I hate the content industry.
But isn’t that the industry you are in?
No, the industry I am in is communication and persuasion.
Sounds just as bad, so what’s up with “content”?
I was reading an article on adage.com and I had the warning, the word paradigm was used in the title. But what I focussed on was the bit about content…
At its core, it requires an understanding that audiences are not monolithic.” as if it were a revelation.
But surely everybody gets the fragmentation and micro segmentation of the audience nowadays.
It goes on,
Breakthrough content will be developed by agencies that were born and raised in the digital revolution. Agencies that have the ability to not only develop the content, but also the commitment to leveraging data in more complex ways than simply media targeting. It requires a commitment to creating both emotionally engaging content but also the more mundane tools that consumers need for frictionless experiences buying and using products. And, perhaps most critically, it requires the technical skills to build experiences that live within the consumer journey, not interrupt the journey.
Now, I am aware that it may be just the jargon that is winding me up, the use of friction and journey particularly. It’s this insistence that you have to be some can of yoofful, newdigital age, Facebook fugger to get it.
Bollocks, admen were creating emotionally engaging content back when cornflakes were first invented and even then way before that. And that tools and complexity is needed to create in the the pseudo medium (it’s not a real medium).
Crusted, old geezers can still pick it up faster than it takes a drop of watery mucus to fall from these snot nosed kids whose arses are more suited to bean bags than chairs.
Because it’s not complicated, it’s not new. Yes the tools are new, but they are simply mechanical devices invented to get the idea from one persons brain to another persons brain. To be honest the mechanical stuff is easy, pwning Snapchat, Instagram can be learned in an hour.
The information to suck into your brain in one swoosh of an internet surf hour resides in servers around the globe, just waiting for you to plug in and go. Do you have to be some man bearded, fixie bike riding metrosexual to and from the breakfast cereal cafe? No, of course you bleeding don’t, you muppet.
it’s relatively easy, it’s simple analysis and research. Remember, these systems are brand new, no one is really an expert in them.
Yes you have to have the right attitude, but to someone who is an expert in persuasion, it’s not hard to adapt to the current landscape.
How to tell a story is still the most important thing in branding or this “new paradigm” bollocks type branding. Which isn’t really new at all.
The story amplifies the culture. I am less calling in a brand these days, and think the term “culutre” is more accurate and rather than calling it an audience, lets call it a tribe.
Content production is increasing at an unprecedented rate because it’s cheap and it sometimes works. But the type of content that mostly gets built is garbage.
Content often follows no strategy apart from the SEO dept telling the content creators, “this week we need to rank for “Kim Kardashians ass“, and so every bit of content then produced is about Kim Kardashian’s ass and there is a lot to write about.
But that is not the way it should be done. SEO should follow the content, not drive. OMG, did I just commit SEO heresy?
A strategy, which reflects the culture of the brand should be developed and crafted. The story framed to highlight and focus on certain aspects. The content is simply the mechanical distributor of the story you want to tell. You need content to tell the story, but it is not the thing that really matters itself.
To be able to develop such a strategy you need to understand the culture of the organisation you are there to help. You also need to understand pop culture and the zeitgeist of the time, as content needs to catch the right current that is going to propel it a little faster than all the other boats that are sailing that day.
The tribes you wish to appeal too also matter, you must learn about them and be able to communicate with them.
The point being is you don’t have to be a new, shiny shiny agency to do all this, crusted and dusty agencies with saggy ball bags and a hacking, morning cough can also compete in this new arena.
The fact is, the older agencies have always had to adapt and have the minds with the ability to do this.