How many customers walk into your store and ask you recommend a movie with birds? You sell bird seed, right? So the connection is obvious. Lizzie Mae’s extensive R&D department actually has a movie for you to recommend. It’s another way Lizzie Mae is looking out for you and it is definitely not an excuse for us to take the afternoon off and watch a movie. No. It is not that.

The movie is The Big Year starring Jack Black, Owen Wilson, and Steve Martin. Three of the funniest actors in moviedom. But the funniest part about the movie is that it is actually not a comedy. Ha! The movie poster shows three comedic actors in a funny pose and the movie is not a comedy. Wait – would messing with the audience’s expectations like that hurt this property at the box office? Umm… yes, apparently so.

So don’t go in expecting an LOL comedy. Instead, expect a warm, carefully crafted story about three men at different stages of life as they go for their Big Year. In the real world, a Big Year for a Birder is 365 days spent trying to see or hear as many different kinds of birds as possible. Birders actually do this and are very serious about it, travelling around the world to achieve their goal. The people who live with these Birders are also very serious and say things like, “Really? This is why you withdrew funds from the 401(k)?”

Now, technically speaking, the movie is about bird watchers and not bird feeders. But guess how many Hollywood movies starring three well-known actors there are about bird feeders? Exactly. (Okay, bonus points for anyone that said Brando kept pigeons on his roof in On The Waterfront. But was it really pertinent to the storyline? He coulda been keeping poodles up there for all it mattered.)

So The Big Year is a nice movie about birding that, seriously, a family could watch together. Maybe not a family with really young children because they want to see talking snowmen. But go find a copy, watch the movie, and be ready to build that connection with your customers.

Back to work for us. Pass the popcorn.