will, and that’s a solid lesson for any business.

For every movie in the Troma library, having a great key art image that became the basis of the poster, and then the smaller sell sheets, was essential. As essential as having a good trailer.

Here’s an exercise: Go forty-eight hours deliberately using “we” instead of “I,” and see what happens. How does it make you feel? How do your coworkers and others treat you when you credit “we” for everything?

Our fans would go see (and still go see) a movie because it was a Troma movie. Whether it is Redneck Zombies or Tromeo and Juliet or some other odd title they never heard of; as long as it was Troma, our fans would show up. Why? Because, like Disney, based on the brand, they knew what to expect. That’s what branding is all about—establishing truste

them accomplish a really hard, potentially dangerous, task together. Focus is required. Teamwork is required. It is going from zero to sixty in the first few hours of working together. It forces the cream to rise to the top and quickly exposes the weak links in the chain. (There were always fewer people on the crew on day two than there were on day

Troma has achieved remarkable brand affinity over forty years and around the globe by creating an inclusive universe—Tromaville, where everyone is part of the “Troma Team.” This concept is hammered into every Troma employee and everyone who watches a Troma movie. From the opening logo to every Troma film, the message is clear. This is “a Troma Team

What content can you wisely repurpose for your purposes? Do you have anything that can double as an Easter egg to charm your customers?

Other bigwigs who have collaborated with Troma include South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Before they created one of the most successful musicals in Broadway history, Book of Mormon, their early film Cannibal! The Musical was released by the Troma Team.

The discipline and planning of preproduction is something that every product launch could benefit from. Few businesses understand their processes as well as a film production, where literally every page of the script (think product roadmap) is broken down into manageable (well, hopefully manageable) chunks, to be executed according to a strict sche