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Magnet 360Known Associates

+ + December, 2008 + +

Two words for 2009: Content Strategy

Posted by tbrunelle On December - 29 - 2008

Hopefully you’ve noticed our new site design. 

We’re not alone in moving to a blog platform. In fact, it seems as if the whole world is moving in this direction. The reasons are simple enough: We needed a more immediate and efficient system for managing our content—be it historic work samples, case studies or opinions like this one.

It’s not about blogging. It’s entirely about content strategy. 

And this, we predict, will be at the forefront of marketing in 2009. It’s not about what you say, so much as it will be about how you organize, connect, enable and (re)distribute what you say and what your audience says (i.e. content). 2009 will be about marketing systems. Why?

Them, Not Us

The most obvious reason is our users; or perhaps the better word is viewers, or even audience or participants. We must acknowledge the viewer is more important than ourselves, our agencies, our brands, our corporate ID systems and our budgets. Without them, we do not exist. We do not matter. Therefore, everything we do must be viewer-centric. 

Many people said they enjoyed our previous site. But quite a few did not. Such is life. Like any marketer, the alarm eventually rings for something new. Now we’re better able to supply, aggregate and maintain content and hopefully better enable and engage in conversation with our audiences as well. 

The most popular web properties (YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, etc.) are deeply focused on helping people accomplish something. They are deeply participant-centric. One could argue focusing on your audience’s needs will drive greater traffic and stronger engagement than focusing on your corporate/brand needs.

(I’m curious. Does this new site better meet your needs and expectations of Hello Viking?) 

Limited Resources

The second reason in favor of content strategy will be economics of scale—as in staffing, money and time. Marketing used to have generally few and narrow avenues of distribution, which allowed organizations some luxury in their focus and allocation of resources. Not anymore. More media channels and methods for your audience to redistribute your marketing ideas means more attention must be paid, everywhere, all the time. 

But who has more of more in 2009?

Content strategy speaks directly to this issue. Doing at least the same marketing with less becomes much more likely if your organization (internal and external) can agree on strategy for managing—not necessarily creating—content. Of course new messaging has to happen. But the world around us has evolved from one that appreciates or even withstands marketing campaigns to one that demands its share of voice in what have become ongoing conversations about your company, products and brands. 

Employing a content strategy acknowledges the growing impact of conversation, and allows a marketing organization to better engage with its audiences; even to guide them in ways beneficial to marketing’s goals. 

Here’s a hypothetical…

It’s time to launch an update to a beloved product. You’ll no doubt produce the usual mix of broadcast, print, direct and digital materials to get the word out and incite action—the typical integrated campaign. The board of directors expects it. Wall Street expects it. Your retailers/dealers/sales channel expect it. Consumers however, could probably care less, and now have the mechanisms to evade or counteract your best efforts.

Before firing the starter’s pistol to develop your messaging ideas or negotiate your media, think about content strategy. Put the audience first. How, where and why would they converse about your new product? What’s their system for sustaining conversation about your brand? Build on that.

How can your team listen to and engage your audience using existing, open source channels? What channels are your audience(s) currently using? Might your collective team’s efforts and budget be better spent listening and speaking one-to-one versus crafting big budget propaganda? Old methods aren’t dead—far from it. You probably do need TV, print, radio, out of home, etc. to generate awareness. But awareness alone isn’t enough anymore.

It’s about creating feedback loops. It’s about assigning and empowering marketing staff to play active roles as marketing content rolls out, your audience reacts and conversation builds. Think about all this before hand. Work through some best and worst case scenarios. It’s like writing a script for a play leaving room for improvisation—the basic story arc exists because you’ve created one, the production materials, players, budget and other resources stand ready to play out the story, and react when necessary.

This story never ends

The biggest challenge, however, is a way of thinking. 

Content strategy requires us to move away from “campaigns” (i.e. finite, encapsulated efforts) and into ongoing, potentially unlimited conversations. Consider your website. Will it ever be finished? 

This is game-changing stuff. “Ongoing” and “unlimited” require far different approaches to budgeting and staffing than the marketing and advertising industries have practiced. Collaborating with empowered consumers requires thinking far differently about legal and trademark issues. But it must be done.

Our move to a new design was, in part, an effort to prepare for this future of never being done, of being (as so many have already said), “always in beta.” We’re convinced content strategy will be at the root of marketing systems that thrive in 2009 and beyond.

 

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Viking Smackdown

Posted by admin On December - 14 - 2008

This was our highlight in 2008. A web-based iPhone/iPod Touch game, contest and birthday celebration all rolled into one. Six hours after its launch, Viking Smackdown was featured in TechCrunch and had over 300 players. In its first week, Smackdown was the featured game and “staff pick” on the Apple Web Apps site. And in its first month, over 100,000 people played worldwide while the story was featured on hundreds of blogs. Read the rest of this entry »

Crazy economy? There’s a perfectly irrational explanation.

Posted by apafenbach On December - 12 - 2008

Watching the economy go through its current gyrations makes us wonder why so many smart and seemingly rational people got so much so wrong. Professor Dan Ariely, Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University has an explanation in his new book, Predictably Irrational: When it comes to making decisions about money, even the smartest of us are irrational. It’s a fascinating topic. One the Obama administration is taking a hard look at as they formulate a way out of this mess.

In this interview with Robin Young on PRI, Ariely has concluded that because we hate to make decisions, we either make the easy, short term decisions or we put off making decisions altogether—even though we’re usually the worse for it in the long run.

<i>A rational case for why we're irrational</i>

This could be yours. A rational case for why we're irrational.

Ever ordered the same entree as your companion in a restaurant because it was easier to pick that, then to think about what you wanted—then regretted it at the end of the meal? We make stupid choices about our finances for the same reason. Because the pain of decision-making is here and now and the rewards appear to be too many years in the future. It’s why some folks don’t sign up for employer-funded 401ks.

Hello Viking will give you this book.

Speaking of the investing in the future, if you’re the 10th, 25th, 50th and 100th person to subscribe to our new Hello Viking Newsletter we’ll give you a copy of Professor Areily’s new book. It’s our hope you’ll find our newsletters to be as useful and insightful as books like this one. So be rational. Hit this subscribe link and let us know you’re willing to read what we have to say every so often, and where to send your prize (should you be one of the lucky winners).

Managing *for* Creativity

Posted by tbrunelle On December - 12 - 2008

Image from flickr by GeminiCai@SH

Teresa Amabile and Mukti Khaire at the Harvard Business Review have an engaging piece in the latest issue called “Creativity and The Role of The Leader” (PDF excerpt). In describing the value and role of creativity within a very wide range of businesses, the authors note:

“What used to be an intellectual interest for some thoughtful executives has now become an urgent concern for many.”

 

As Teresa’s blog points out, “Big companies, unable to cultivate [creativity] within their own walls, end up buying it instead.”

The growing need for more creativity within organizations isn’t a surprise. As the article points out, business has succeeded in honing processes of optimization, distribution and execution to the Nth degree. Our on-demand supply chains hum. But as psychologist and NetFlix Prize contestant Gavin Potter points out in Wired, “The 20th century was about sorting out supply. The 21st is going to be about sorting out demand.”

Creativity = Demand

And thus, figuring out how to manage for creativity (versus simply trying to control or organize it) is the business challenge of the future.

As we’ve experienced over 20+ years working in and running small and large ad agency creative departments, managing for creativity has as much to do with willingness, temperament, attitude, patience, philosophy and optimism as practical considerations, like work flow. Or time sheets.

The currency is ideas. The more you have, the better your chances. The better your abilities to filter, the more likely you will be to succeed.

You have ideas. Everyone does. That’s not the problem.

The problem is in understanding what the idea needs to accomplish, then mercilessly tuning that idea (or killing it, most likely) until it succeeds. You will kill more ideas than you tune or produce. Be quick. Get on with making new ideas. As an old mentor of ours puts it, “The business of creativity is learning to survive rejection.”

What do you think?