Mike Stiles
A seismic shift is going on right now in the marketing world. It pits the dinosaurs of classic advertising (the Mad Men) vs. the young bucks of brand personality. It?s been amazing to watch. In short, the etched-in-stone rules of advertising are getting hammered. What the old guard knows to do instinctively is no longer going unquestioned and unchallenged. Digital marketing, and specifically social, have changed everything. And advertising is not exactly an industry that races toward change with arms wide open (apologies to Creed).
Here?s what traditional advertising knows you should do:
? Put the logo in front of people in as many places and in as many ways as humanly possible.
? Hit them with heavy repetition so this mass of logos is in front of them as much as possible.
That may send a tingle up the legs of the marketing department, but does anybody care what your target audience thinks anymore? Because they hate commercials. I mean, they despise them. They piss them off. They go to great lengths to avoid commercials, oftentimes gladly paying money to avoid them. Now what?
Well, you could take the Red Bull route. Red Bull seems to be totally cool with the future of marketing. They seem to be totally cool, period. And that?s exactly how they want their customers to think of them. Branded content is huge. HUGE. I didn?t say commercials, I said branded content. Not understanding the difference between branded content and a commercial puts a Berlin Wall between you and having your customers embrace your brand like never before.
Branded content is about creating material people want. It?s about entertaining them or giving them something useful. It?s not about selling them. The more it smells like a sell job, the more tainted it becomes, and the less it?s valued. And it won?t get shared, because sharing a commercial with friends makes you a tool. Traditional advertisers freak if every 2 seconds doesn?t push the logo and brand message. We?re now in an age where that?s suicide.
Here?s one of Red Bull?s videos (http://youtu.be/uiIgrGWRaik). It doesn?t feel like an ad to me. The logo was barely there, but I know who the video was from. I watched it all the way to the end. If I saw logos everywhere, I?d have stopped it. As it is, I appreciated it, shared it, and I think Red Bull is cool. They thought about their consumer first, then the brand second. The old formula was to think about the brand first, and relegate what the customer likes to an afterthought. That won?t fly anymore. Are you cool enough to put content over commercials?
Mike Stiles is a writer/producer with the social marketing tech platform, Vitrue, and head of Sketchworks comedy theatre. Check out his monologue blog, The Stiles Files.
Find him on Facebook or on Twitter @mikestiles
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