For a couple of years, I directed short films and produced corporate videos. It was a completely different world from marketing. Or so I thought.
The skill that changed everything was learning to make a stranger care about a stranger in under two minutes. That is the entire job of a short film. And it turns out, that is the entire job of a cold email too.
In film, you learn that attention is not given. It is earned in the first three seconds. If your opening shot is boring, nobody stays for the story. The same is true for subject lines.
You also learn that structure matters more than you think. A good short film has a setup, a tension point, and a resolution. A good cold email has the same thing: context, problem, offer.
The biggest lesson was about specificity. In film, you never show "a person walking down a street." You show a specific person, on a specific street, at a specific time, for a specific reason. Generic is invisible. Specific is memorable.
I brought all of this into B2B marketing. Every email I write, I ask myself: would this opening hold someone's attention for three seconds? Is there tension? Is it specific enough that it could only be about this person?
Most B2B emails fail the specificity test. They could be about anyone. And if it could be about anyone, it is about no one.
The details matter. The system matters. But the thinking behind it matters more.
