Servant of Chaos

The Importance of Content Marketing

I always find it interesting that a great deal of thought will be put into the strategic planning of a campaign – but very little time will be devoted to creating a content strategy. After all, it is the content that will bring your campaign to life. And perhaps, more importantly, it is content that will feed your social media efforts.

Some time ago, I was interviewed by ethos3 – seven questions on storytelling – where I discussed the P-L-A-Y framework for brand engagement. I remember emphasising the importance of allowing people into the context of your world – like starting a story with “once upon a time”. For me, content marketing comes back to telling a story. It is using the techniques and devices of storytelling to change the way that someone relates to your business, brand or product. And it’s about allowing these people into the process of storytelling. For brands, that means changing the way that you think of your consumers. For businesses, it means transforming the relationships you have with customers. And for marketers, it means changing the very nature of the work that we do.

But if this is the case, where can you find out about content marketing?

Over the last 12 months, additional focus has been given to “content marketing”. The “Top 42” content marketing blogs have been tracked and compiled regularly on the Junta 42 website (servantofchaos.com is currently ranked #16), and Guy Kawasaki has recently created a new content marketing catalogue for his alltop.com site. Each of these sites provide a convenient listing of content marketing related sites – which is valuable for any marketer wanting to think through a content marketing strategy. (And while many people feel more than a little jaded about the relevance of lists with their rankings of “influence” or “authority”, I still feel that most lists like this listing of 150 social media blogs, can prove to be a great resource for all of us).

And in this interview with Bryan Person, David Alston shares his insights around the importance of content marketing. As VP Marketing for Radian6, David has a broad professional and personal interest in social media and the role that content marketing plays in lubricating our social/digital interactions. As David says, "Not everyone's a customer when you WANT them to be a customer" ... so content allows you to offer value (not a product) to build a relationship. And in social media, it’s relationships that count.

So, tell me … what’s your story? Why is content important to your brand?

A Wii Kidsperience

When we talk about thinking "outside the box", or when we think of the "experience", this often means that we are trying to make a break with current types and modes of thinking. On the creative front, this means playing with expectation, changing the framing of a story, transforming a consumer’s sense of control or mastery. I often think about this in terms of the P-L-A-Y framework:

P -- for Power

• Demanding of attention 
• Testing limits (boundaries around behaviour, responsibility etc) 
• Controlling the controllable 
• Belonging

L -- for learning and curiosity

• Skills development 
• Negotiation

A -- for adventure

• Exploring an ever changing world 
• Actively making the world a better place

Y -- the yelp of surprise and delight

• Recognition and reward 
• Self expression

As brands continue to investigate the changing consumer and business landscape prompted by the ever-increasing adoption of social (and mobile) media, strategists need to also consider the idea of “kidsperience”.

Nintendo appear to be following a similar path in their efforts to differentiate their product in the highly competitive gaming console market. As Scott Weisbrod points out, Nintendo are in search of a Blue Ocean. His competitive strategy canvas shows exactly how the positioning is being planned. But the question remains – how does this play out in their branding and advertising works? Take a look here. NO … wait, really, click through – and then come back and share your thoughts. I am fascinated to know.

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• The Blue Ocean Strategy - Ipod, Wii, and this Blog

Reversing the Launch

We all shuffle into the meeting and take our chairs. We greet one another, sip our coffee and lift our pens in silent readiness -- after all, one never knows when an action point will be thrust across the room.

Before long, even the most strategic of strategy sessions will be punctuated by tactics (and let me admit I am as guilty of this as anyone). In a bizarre twist on meeting bingo, marketing bingo is littered with words such as "viral", "youtube", "facebook" -- and increasingly, "social media". Much of this is driven by short-term, campaign oriented thinking and a focus on short-term objectives. However, when it comes to advising our clients (whether they be internal or external), it is important to remember that campaigns (and microsites) are no longer stand-alone. Google has seen to that.

Where once we built our discrete campaigns around various plans to raise awareness, generate demand, build brand, stimulate sales, accelerate trial etc, brand custodians now need to consider a longer term narrative line that incorporates the way that consumers engage with the brand over time. We no longer have disconnected brand campaigns but discontinuous brand interactions. The crucial link between each of these campaigns is a combination of social media powered by Google. That is:

• The articles or references that bloggers make about your campaign (whether it is digital or not)
• The perspectives published by the media (advertising media as well as other publishers
• User generated content that riffs off your campaign

All of this can be found by Google. More importantly, it can be found by Google well into the future -- long after your campaign has ended. For example, when I search on some of my old projects, I can find all the pointers, the conversations and the discussions AROUND them, but the project has passed. The microsite has gone. All we are left with are traces leading nowhere. This is brand equity being squandered.

In the future, we need to think about brand lifecycles. We need to think about brand "through lines" -- and design experiences with entry and exit strategies. We need to start putting as much thinking into "reversing the launch" as we put into the start of a campaign.

When we reverse the launch, we can draw upon the P-L-A-Y framework, delivering an experience that enhances and continues the conversations that evolve around your campaign. In fact, part of your strategy could be to build upon some of these user generated conversations as a catalyst for ongoing dialogue. After all, creating the talking point is one of the early challenges, maintaining or stoking that conversation requires much less effort and attention.

Best Practices in Social Media: Tell a Story

While many brands still struggle with social media, there is certainly a maturity entering the market with some sophistication in the consumer, corporate and agency spaces. Mitch Joel over at Six Pixels of Separation kicked off a meme around best practices in social media which, I am sure, will capture some of the lessons learned over the last few years, often by trial and error (or by flame and terror). Sound advice has come, so far, from:

• Consistency (Mitch Joel)
• Embrace your audience (Jason Falls)
• Listen and add value (Kipp Bodnar)
• Listen (Chris Brogan)
• Be human (Kristie Wells)
• Reach out to others (Morriss Partee)
• Honesty and respect (Paisano)
• Watch what people actually do (Liz Strauss)
• Provide a platform (Beth Harte)

Drew McLellan, added to this list by explaining that you can't go wrong when you lift up others! He tagged Mike Sansone, Roberta Rosenberg, John Rosen,  David Reich and me.

My best practice is: tell a story.

While this sounds simple, it can be challenging -- and easily forgotten in the rush to post your latest thoughts. But pause for a moment. Consider your audience. You can add significant value by taking the time to frame a blog post, a video or podcast. Remember, we connect with and through stories. Be generous enough to share yours with us all.

Now it is your turn to share a best practice. If you don't have a blog, leave a comment below.

1. Blog it or add it to the comments here.
2. Link to Mitch’s blog
3. Tag it “social media marketing best practices project”
4. And then tag someone else with the meme.

I tag Julian Cole, Mark Hancock, Tim Brunelle, Charles Frith and Adrian Ho.

Social Media? I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means

In the debate over whether Scorched.TV really is social media, I was reminded of this line from one of my favourite movies, The Princess Bride.

Not content with taking Channel 9's word for it, I decided to check out the Scorched.TV site and upload a video of my own. Unfortunately, even when I follow the directions provided by the "EP of CPN" (that is, the executive producer of a fictional news network), the best I could do was to send them an email with my story idea. This is hardly social media.

Social media is relatively simple ... and it looks like the slide below. The way this plays out, however, is complicated -- and is most articulately explained in Michael Wesch's definition of "context collapse" which I talked about here. The defining feature, however, is participation of "users", or "consumers" or "people like me". And until you have those folks involved, creating, changing, mashing and even destroying, then in my book, you don't have social media.

Simple Social Media

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: social media)

Mr Chaos Has Entered the Building

I can remember sitting through a pitch on the oddcast technology. These spookily real looking avatars were interesting, maybe even funky, but I could not quite see how we were going to be able to use them for client promotions. And to be honest, the licensing rates were, at that time, beyond what we had in our budget.

Report

But it seems the folks at the BBC have come up with a very neat promotion that integrates the core storyline from their spy drama, Spooks -- only this time, YOU are the star. When you upload a photo of yourself, the oddcast engine transforms your image into an animated avatar who is protagonist of this digital adventure episode. You even get to make a couple of narrative choices in this choose-your-own video animation promotion.

The question remains, however ... did I achieve my objectives? Did I make it out alive? Hat tip to Stephen Collins.

Transmedia vs Social Media

It is the year 2012. Warragamba Dam, which supplies Sydney with fresh water has now reached critical levels, holding only 15% of its capacity -- and the city has been placed on Level 8 water restrictions. Country towns, meanwhile, are struggling to survive.

This is the setting for Channel 9/NineMSN's new drama series, Scorched. Gordon Whitehead has an excellent post explaining the digital strategy that has been put into place to support the series and to transform it into an immersive online experience. But he also asks, "is this social media?" -- provoking some interesting discussion with Craig Wilson. After taking a look at the Scorched.TV site, there seems to be quite some distance between the stated aim of allowing users to contribute content and the activation which requires you to send your ideas for video submission via email/form.

Perhaps it is still early days, and the social media strategy is yet to kick in. However, there is clearly some good thinking around transmedia digital strategy in place, or what Faris Yakob calls "converged communication" (see below). But with an airing date of August 31, Scorched have only a couple of weeks to begin really building and activating their viewing community. And if the plan is to extend the storylines into web-only episodes post-August 31, the success (or otherwise) of this effort will be available for us all to see. The clock is ticking ...

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: transmedia faris)

Tiptoe Through Your Digital Tulips

In a digitally-connected world, our past may no longer be "ours". With sites like the WayBackMachine and Google's great caching engine, our own words and the words of others ABOUT us will live long into the future. Add to this the "handles", user IDs, profiles and so on that we create in the various courses of our lives -- from Facebook to Twitter, Flickr and even dating sites -- and we can amass a digital footprint that extends well past the bounds of public/private and into the deeply personal.

But how might this play out for a baby? Or for, say, my nephew who is 10 years old? What is out there and how will all this data affect the relationships that he has in the future? What about his first job? His first date? Or his twentieth? What about the photos taken by his family and friends? Who sees what and who "owns" what is shown?

This video produced by Kanupriya Tewari for the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society’s Digital Natives Project shows how all this may play out for a newborn (hat tip to Katie Chatfield). But watch the video, then read this account of a first date gone wrong.

There are lessons here for brands as well. Clearly, with 78% of consumers trusting the purchase advice of friends or even networked acquaintances over advertising, it pays to at least monitor the conversations that are ALREADY taking place about your products/services. And while, yes, consumers have always spoken about and discussed the brands that they love and hate, in this Age of Conversation, these sentiments are captured, stored and immediately available well into the future.

Social media may look like a tulip field, but it is, in fact, a whole new way of playing and participating. Tiptoe with care!

A Lion of a Story

What happens when you raise a lion as a pet (!) and then release him into the wild? Kim Komando shares a story about two men who did just that. John Rendall and Ace Berg purchased Christian from the zoo in 1969, but after a couple of years found he was too big to handle safely. They agreed to release him into the wild.

Nine months later, they decided to travel to Africa to see Christian, the lion, one more time. They were told that he would not recognise them. What will happen at their reunion?

Hat tip to David Armano.

The Yelp of Surprise

What happens when you see a great creative idea? Can you recognise it for what it is worth? Do you turn away? Do you get shivers, goosebumps or sweats? Does it make you smile or gasp? Any or all of these reactions (or more) indicate that an idea will deliver on the "Yelp of Surprise and Delight" that I discuss in the P-L-A-Y framework.

But, of course, the challenge is not just in the conception of such an idea. It must also follow-through in the execution. For TV that means, a myriad of challenges -- setting, casting, script etc. For digital this is magnified -- call to action, availability, timing ...

Kathryn Schlieben has provided a great demonstration of how this can play out, with this video aimed at attracting the next Gordon Ramsay to the Caterer.com job portal (specialising in hospitality employment).

To deliver a knockout in terms of RESULTS for your brand, it is important to bring all this together in a unified, yet flexible strategy. The P-L-A-Y framework is definitely at work here ... can you see the elements? And gasp! I certainly did.