The Three-part Key to Branded Content
The world is over-clogged with advertising, and everyone knows it. And so companies and organizations of all kinds are coming around en masse to the idea of branded content. Why buy ad space, when people could share your reels for you for free? Why try to capture people for a 15-second ad when you could have them for a 45 minute podcast? Why sell when you could inspire? Of course, this is easier said than done, and more get it wrong than get it right.
Success in branded content isn’t easy, but it is based on simple principles. No matter what stream of content you might produce: videos (long or short), podcasts, blogs, books, games, “experiences”, and so forth, they all share the same goal: connecting the brand with a particular audience, making them feel affection and affinity for the company and its products, and increasing the chances that they might purchase something. To achieve this goal, it must be all of three things. I like to think of these as a Venn Diagram:
All of these are crucial. None are optional. Miss the first and the project will show you no benefit. Miss the second and it will never sustain an audience. Miss the third and it will never find one in the first place.
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The first, Aligned, is the most obvious, and the one marketing departments tend to spend most of their time thinking about. Who are we as a company? What are we trying to sell? What do we want people to know? How do we want them to feel? What is the mood and tone of our other messaging, and how can we compliment that? These are indisputably critical questions, and they have to be answered. Certainly, this project needs to express your brand properly and pull people back toward it, otherwise what would be the point?
Far too often, though, this is as far as the conversation goes. A series is created that expresses brand identity beautifully, but not in a way that anyone other than your marketing department would care to listen to.
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This is what brings us to number two, Useful. Successful must give something of real value to its audience. It has to genuinely entertain, educate, or inspire them. To achieve this, real thought and care has to go into considering who you are attempting to connect with and what they would enjoy. What do they currently watch, read, and listen to, and why? What can we cook up that they will enthusiastically add to their regular diet?
This is the hardest of the three for many companies to achieve, not only because it requires real creative skill, but also because it requires two things marketing departments aren’t necessarily known for: subtlety and generosity. The overt brand messaging has to be present, but in the background. This is not an advertisement, but rather a gift. Something that the audience you want will genuinely like, happily delivered to them by their friends at Company A. The goal here isn’t an immediate sale, or even the repeated consumption of brand imagery, but rather mutual good feelings. The chance that someone will be talking to a friend a few weeks from now and say “Oh, Company A? I love those guys. They have this great podcast – you really should check it out.” What’s better than customers? Advocates.
To achieve this most successfully, you need to provide that audience with something that is not just of value, but of unique value. It amazes me how many times I’ve heard a potential client say something like “Our competitor has a series that seems successful, I want to do something similar.” No, you don’t. You want to do something that is as different as possible from that. “Huh, interesting” isn’t good enough. You want people to and say “wow, that sounds amazing, how do I check it out right now?”
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Of course, for that reaction to occur, they have to notice that the project exists. And so, while the brand’s presence inside the content has to be subtle, when it comes to how you package and market that content, subtlety should be the furthest thing from your mind. The third wheel in our key is Excitement. This is what I’ve written about before as MVF: Minimum Viable Flamboyance. The reason someone watches or reads or listens to something in the first place is because it has attracted their attention. The project can’t just just be valuable, it has to also be intriguing. Everyone judges books by their covers. Make one that stands out from across the room (and across the world).
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Please remember that this is a three-legged stool, and it will fall if even one is removed. Create something aligned and useful but not exciting? You will wonder why you have this great show that no one is paying attention to. Aligned and exciting but not useful? You may get a short-term PR bump and maybe win an industry award, but you will not build a worthwhile audience. Useful and exciting, but not aligned? You might build an audience, but it won’t move the needle on your marketing goals.
Create a stream of media that shines in all three of these ways, though, and the audience you want will follow the trail you have laid, backwards through the trio: excitement will inspire them to tune in, utility will hold their attention, and alignment will build long-lasting affection for your brand. Success.