I had two interesting discussions with marketing leaders recently. Both revolved around the same question: “Where do we start?” One told me she’d road-mapped an entirely new content operation for her marketing department. She’d gotten the go-ahead from leadership, but everybody was so busy with other work that they weren’t sure how to move forward….
How are things for marketing agencies? Not as great as last year, according to rebranding themselves (subscription required) as creative solutions companies, content studios, growth incubators, or accelerators. Marketers should do this in 2024 and beyond What should you make of all this? The world of agencies is complicated. One reason for their slowdown is…
Social media offers a volatile space for marketing. The rules of engagement vary across platforms, as do the audiences and opportunities for brands. The platforms’ popularity ebbs and flows while new challengers emerge, hoping to disrupt the scene and steal the spotlight. Once seemingly stable and reliable, shared media outlets shift their business priorities and…
Stuart Butler is a trained rocket scientist turned content marketing rock star. Though the career as a rocket scientist didn’t stick, he applied what he learned to a 20-plus-year career in marketing. Now, as chief marketing officer of Traveling the Spectrum, a heartwarming, unscripted six-part video series following three families living with autism as they…
A long time ago (so long ago that Nickelback still had hits), my marketing leader would ask me what value my brand-building programs added to the business. My answer to him was always the same: “Good things.” Halfway through 2024, brands are desperate to make every piece of content catch their audiences’ attention. That’s no…
We didn’t get to the south of France this week, but we’ve been talking about Cannes Lions. At the most recent book and in his keynote presentation at Content Marketing World 2023, Robert Rose asked if marketing was simply becoming content marketing. Well, this year’s Dumb Ways To Die campaign. This year’s early winners struck…
Brands’ words and actions — including yours — matter. As politics, health care, and other cultural topics become more polarized, being authentic about your values and causes can build audience loyalty. Over half of young U.S. adults (ages 18 to 29) want businesses to take a public stand on current events, while 35% of those…
A mentor of mine used to drill the following into my head: “You are not your target market.” He meant that it doesn’t matter if you think the headline is great, the ad design is impressive, or the copy is sublime. It only matters what the customer thinks. As he would say, “Our job is…
When is your content, our content? In the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn) has a pizza delivered to his history class taught by Mr. Hand (Ray Walston), who isn’t pleased. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E81eW3BFLHs?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281] “Mr. Spicoli, you’re on dangerous ground here. You’re causing a major disturbance on my time.” “I’ve been thinking…
Two brains are better than one. Embracing the machine brain of technology as a partner with the human brains of content marketers lets you do things for your audience and brand that you could only imagine or considered too resource-intensive just a few years ago. These examples of what’s possible with tech-human collaborations today and…