The Beastmaster gives us sword fights, animal sidekicks, Rip Torn chewing the scenery, bird-men I still don’t understand, and more useful marketing advice than anyone involved could possibly have intended.
I have watched this movie more times than I care to admit. This series was partially started as an excuse to watch it again. I am not ashamed.
Here are 12 lessons from The Beastmaster; most are even about marketing.
Get Rid of Dead Weight. With Prejudice.
As they run from the Juns (the bad guys), the ferry is too slow. So Kiri kicks the three captured priests over the side to their deaths. In fairness to her, they were going to sacrifice her.
She did it quickly and without hesitation.
When something isn’t working for you, cut it. Ruthlessly. Of course, sometimes you’ll need to give it a think, but often that’s an excuse to dilly-dally on a decision. We usually know what isn’t working.
Quicksand Isn’t Everywhere — We Fear What Isn’t There
As a kid in the 70s and early 80s, I thought for sure that if we escaped nuclear annihilation, we’d all die from quicksand or the Killer Bees from Mexico were going to get us.
Nuclear annihilation remains terrifyingly plausible, but quicksand is not everywhere, and Killer Bees fizzled out only to be replaced by whatever new thing was going to kill us all. Perhaps a heart attack from a Jane Fonda workout tape.
Anyway.
Whatever you’re afraid of — running out of ideas, people hating your ideas, your boss seeing your ideas, not being able to keep up with your ideas, or the more prosaic typos and “what do I know?” — most of the fear is happening in your head before anything has happened in public.
I’ve been publishing content for over 30 years, and there’s still a knot of fear in my gut every time I hit publish — fear of an obvious typo, fear the point is flawed, fear nobody reads it, fear somebody does and thinks it’s garbage.
Typos happen. Grammar snobs happen. Neither one has ever actually hurt anybody. What will hurt you is never hitting publish. Punch that mouthy bastard of a fear into submission and get on with it.
Enjoy the Tropes
Training montages must include at least one shot on a hilltop in a desolate place. Plus the final scene, kissing on top of a rock outcropping.
I don’t make the rules.
Do What You Can With What You Have
There’s a shot of the city of Aruk so obviously a model that I snort-laughed. In fairness, it works. If you’re just watching the movie — suspending your disbelief along the way — the back of your brain might note it, but it won’t really matter.
This movie obviously had a limited budget, and this is no worse than anything in Star Wars.
Do the best you can with the materials you have and move on with life. It’ll never be perfect, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be good — or at least enjoyable.
Nobody Knows Your Plans — Improvise
After the eagle rescues the small child from the pit of fire, Maax quickly steps in as the crowd mutters, “See, Ar has spoken! He wants your children!”
Obviously, that wasn’t part of his plan, but the crowd didn’t know. People don’t know when you make a mistake, especially if it’s a plan they never even new about. All you need to do is keep tap-dancing.
My ex ran events. There were many times behind the scenes when speakers were late, the AV wasn’t working properly, or the wrong food was served. No one needs to know that the speaker stepped onstage two seconds after arriving, that the AV isn’t recording, or that something different was supposed to be on the menu. Mistakes happen. Don’t let them derail you.
It’s Fine to Just Make Money — Rip Torn
Rip Torn had a career as a serious stage actor and had a fair number of serious roles before The Beastmaster — and who can forget his coaching strategies in Dodgeball (dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge!)? But he took this role, which isn’t so much acting as chewing all of the scenery.
Not every project has to be a calling, a grand creative statement, or something you want engraved on your tombstone.
Marketing is ultimately about bringing in money. It’s OK to ask for the sale, make the moneys, and keep the doors open.
We Don’t Deserve Dogs
Early in the movie, Todo — hmmmm, wonder where they got that name; it sounds VERY close to a golden-hued road — saves Dar even with a crossbow bolt sticking out of his side.
No marketing message. Just a statement of fact.
“We Depend on Each Other”
It’s good to have friends. Dar explained that he had strength, cunning, and sight — the cat, ferrets, and eagle, respectively.
You can’t really do it all yourself. Or sometimes you can, but that’s a lonely road. It’s trite but true: teamwork makes the dream work.
Later, Dar, blinded, uses the vision from the cat to stab a witch about to leap on him from the ceiling. Friends help you see your blind spots.
As my sophomore English teacher used to say: Friends are like shoes. You got ’em, use ’em.
Sneak in on the Hay Wagon — Simple Works
To get into the city, Dar hides in a hay wagon. See “Enjoy the Tropes” above.
Marketing can be extremely complex and complicated. For most businesses, it doesn’t need to be. You aren’t a Fortune 500 company juggling multiple brands, offers, ad campaigns, etc.
You probably have one or two products or services and need a simple way to get the word out. Obviously, I’m a huge fan of newsletters, and I think you should have one.
Newsletters are simple in the same way: you control the list, you control the message, and you control when you send it. Social is a fine place to meet people, but your email list is one of the few online business assets you can take with you. Build your business on that, not entirely on whatever LinkedIn or Google decides to show people this week.
If you want a newsletter without turning it into another sprawling marketing project, schedule a short conversation about Newsletter-in-a-Box — no pitchslap.
Trying to Avoid Your Fate Never Works
While I don’t personally believe in fate, it’s one of the most common narrative devices in sword-and-sorcery flicks. No one ever escapes theirs.
Marketing doesn’t involve fate, but sometimes a change becomes unavoidable whether you particularly like it or not.
For me, over the past year, that has meant learning how to use generative AI to advance my goals and my clients’ goals. I could refuse, complain, or pretend it was going away. It wasn’t.
Better to learn what it can do, where it can’t be trusted, and how to use it on my terms.
That doesn’t mean pretending to be something you’re not. Use the tools. Keep being yourself.
Never Assume You Know Everything
It turns out that Kiri isn’t only a slave girl, but a member of a secret sect of warriors. Everyone has hidden skills. Don’t assume you know everything, because you don’t know shit.
I built AIIM’s first online community back in 2010. Leadership wanted “rock star” bloggers so we could go viral. I made the boring argument that we’d grow through steady, useful content instead — and I also figured that after 16 years in the industry, I knew exactly what my audience wanted.
I was wrong on that second part.
A post on TIFF vs. JPEG as an output format for scanned documents — a topic I expected to underperform — turned into the most-engaged post I ever published and sat in the top 10 for years.
A different facet of the same lesson comes from my copier dealer marketing days. During my four years doing marketing for copier dealers, the customer-facing staff — service reps, help desk, billing — were a treasure trove of content ideas I never would’ve come up with myself.
Dead rats in paper trays. People breaking platens photocopying body parts. The same billing question, answered a hundred times a month. Toner pirates (yes, that’s a real thing).
You don’t know what you don’t know. Go find the people who do.
Understanding Isn’t Needed to Think It’s Cool
There are these bird-men things that Dar meets about halfway through. I have watched this movie more times than I care to admit, and I have zero clue what they are, how they fit, or why they exist other than as a cheap way to end the movie with a victory by the good guys.
But whatever. You don’t need to understand them to think they’re pretty cool.
Sometimes you’ll write or create something that you hate but everyone loves. You won’t always know why. Try to figure it out, but also keep doing what works — even if you don’t know WHY it works.
No one should build an entire marketing strategy around a sword-and-sorcery movie. Probably.
But the lessons hold up: use what you have, keep things simple, ask for the sale, listen to people who know things you don’t, and hit publish even when your stomach knots. The work will never be perfect. Neither was the model of Aruk. It still worked.
Now go make something useful. If necessary, sneak it through the gate inside a hay wagon.
Thanks for reading. Comments, criticisms, and witticisms welcomed.
Your newsletter doesn’t need to be perfect; it needs to exist and keep showing up. If you want help getting yours moving, schedule a short conversation — no pitch slapping! Tell me your main sticking point and let’s chat: bryant@simplyusefulmarketing.co.
Don’t forget to check out the others in the series.
The deadly killer bees that never came! What a time to be alive. I just learned they did 2 sequels to this and I'm amazed.