One of the growing trends in the digital age is the emphasis on creating Content. Communications agencies, from advertising to public relations, write about content on their websites and twitters, talk about content in their interviews, and some agencies have been turning more and more attention towards consulting on content creation. Some communications professionals are even saying that, in the future, every company will be a content company on top of whatever their core business is. But what is content and why is it so important?
Content is a bit of a silly buzzword, as has been pointed out by media critics such as Charlie Brooker, because it is so vague and all encompassing. In the communications context, it can refer to podcasts, videos, blogs, and white papers, amongst others. Content covers anything that a company can create for consumption by the general public, which is separate from their main product or product line. Since the point of this content is promotional in purpose, it is offered for free to improve its potential reach. It is important to make the distinction between content being a silly buzzword and a stupid one. Content isn’t something consultants made up to seem smarter or to give themselves make-work. Content is real, and it drives sales.
Whether you call it content marketing, branded content, or some other term, the idea behind content as a marketing tool is that companies can differentiate themselves from their competitors, and draw attention to their brand in general, by providing something of additional value to the consumer or to the world. The idea for branded content in itself isn’t new. The ubiquitous Guinness Book of World Records was started by Guinness Breweries, and the Michelin Guides, and subsequent prestigious Michelin star ratings, came from Michelin Tires. What’s changed now is that the relative cost of producing and publishing content has never been lower, with design software being so accessibly priced and services like YouTube and WordPress offering publication tools for next to nothing. There is a veritable renaissance in content marketing going on, and the companies that don’t get onboard risk falling behind.
While it seems simple enough to put two interns behind a USB microphone to talk about how awesome a company is, this isn’t the answer to creating effective content. In other words, not all content is created equal. There is a commonly repeated public relations axiom that there is no such thing as bad press. BP and Exxon might disagree with that assessment. It isn’t enough to half-ass a blog or throw together some boring instructional videos about a product and put them on YouTube. Good content will work to create a cohesive message about a company, reinforce brand image, and drive sales. Bad content will sit there, online, doing nothing. So what makes some content good and other content bad?
The first step toward great content is to have a plan in mind from the beginning. In the communications world, this overall plan is known as Strategy. Strategy, used in its broadest sense, covers the public relations, advertising, brand image, market positioning, and even the product design because, when done right, strategy is all about creating a unified impression of what the brand stands for in the eyes of the consumer. If a company makes luxury cars, perhaps its goal is to sell itself as the car for comfort. So a possible strategy would be to focus on the smoothness of the ride and the quiet of the interior cabin. Press events for the launch could emphasize the quiet interior in the presented materials, and highlight the smoothness of the ride in the selected test-drive circuit. Advertisements could show exterior shots of the car driving through somewhere noisy, such as a construction site, with contrasting interior shots of the quiet elegance in the car’s cabin. When it comes to creating content, the focus should remain the same. Whether it’s videos for YouTube or a blog about the car’s production cycle, the core message of comfort, smoothness, and quiet interior should be reflected in all of the content. Similarly, the strategy should be reflected in the type of content that is created. If you are Redbull, and your lifestyle brand is built on Adventure, sponsoring mountain biking competitions makes sense. If you are a brand focused on being the leading expert in a niche field, perhaps podcasting, as an extension of your company’s white and yellow papers, is the right way to show that off.
Many companies that get into content marketing through their internal marketing department become obsessed with the distribution outlets. It is important to understand that not every channel of distribution is right for every brand. Whatever the hot new thing is, be it Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, or something else, the first question should be how that channel’s toolkit fits in with the strategy. There is also the demographic that each channel reaches to consider. Twitter and Facebook are fairly universal, whereas Pinterest trends towards more women than men and Instagram trends towards the young. To demonstrate the kinds of judgment calls I’m talking about, let’s return to the faux luxury car from earlier. I see a video content campaign on YouTube as workable, whereas something like a podcast is a dead-end. This is because a YouTube campaign can engage customers with the core brand image of comfort through the viewing experience. For example, a video series showing real customers driving tricky household objects around with no problem, such as driving a full fishbowl around without spilling, would serve to demonstrate the smoothness of the car, which is one of its main selling points. On the other hand, how can a car’s features be shown in that way on a podcast? If a distribution channel cannot demonstrate effectively any of the brand’s core values, it probably isn’t worth using.
Once a strategy has been determined, the next step is to choose how to distribute it. I don’t mean finalizing which distribution channel should be used, but rather whether it is the kind of content that will be published over a long period of time or as a burst of new content in a limited run. If it is going to be something that is intended to go on for many months or years, such as a blog, podcast, or web-show, it is imperative that the content be published at regular intervals, and the tighter the interval the better. People like to habituate themselves, and content is most effective when it becomes part of that habituation. Frequent and consistent posting improves the likelihood of habituation. On the other hand, infrequent or inconsistent updates, such as haphazard posting or posting only once a month, makes people far less likely to remember to check for updates. There are ways to promote updates with push notification, rather than pull, such as RSS Feeds and Twitter posts, but RSS feeds aren’t heavily used and Twitter feeds get flooded with posts all day long, which can cause update posts to get lost in the noise, especially for anyone who follows over a hundred accounts. Even if regular reading, watching, or listening isn’t a priority for the long-running content, posting regularly can still be helpful. Think about a journalist doing research for a piece about a current trend in business that the company exemplifies. The more recent the material that is available, the more likely it will be usable and get the company mentioned by name in an article, which is a huge win for the company’s brand image. Using car companies as the example again, consider which is more likely to get a mention from a reporter: a blog post from 2009 about some now somewhat out-of-date ideas about building more efficient engines, or a blog post from earlier this month detailing the company’s on going commitment to, and progress in, improving fuel economy without sacrificing performance.
On the other hand, not all content is designed to run for a long time. Some content is intended to make a splash and nothing more. The idea is to use the content as a part of a launch campaign, either for a new company, new brand, or new image for an existing brand. Since new brands, or changes to existing brands, have no history with consumers, producing the right content can create buzz about the launch and the related branding strategy. This is arguably better than a traditional ad campaign because the cost of selling a brand image is much lower in a series of five minute videos on the Internet than with thirty or sixty second media buys on TV. As long as the content is quality, people will keep watching. A perfect example from the real world would be the Cadillac ATS vs. The World campaign. Cadillac wanted to show that their car could compete with the top performance luxury brands like BMW and Audi. To do so, they shot a series of videos around the world on some of the toughest, most performance intensive roads they could find. They drove an open, wind-battered straight-away in Patagonia, a tight canyon road cut into the side of a cliff in China, and the route of the Morocco grand prix, just to name a few. Still wanting to reach out using traditional TV spots, Cadillac’s approach was to create TV ads that would act as a soft sell and drive traffic to their longer form web content, which would then serve as the hard sell for the viewers that it brought in.
In order for content to have an impact, it has to reach an audience. In the same way that product placement in a movie or TV show is only as good as the eyeballs it can reach, content is only effective as marketing if it is actually consumed by real people. This means the content has to be promoted, so that consumers know to be looking for it. Promoting content can be done in a variety of different ways. For example, as with the Cadillac ATS, a company could use traditional print and media buys to drive viewers to the content, with both the traditional and content marketing serving as advertising for the core brand promise. If such traditional advertising is too expensive, using social media tools like Facebook and Twitter can be effective. Posting updates, not just about the finished content, but also behind-the-scenes details of the content, complete with intriguing hints and exclusives before release, can really create a buzz around what the content is going to end up being. For example, if an automobile company wanted to launch a web-series where they took their newest ‘fun’ commuter car on a series of trips on America’s best driving roads, they could post to Instagram, and publish to Twitter and Facebook, vague pictures of things from the travels of the production crew without much accompanying text to explain them, such as a distinctive looking wheel well covered in mud with a caption that reads: “The new … gets down and dirty.” People enjoy a mystery and creating some mystery around content before it is released will build interest and attract viewers. Another way to get viewers is to pull in a personality of some kind. For companies who’s focus is not on the mainstream home consumer, such as a business-to-business or niche interest company, this is often a good approach. It isn’t necessarily flashy, but it is cheap and effective. Bringing an expert guest onto a podcast or web-show, or inviting a minor celebrity to participate in and/or collaborate on the content creation process, can do wonders for bringing in an audience. Involving a personality brings that person’s curious fans to the content, hopefully getting them hooked, and lends credibility to the content itself, through the power of tacit endorsement. A terrific example of this was the podcast that Wizards of the Coast ran a few years ago to promote the fourth addition of their landmark gaming system Dungeons and Dragons. In an effort to bring more video game enthusiasts into tabletop gaming, they contacted Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade to play the new game, lead by a Dungeon Master provided by Wizards, and have the whole thing recorded for a podcast. Wizards also reached out to two more power nerds, and friends of the Penny Arcade team, actor Wil Wheaton and web-comic Godfather Scott Kurtz, to round out the show. The podcast ended up a major success in terms of viewership, and future sessions of the podcast’s on-going game have since become a staple event at Penny Arcade’s annual mega-expo PAX, filling both the main stage and a remote viewing area, and reaching many more through live-streaming and video archives on YouTube.
Once viewers are coming to check out the content, changing their passive engagement to active engagement can be a powerful tool, because active engagement helps create brand loyalty. The best way to do this is by adding an interactive component to the content creation. What kind of interaction works best depends on the nature of the content. The main split is between content that is made in-house, but is user-participatory or user-driven, and content that is user-made. A hybrid approach can also work, if done correctly. The best way to explain these ideas is to provide some example scenarios. User-participatory content is content that includes ways for the user to participate, not surprisingly. For example, a live web-show, done in the format of a round-table talk show, could offer viewers the chance to submit questions, via social media, for the assembled panel to answer. The web-show “What’s Trending with Shia Lazar,” produced by CBS Interactive, used this system. The producers encouraged viewers to submit their questions via Twitter, and then selected questions got answered on the show. User-participatory content and user-driven content are both created in-house, but user-driven content puts the reigns for the show’s direction in the hands of viewers. Using a live web-show again as an example, the producers could let viewers determine every topic that would be discussed on-air, through online voting. Depending on what the company decided was the best method for maximizing impact, they could tally hash-tags on Twitter, use a Facebook poll, use a poll on their company site, a mix-and-match, or a number of other options. Finally, there is user-made content. User-made, or user-generated, content puts the making of content into the hands of the fans themselves. For example, if a car company wanted to show off how efficient their car is they could hold an on-going fuel economy contest. Owners could submit photos of their dashboards, showing their MPG, and then get ranked against other drivers. The ranking they get would let them show off their efforts, give them a sense of pride in their accomplishments, and encourage on-going economic driving as people strive to improve their position in the rankings. VW actually did something similar to this with their TDI diesel cars. Upset that the U.S. Department of Energy had given their efficient diesel vehicles a much lower rating than expected, VW started a contest where owners could submit their own MPG experiences, with a national leader board showing which drivers had been able to get the most out of their cars. This let VW demonstrate that their TDI diesel cars not only got great mileage, but also performed better than the number they were legally obliged to list; a clever way to overcome the potential setback the government findings could have represented. Finally, the hybrid approach is to start something as an in-house creation, and then turn it over to the fans. For example, a photo series centered on creative uses of a product could start out being produced by a creative agency and a professional photographer, but then after several weeks be turned over to the fans. An announcement from the company could read: “We’ve shown you some ideas we’ve had, now show us yours!” Oreo ran a campaign recently where they took pictures of Oreo cookies in interesting ways, such as an open face Oreo with a footprint in the center to commemorate the moon landings. They could easily have turned that into a hybrid campaign by letting fans submit their own pictures, and highlighting the best submissions, after the traditional campaign ended in October.
Many of these viewer-engagement concepts involve contests. This is because contests are a great way to create motivation for consumers to get involved. It makes it a game: it creates stakes and a purpose for the interaction. Certainly, plenty of campaigns can succeed without relying on a contest, fan-art for video games are a great example of this in action, but contests are such a strong model, serious consideration should be given before choosing to reject them. Remember, not all contests have to offer a prize. Sometimes pride is enough to get people involved.
A final warning about content: when companies start thinking about what they want to accomplish, far too many fall into the trap of wanting to create “viral videos” or developing a “viral marketing” campaign. It can seem like an attractive proposition. Make one really great video (cheap), get it to be a YouTube sensation (millions of views), and it basically promotes itself (viral costs nothing)! Think of the brand impact for KFC if “Charlie Bit My Finger” was “Charlie Bit My Drumstick” instead! And what about the ticket sales that could be generated by manufacturing a meme as strong as “THIS! IS! SPAAAARTAAAA!!!!!” for a different movie. The problem with thinking this way is that the viral part of viral marketing refers to how the content is disseminated, not the type of content that gets created. In many ways, viral videos function in the same way as word of mouth. They both get spread from friend to friend, through a social network, and as long as they continue to resonate they continue to spread. Everyone in the entertainment world knows that positive word of mouth can boost a film’s/play’s/book’s sales, and negative word of mouth can totally kill them. Hollywood has been trying for years to harness word of mouth, and has completely failed. If people like the film, they will tell their friends its good. If not, they will pan it. If people think a video is funny or spectacular or uplifting or what-have-you, they will send it to their friends over some form (or forms) of social networking. If those friends think it is funny/etc. too, they will share it as well. If it does not strike people in anyway, it will simply be dead in the water. This model of dissemination simply cannot be manufactured. Any attempts to do so generally read as false in the eyes of the savvy consumer, and such campaigns have a tendency to either fall on their face impotently or backfire horrendously. Even agencies that specialize in creating content, such as Pereira & O’Dell, refer to their work as storytelling, post-advertising, or something similar, and only refer to their content reaching viral status in their results, not in their offerings. I would go so far as to warn companies against trusting any agency that claims to offer viral videos as one of their services. Content going viral is not something that can be forced, it has to happen on its own, organically. Pereira & O’Dell’s Sexy Pilgrim video for Muscle Milk was able to reach 3.5 million views, but it did so because it was funny and it was timely (released just a week before Thanksgiving). Instead of focusing on making something viral, the focus should be on making quality content, promoting it to get viewers, and having faith that those in the target market will share it with others in the same demographic, and eventually people will come, consume the content, be sold the brand promise, and eventually buy the product itself.