen, it made sense to bring in someone with the specialist tools, experience and enthusiasm to honour the source material.
The 1986 movie brought to life everything that made the stage show so memorable, while expanding on the areas that were limited by the stage. Bigger sets, special effects, elaborate Audrey II sequences and a star-studded cast all helped turn a cult musical into a cinematic experience.
Sure, there were plenty of minor changes that any fan of the original musical could point out. But at its core, the film stayed true to the show’s completely unique satirical characters, magnetic musical numbers and, integrally, the very fine thread of darkness running through the entire thing.
The problem with this commitment to the original material came at the ending, where Oz decided to follow that dark thread all the way to the original conclusion of the stage production.
Audrey dies. Seymour dies. Audrey II wins. The plant grows out of control and sets about taking over the world.
On stage, that ending worked.
On screen… well.
And there’s an important distinction here.
The problem clearly wasn’t that Oz stayed true to the original.
The problem was that he kept the story almost exactly the same without accounting for how dramatically the environment around it had changed.
As Oz later explained, audiences watching the stage show knew that the actors they had just watched die would soon come back out for a curtain call.
In a film, you’re met with a black screen and credits instead.
The characters you rooted for don’t come back to blow a cheeky kiss and take a bow. Their deaths feel final. There’s no immediate reminder that what you’ve just watched is a performance.
It’s a fundamental difference between a theatre audience and a cinema audience, and one that completely changed the way the ending was received.
And that’s the important bit.
Your audience changes when the channel changes
It’s easy to think of your audience as one big group of people.
Someone finding your business through Google is likely looking for an answer to a specific question. Someone scrolling on Facebook might not be looking for anything at all. And someone opening your email might already know your business and be ready to take the next step.
In fact, all three could be the same person.
What changes isn’t necessarily the person, but their circumstances, what they’re looking for and how they experience your message in that moment.
That’s why understanding your audience means looking beyond who they are, and tailoring your message accordingly. You also need to understand where they’re encountering you and what they need from you there.
And just as the film audience experienced Seymour and Audrey’s deaths differently from the theatre audience, your potential customers will experience your brand differently depending on where they encounter it, so you need to make sure your message makes sense for that audience.
The question isn’t just who you’re talking to. It’s what they’re there for.
Brand consistency doesn’t mean refusing to adapt
So, we’ve established that your messaging needs tweaking across platforms, and that can feel daunting for some businesses. But thoughtful change in the right places isn’t going to kill your brand identity. Sometimes, adapting to a new environment is exactly what saves it.
Take it from Seymour:
“It’s true! I chopped him up. But I didn’t kill him.”
Little Shop of Horrors might be an extreme example, but this is a problem that plenty of brands still run into.
They know what works for them. They know what their customers respond to. They’ve built a recognisable identity, a way of communicating and a set of messages that feel distinctly theirs.
So when they move into a new channel, they take all of that with them.
Which sounds sensible.
Until it isn’t.
Listen to what your audience is telling you
Frank Oz and the team had invested enormous amounts of time, money and creative energy into that original ending. It was ambitious, spectacular and faithful to the stage musical. They believed in it.
And yet, when they put it in front of an audience, the response was overwhelmingly negative.
They could have dug their heels in. They could have decided that audiences simply didn’t understand the artistic vision. They could have spent more money promoting the film, hoping that a bigger campaign would convince people to love it.
Instead, they recognised that something wasn’t working and made a change.
Of course, marketing isn’t quite as simple as reshooting an ending and sending everyone home happy. Not every disappointing result means you’ve got the wrong message, and not every dip in engagement means you need to rethink your entire strategy.
But it does mean you need to pay attention.
If your social posts are generating plenty of likes but no meaningful interest in your business, what does that tell you? If your emails are being opened but nobody is clicking through, is the content meeting expectations? If your website is attracting visitors but very few are making enquiries, is something missing between what you’ve promised and what you’re delivering?
These are questions worth asking before throwing more time and money at the same approach.
So, what should we take from a killer plant?
Let’s be honest: most businesses aren’t spending $25 million on a bloodthirsty puppet plant. And hopefully, none of us will ever have to explain to a room full of executives why our entire ending needs reshooting.
But the lesson behind Little Shop of Horrors is one that applies to businesses of every size.
You can have a brilliant idea, a strong brand and a message you genuinely believe in. You can put the time and money into getting everything right. But if you don’t consider how your audience will experience it, you risk missing the point entirely.
The same applies when you’re deciding how to use different marketing channels.
Before asking, “What should we post on LinkedIn?” or “What should our next email campaign look like?”, it’s worth stepping back and asking a few more fundamental questions.
Who are we trying to reach? What do they need from us? What role does this channel play in helping them take the next step? And how can we make sure our message feels relevant without losing what makes us, well, us?
Because the answer isn’t to abandon your brand identity every time you try something new. Nor is it to take the exact same message and hope it works everywhere.
It’s to understand what makes your brand worth paying attention to, then find the most meaningful way to communicate that to the person on the other side of the screen.
At Koobr, that’s what meaningful marketing is all about. Not doing more for the sake of it, following trends because everyone else is or shoehorning the same content into every available channel.
It’s about giving everything you do a reason to exist, understanding what you’re trying to achieve and making decisions based on what your audience actually needs.
