Have you ever come this close to death?
Morbid, but fascinating nevertheless.
“What’s it like,” asks Don Draper to his bellman, who almost died of a heart attack during the opening episode of season 6. Draper, a character that faked his own death, obsesses with mortality throughout the overall show arc. One wonders when he will find out for sure. But I digress…
The Bell Man answers with the usual trite response of a white light appeared.
So, is that really all there is?
More and more voices state that content marketing overhype has jumped the shark. They’re right. As a primary strategy content marketing is overhyped. Instead, brands should focus on customer experience marketing.
Before we go too far, let me say I love content, all forms of it, too, not just online, but events, print, and music, just to name a few. Brand developed content (cough, advertising) offers a great tactical toolset, one of my favorites.
That doesn’t necessarily mean content marketing should serve as every company’s primary outreach strategy.
Why not just make Facebook your primary strategy? Should we have that conversation again?
A better strategic approach focuses on marketing tools as extensions of the brand experience.
In building the program for xPotomac (February 25th), I sought to address a sea change in media evolution. That change spells the end for the social PR revolution, a marketing movement embodied by brand-led conversations over the past seven years.
We are currently experiencing a throttling of branded, online grassroots power. Specifically, it’s becoming harder and harder for marketers to be seen with branded earned media and social updates.
This evolution is best evidenced by the increasing role of owned and paid content placement (as discussed, content marketing is the 21st century nice description of advertising), and social or native advertising.
Other signs evidence this change, too. Social search and stronger policing of black hat SEO by Google has put a premium on paid search again. Facebook’s use of Edgerank to force companies and individuals alike to pay for attention is another harbinger of this fate.
The rise of big data and the forthcoming wearable computing revolution — themes that run throughout xPotomac — will cause a further throttling of online grassroots pipes.
