so much is impacted

by

a key skill

set

couched in core

values

dovetailed with action

items.  

In the early 90’s, so-called place- and retail-based media was all the rage, based on introducing advertiser-supported video and TV-style programming into environments rich with “captive” consumers.  

Active still today, the most prominent success from that era is the pioneering CNN Airport Network. Launched in 1992 by Turner Private Networks, the network currently broadcasts news and entertainment features to some 46 airports across North America.  

When I was roused out of a morning snooze the other day by a commercial claiming that the Chevy Volt would “save you a crap load of money” …

 … I thought of my father’s best friend, Carl Ally.

He would have dismissed that giggly thing as just another form of vapid corporate prudishness. But he might also have thought to himself: There’s a client just desperate enough to be worth working for.

Need a ready-made reminder of the pitfalls that accompany putting advertising before your overall marketing strategy? Look no further.  

Up until this month’s Super Bowl XLVI, Budweiser.com was a content graveyard. I’d closely watched Bud’s homepage for weeks to see how long it would take them to do an update after a coworker told me she’d been on the site and was surprised at the lack of relevant content leading up to the big game. In fact, not just a dearth of content but no content.  

In talking to a prospective client recently, she made a comment that I agreed with but also made me cringe. "Content is the new black," is what she said and, as a marketer, it made me cringe because of how trendy it makes content marketing sound. Truth is, the term "content" is all the rage right now, but I started asking myself, ‘what were we doing before?’  

Recently the Chicago Sun-Times' Neil Steinberg was turned down by the Wrigley Company when he asked to see how the gum was made.  

Steinberg's complaint struck the crux of the corporate communicator's plight:  

"At times, it seems that half of any big company is desperately grabbing for publicity while the other half, with equal fervor, frantically tries to keep itself under wraps."  

Twenty-five years ago, a potential technology boon for communicators was simultaneously undermining the communication business.  

Oh, it was awful.  

Awful, and—after I completed a marathon session of vetting many dozens of corporate videos as program chairman of the Strategic Video Awards— suddenly familiar again.  

Here’s a basic, but all too common Achilles Heel for marketers that will smother great strategyor creative work every time. Check out the picture below, it’s of the marketing content accompanying a fairly high-end piece of music equipment that caught my eye in a store recently.

How many logos do you count?  

We’ve all heard that good content is supposed to be engaging. And now there are plenty of tools to measure engagement.

But that leaves a big gap: What kind of content is engaging, and how do we create content that engages our audience?  

Content marketers that focus on platforms and metrics can lose sight of these questions. And the answers you read about don’t tend to be very useful. Good content is supposed to be credible, authentic, relevant, compelling, “high-quality” (I’m guilty of using that last one), and so on. Most of these terms are just different plays on the word “useful.” But what is useful?  

If you’re like me, you probably look on with frustration as one company after another slaps YouTube, Facebook and Twitter logos on their websites and expects droves of fans and followers to sign up. Just like any other channel, marketing through social media requires a compelling reason for your audience to take action. And from a business perspective, connecting with this audience should ultimately and measurably impact goals.  Tall order? Well, it can be - and is being - done.