Pretend you’re a super rich movie star. Your job is making movies. The only way you are going to keep making movies, and making tons of money, is to sell your product. You need to sell yourself and your product so people keep buying your product.

Bruce Willis has gotten a lot of press lately regarding his unwillingness to “sell” himself or any of the projects he has worked on. When a reporter on a press junket asked him recently if he enjoyed the car chases, he replied “I’m thinking about driving right now. I can hardly keep my mind on this interview.” There are several other quotes from the interview, none of them nice, several of them rude.

Part of the job

In case you’re thinking he had an off day or maybe he was tired, try to remember that it is his job and he clearly thinks he is above it. I guess all those years of being a big time movie star have blinded him to the fact that every time he has an opportunity to talk about his
 product to his target audience, it is an opportunity, a privilege even, for him to be able to market his product face to face.

 

Elizabeth Mansfield

If you’re even remotely familiar with the film industry, you know actors routinely fly all over the world promoting their films. But Willis obviously thinks his work is finished when the movie finishes shooting. He probably thinks his job is done as soon as he has finished speaking his lines. That’s too bad for the people he has to work with but it is good for us because it is a great example of someone who has gotten completely out of touch with sales and marketing.

Even Brad Pitt showed up at a movie theatre in Hoboken, NJ to promote World War Z. Hoboken, New Jersey. Not Hollywood or Beverly Hills. Hoboken. Brad gets it.

Brad or Bruce?

So, let’s say you are in O&P and you have a product or service you are selling. Did you know there are 11 chapters of the American Academy of Orthotists and Prosthetists (AAOP)? Did you know there are many state O&P associations? Did you know that most of them have annual meetings? Of course we all know about the American Orthotic & Prosthetic Association National Assembly and the AAOP Annual Meeting but there are many other meetings too. The International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics has meetings all over the world, all year long. O&P meetings require thousands of hours of content a year.

 

 

I work with the Midwest Chapter AAOP, the Texas Association of Orthotists & Prosthetists and the Virginia O&P Association, just to name a few. Although most of the presenters — the Brad Pitts of the O&P industry — understand that attending meetings is truly an opportunity to be able to market face to face with their buyers, I’ve run across a couple Bruce Willis types. They weren’t necessarily rude like Willis but they had clearly lost sight of the fact they had been given an opportunity and a promotional junket is part of their job. Their job is to sell their product and services to their buyers. Just like a multimillionaire movie star.

So, looks aside, who is your celebrity persona when it comes to doing O&P meeting presentations? Bruce Willis or Brad Pitt?