ignite advertising
TRANSCRIPT
In the traditional world of media, brands would buy ads to connect with consumers. Tv channels, magazines, newspapers they’re the curators to reach thousands or millions of people at a time, and brands would support them and come along for the ride.
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The internet and social media has disrupted that, individuals can skip the ads and connect with one another for information or entertainment. Bloggers, youtubestars, they’ve taught themselves how to make content that attracts and engages fans.
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Without publishers as the gatekeepers brands can connect directly with individuals as well. It’s potentially cheaper than buying ads, creates a deeper relationship, and can just be more fun-‐ like our friend Mustafa here.
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This means the old way of reaching consumers, paid media, is being replaced by direct connection-‐ also known as owned and earned media, which basically just means making content, and getting it out via social.
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Ads as we know them are going away. Now not immediately, and not totally. It will take a decade or so for the transition to happen. But it will happen faster than we think, billions are already being spent on social.
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But so far it’s mostly spent on gathering followers. Far less is spent making content to keep those followers engaged. This is like to spending money on nice invitations to a party, and then nothing on the food and drink when people get there.
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This is because brands are stuck on the methods that have worked for the past 40 years, writing a big check to the experts on Madison Avenue to create ads and buy placement for them as they deem appropriate. It’s much easier.
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But good brands have been creating original content as long as there has been advertising. Soap operas were, of course, a product of needing to sell to housewives. And salesmen have always produced informative pamphlets to engage prospective.
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Now companies are realizing they need to produce, a ton of content, to feed an increasing array of sites, social channels, and apps. The more they get into this process the more they begin to look, suspiciously, just like publishers.
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There’s some brands where this is already a part of their DNA. Sneaker companies, food and beverage brands, are adept at new media. Coca Cola’s CMO calls themselves liquid content-‐ when your product is virtually free you need to sell something else.
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Fashion and beauty brands are good at selling an image, and doing it now directly rather than through ad space. Saks, Gilt, Net-‐a-‐porter have built big editorial teams, hiring mostly journalists that have been laid-‐off from the shrinking print world.
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Gap is instead outsourcing the job of creation; they pay bloggers thousands to style and shoot for their online magazine sites. This is just the tip of the iceberg as more money is spent on content creation and management.
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This is a business that has the potential to dwarf even Google. And everyone wants to get into this changing spend. Both old and new marketing companies are trying to make creation more efficient, automated, scalable and measurable.
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Ad agencies, PR agencies are repackaging themselves as content experts, working to grow their in-‐house teams. Traditional publishers are creating custom content or reselling their high-‐quality articles and videos to brands.
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With endless social channels to fill companies are giving tools to community managers, often just out of college, to enable them to keep the hungry beast of social media fed. But handing the car keys off can sometimes backfire.
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Hiring journalists is a safer bet, but building a whole editorial team usually isn't within a brand’s core competency. Ask any publisher how difficult it is to keep fickle consumers engaged long-‐term.
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Outreach to influencer networks enlists bloggers or Youtube celebs to get them involved with making beautiful posts for their readers, as well involving them in marketing, events, contests and other promotions brands are already doing.
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My company tries to straddle the worlds of old media and new. We connect brands with individual bloggers and creators, but in cooperation with publisher partners who have expertise to help manage the process.
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This hybrid model brings curated, original content from thousands of passionate individual experts. I think direct connection and support of individuals where will be dollars previously devoted to ad are going to be spent.
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It’s still early in this transition. But we may live to see a world without advertising, at least not in the way we currently know it and I think many people agree this is a world they'd like to live in.
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