The 2026 attempt organically proved there is an audience but failed to convert that audience into meaninful pledge numbers. Awareness is great but it’s only part of the equation. The total on the other side of the equals sign was not what it should have been.
The following list of what went didn’t work, didnt happen and didnt come through as expected is long, and probably not 100% comprehensive. Writing this is about as pleasant as putting on soaking wet underwear – but here we go.
- Not enough time – 25 days. Should have been 60.
- 1,400 newsletter subscribers – but only <20 actually pledged. That’s 1.5%, when the expection was literally ten times that, 15%.
- Unsubscribe quantity of c.50 sounds low, but it’s 3.5% – industry average for a project like this is max 1%.
- Failed to make subscribing more engaging and valuable.
- Interested people signed up, but there was no follow-on to find the real pledgers.
- Kickstarter intro video delayed the page release. It should have been made much earlier and steadily edited into improvement:
- It’s too long – 5 minutes, when it should be 2 mins, maybe 3 at most.
- It’s choppy – too many hard cuts to cover weak or unclear dialogue.
- Few cutaways – it’s just me talking, for too long.
- Kickstarter page is disjointed at the top, with videos and description competing for attention.
- Kickstarter updates were often delayed and should have been drafted in advance (in Coda/Superhuman).
- Very few, if any visuals provided.
- No attempts to encourage up-pledging
- Facebook Ads only gained subscribers, not pledgers.
- Reactions ≠ pledges. Lots of comments, little result.
- No Kickstarter ads in advance of launch.
- Few Kickstarter ads during the campaign: minimally designed, underfunded, too late, too few
- Strangers were slow to pledge – speaks to awareness.
- Failed to “warm up” the subscribers OR the public / groups
- The ‘anti-Ridley Scott/Napoleon’ direction was unplanned:
- Ad-hoc pivot required more visuals and content than was generated and what was there was weak, inconsistently applied.
- No strategy, just a tactical opportunity that did not have the support to maximise effects.
- Website was not great – it didn’t WOW.
- Too much text, not enough video, too much scrolling.
- Video was secondary to text-based info dump.
- Felt like a poster, not a portal to the project.
- Walls of text, no interaction, no freshness or sense of “what’s new”
- Youtube Connections were too little, too late.
- Some connections only made days before cancellation
- YouTube connections were not planned or researched or engaged with in advance
- History Symposium interview led to very little gain (2–5 pledges) – albeit did add credibility.
- Over-focus on Can/US markets, ignored UK market despite the historical context of the film.
- The media plan was miniscule and not thought-out or researched, and haphazardly implement
- Possibly “burned out” family + friends
- Next time, reach out again? Maybe; maybe not.
Summary
Fundamentally , the framework I built to drive pledges failed to deliver results. Money was spent for very little gain. It took a 3rd party youtuber to drastically enlarge the pledge amount to where it should have been organically by mid-campaign, but there was no follow-on events to add to that and push it higher.
The project itself was badly advertised before launch and inconsistently so during the campaign itself. The focus on Canada & U.S. ignored the United Kingdom as an additional market, despite the film being both set in British imperial history and about a soldier in the British Army. Also, the GBP has very strong return on $CAD spent ($1.88 for every £1).
The media plan for 3rd-party exposure of the project before and after launch was miniscule, barely researched, and haphazardly planned out and executed.
Overall, while a lot more people are now aware of ‘The Coward’, that in itself is not enough. To get out of the stroyboard and onto a screen we must identify, encourage and lock in actual pledgers, not just well-wishers and moral supporters. This is a reflection on me, not the supporters. I must publicize this project more clearly, more often and more widely.
NEXT: What Must Be Done?
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