What’s the difference between jumping from space, producing a blockbuster film and cross-dressing as a female flight attendant on your competitor’s airline? Very little if you view each example as corporate content.
On October 14, 2012, over 8 million people watched Felix Baumgartner jump from a balloon 24 miles above the Earth during Red Bull Stratos. On Sunday, May 12, 2013, Richard Branson took an AirAsia X flight from Perth, Australia, to Kuala Lumpur dressed as a female flight attendant. And on February 7, 2014, The Lego Movie opened in theaters around the world and eventually grossed $468.1 million.
Marketing is no longer a competition to see who has the catchiest slogans and steepest deals. Rather, the best acts of marketing are events, experiences, performances, media and entertainment that are at least as remarkable as the company’s products and services. Content marketing is becoming a fountainhead of history, world records, entertainment and news, all of which begs the question: why are companies going to such lengths?
Corporate Content = Painted Purple Cows
Corporate content is beginning to tower over traditional media because it has to in order to compete. As remarkable products become harder to spot, remarkable marketing becomes more important.
In his book The Purple Cow, Seth Godin suggested that “Remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing right into your product or service. Not just slapping on the marketing function as a last-minute add-on, but also understanding from the outset that if your offering itself isn’t remarkable, then it’s invisible.”
11 years later, Godin’s Purple Cow argument stands true. However, companies know this, so many are painting their brown cows purple and then circumventing traditional media so it’s harder to detect the farce. Companies are adept at making themselves seem remarkable. With inexpensive publishing technology, they play this charade at a scale disproportionate to their actual success or remarkableness.
When Godin wrote Purple Cow 11 years ago, social media was non-existent. Word-of-mouth marketing meant people were having face-to-face conversations with friends, family and co-workers. Today, eMarketer estimates that the average US adult spends 5 hours and 46 minutes per day on digital media (mobile, online, other). TV time has not declined – rather, the total time spent with media has increased roughly an hour and a half over the last four years to accommodate the rise in digital consumption. So, all the purple cows – painted and real – are grazing on the internet, and that is where word-of-mouth now happens.
The Social Grassland of Corporate Content
Purple cows are harder to distinguish in a world of virtual word-of-mouth because so many painted purple cows have to be filtered out, particularly on social media.
The younger people are, the more likely they are to spend their 5 hour 45 minute digital allowance on social networking. Last year, Ipsos Open Thinking Exchange and Ipsos Global found that social users under 35 spend an average 4.2 hours a day social networking, 35-49 year olds spend 3.1 hours and the 50+ crowd spends 2.8 hours a day. “Word-of-mouth” happens on networks like Facebook and Twitter where peer messages are blended with branded messages and corporate content.
Unlike the face-to-face conversations of friends, where the audience is captive (at least until people whip out smartphones), social media word-of-mouth is easy to ignore. We have to ignore most content to avoid wasting our time. When our network deems everything amazing and important, we struggle to distinguish “remarkable” products and companies. Our Purple Cow filtering system wasn’t made for an algorithmic content water cannon.
So, remarkable products have a harder time riding on their remarkableness because digital word-of-mouth is so diluted. That is why we see a rise in click-bait, marked by headlines with superlatives and extremes. When we turn the old five-person conversation into a multi-billion user party, and then invite brands, everyone struggles to be heard.
Towering Above
Because the best products have a hard time standing out in an age of digital overload, your corporate content must become a Purple Cow in its own right, just like Red Bull Stratos, The Lego Movie and Richard Branson’s publicity stunts. You can’t simply have remarkable products. You need to be a remarkable company with remarkable content.
It’s hard to differentiate one energy drink from 15 competitors. It’s easy to sell free seats to a 123,000 foot jump from space. This is why in terms of viewership, Red Bull Stratos can rank with a weekly episode of America’s Got Talent, Big Bang Theory or 60 Minutes.
What’s the difference between Lego bricks and other toys to a 6 year old? A lot if Lego bricks are the stars of his or her favorite movie. The Lego Movie is currently considered the second highest rated movie of 2014 on Rotten Tomatoes. As journalist Jeff Beer writes in Fast Company, “It might just be the biggest, most high-profile piece of branded content…ever made in the history of brands or content.”
What’s the difference between Branson and other billionaires? He’s likeable, human and pretty damn funny. Two years ago, Branson and AirAsia Group CEO Tony Fernandes made a bet on their Formula 1 racing teams at the 2010 Grand Prix in Abu Dhabi: the loser would serve as a female flight attendant on the winner’s airline. Branson lost the bet but he still won because journalists covered the stunt.
Way back in 1998, Business & Strategy reported that Branson’s highest paid employee was Will Whitehorn, his public relations and communications director, whose “sole responsibility is devising the headline-catching publicity stunts for which Mr. Branson has become known.” To a content marketer, Branson’s antics are planned, live performances.
Seth Godin said that “Another reason the Purple Cow is so rare is because people are so afraid.” Dido with corporate content – marketers are deathly afraid of being noticed. They’d prefer to copy the listicles and infographics of competitors than blaze their own trail – it’s safe and it’s easy to sell to executives.
It’s also a sure way to be boring and unremarkable. As barriers between traditional media and corporate content disappear, marketers have to play in the same league as publishers that live or die on their ability to attract an audience.
You may have a purple cow product, but people will struggle to recognize it on the internet, where everything is painted purple. So stop copying competitors and stop filling servers with digital junk. Start using corporate content to make history and news.
