I love this “ship early, ship often” approach social content from Lars Silberbauer, head of social media and search at Lego, shared at Social Media Week London:
Describing how Lego created its social marketing campaigns, he said: “We start out by creating $100 campaigns. We of course do TV ads and have a lot of budget but I want people to think differently about social.”
The idea of the $100 spend came about as Silberbauer wanted his team to think more about the dynamic of the content and not just the spend available. The number was decided as he asked his team to empty their pockets, and the value of change held by the group was almost $100.
“Pilot and scale” is a planning mantra at Brilliant Noise. I’d like to try out a few $100 campaigns – it’s a neat way to constrain and get you trying out ideas.
An imperious Kevin Spacey as Francis Underwood stares down at the pedestrians in Times Square from this billboard for House of Cards.
I like this poster in several ways.
Immediately, of course, it reminds me of the series, which I watched with Mrs M a couple of weeks ago. A lot of fun – I’m looking forward to the second season.
If you read it closely, however, this advertising hoarding is marking a little moment of media history. There are ads for TV shows everywhere in this part of mid-town Manhattan, but they are all different to this one in one crucial, industry-shaking detail – as well the date, it says “ALL EPISODES”.
It’s not a series you would have to follow week after week. It’s a complete series available all at once, to be consumed at your own pace, in bursts or a binge if you want, habits we’ve grown from watching box-sets.
This was a show I watched in the UK at the same time as everyone here in the States. Often when I visit New York the ads are for things I won’t watch for months yet – Mad Men, for instance. House of Cards, as I’ve already said, I’ve already seen. The whole thing.
The series (which is worth a couple of months of Netflix subscription fees alone, was the first show that the company commissioned as original content.
Which brings me to the last reason that this poster made me smile. It reminded me the most powerful articulation of strategy I have heard recently – when Netflix’s Chief Content Officer, Ted Sarandos said:
The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us.
That punchy statement is not on the poster, but it is a kind of silent strap-line, an implicit message every bit as loud as “Only on Netflix”.
It’s a brilliant strategy because it is active, immediate, clear and gives not only direction but an imperative.
HBO will be coming after online on demand audiences with their catalogue of amazing content – Netflix’s best chance of success is to learn the trick of building loyal, slightly addicted audiences for original content of their own.
After a comprehensive analysis of the state of display advertising (worth a read in itself), John Battelle is agitiating for a new advertising model for individual bits of content can be monetised, which…
…attaches value to an individual piece of content, such that the piece of content is monetized as it travels around the web, getting reposted, tweeted, shared on Facebook, pinned on Pinterest, and so forth. Such a model is incredibly difficult to create, but not impossible. I promised a follow up post.
There are no shortage of opportunities to buy media space – the real estate, as it were is increasing – it is just that the attention you will find there is dwindling -as in, there’s less people looking at it – and shallow people avoid the ads (skipping, blocking) or shift their focus three quarters have another screen right in front of them while they are watching TV, for instance.
The conclusion? Brands need to invest in their ability to create, curate and distribute content, or “content capabilities” as Forrester puts it.
The North Face Ultra Trail Mont Blanc race is taking place today. The runners will cover over a 100km on some unseasonably wintry mountains in the next few hours.
There’s a double interest here for me. I love running, and seem to love running ever increasing distances. So ultra-marathons have a fascination for me, even if I may never get to run one.
There’s also a professional interest here of course – The North Face’s sponsorship of the event and some of the elite competitors and the content marketing that comes out of it shows us how this sort of thing can be done well.
ChangePlayBusiness was an unusual event, to say the least, living up to its promise to be an unconference. About 40 innovators and entrepreneurs gathered at the ICA to play a game about creating businesses, the playing of which included connecting with one another (there were a lot of interesting people) and meeting subject matter experts on everything from financing to marketing (which is where I came in).
My role was to deliver a “masterclass” on understanding and communicating with customers in a “changing economy”. I chose to interpret this as an opportunity to talk about businesses in the age of networks, in the age of complexity.
The slides are here for those (with the push/pull error reversed!) who attended the session:
I had a great time yesterday presenting at the first International Content Summit 2010, although I wish I could have spoken for longer as I had more to say than the fifteen minutes that were available.The brief was to talk about how to use social media with content.I prepared by speaking with some of iCrossing‘s senior content experts, Tamsin Hemingray, Charlie Peverett and Trisha Brandon. I founded the team four and half years ago but have not been involved directly for some time and they have evolved their approach brilliantly, with journalists now taking on parts of the research and analysis process from the social media analysts and developing more and more sophisticated and ambitious strategies for content.In order to make up for the slightly shorter than was comfortable talk yesterday, I am going to create some audio to go with this presentation in the next few days. In the meantime, these are some of the themes and, of course, below are the slides from my talk.
Everything in marketing and media is up for grabs
Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy had earlier mentioned that content was often the first thing to be cut when a downturn came around. There is a lot of opportunity for content specialists, I believe. Like their community manager cousins, the social web is disrupting media and marketing to such a degree that the industry is being re-shaped.
iCrossing has always come from a networks perspective
Being a search firm originally, iCrossing’s perspective is informed by understanding the web as a medium that is comprised of and defined by networks. To understand how to be successful, we have to understand how networks (both human and machine, as I told Reputation Online yesterday) work.
This means that we think of branded content as being something that exists across networks rather than in one place and that success is achieved by how far and how fast content travels. Networks decide what is successful based on what is most useful to them.
Stories and numbers are key
This is what Dan McQuillan called “data storytelling” in a Twitter conversation with me today: it’s the ability to turn data into stories quickly so that people can understand and act on it. in content terms at iCrossing it means that measurement isn’t something that is an after-thought to the editorial/creative process, it fuels it, by providing insights about what people in the network are interested in, what sorts of content might want more of.
Keep your data and content people close to each other
Further to the last point, keeping the people who are researching and listening to the networks (the social media analysts in our case) close to the people creating the content (journalists) has paid off so many times.
There is a useful tension between the two about who knows their communities best, about what content will work. We have tried to preserve that tension and value it in the same way as the tension between the editorial and advertising teams at a traditional publisher. Journalists and social media experts sitting near to each other stumble across great ideas that might not come up in a formal meeting.
Default to social
Being social in the way that you create and distribute content is not an add-on or a tweak to the process. The social network should be in mind when coming up with ideas, and technically when building platforms (is the content findable, portable and shareable?).
Sharing and wanting to share, should be the default position. Even licencing can play a role in this. Organisations default to protecting intellectual property with copyright, when in fact copyright should be the exception.
Digital literacy should be promoted across your organisation
Naturally, I didn’t waste the opportunity to put across the case digital literacy. The point is that if you want your content to be successful in social media, you need to be encouraging everyone in your teams, in the wider organisation to experience social media. Naturally, I think the best way to learn how social media and networks work is to start with number one, and look after your own personal reputation.
I was chuffed to say the least to see the pamphlet-sized versions of the book – it was the first time we had done something like this. Hopefully people liked them, and maybe some will go on to buy the book. If you want your own electronic version, of course, they are available over here…
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