Have you ever done a content marketing campaign and then had to go explain to the big guy or big lady why it didn’t work?  Awkward.  Patricio Robles has 6 reasons your content effort may have tanked.  You didn’t do the market research to learn what the target audience really wanted.  The content didn’t match up to the objective; maybe you put conversion content out to a lead gen target.  The content wasn’t compelling; it’s really, really crowded out there and your content can’t afford to just be meh.  The presentation could have been wrong; wrong delivery format, typography, graphics, video, etc.  Your distribution strategy could have been wrong which means you didn’t reach the right people.  And, maybe you took pride in quantity of content instead of quality of content.  The c-suite might not be impressed you were able to make a lot of lame stuff.

 

If I’ve said it once I’ve said it at least once, content marketing is so much about having the trust of your audience.  Well never mind content, the Internet itself is having extreme trust problems.  The Centre for International Governance Innovation and Ipsos asked users all over the world how they’re feeling and 83% think there should be new rules about how their data is used.  57% are more worried about their online privacy now than they were a year ago.  But this is funny, 38% actually trust that what they do on the Internet isn’t monitored.  Bless their hearts.  Who do most people trust?  Nobody!  Only a third thinks their government’s keeping personal data safe from private companies, and a third thinks private companies are keeping the info safe from governments.  It’s a conspiracy!  83% have changed what they do online to try to control their info.  That includes not opening emails from unknown addresses and doing fewer financial transactions online.  But 11% even said screw it and reduced their overall usage of the Internet.

 

Jim Burns comes up with an interesting proposition, what if you brand content marketers stopped and evaluated your own content in the same way that the general public evaluates content?  What would happen then?  Would you go ahead and distribute content when you know for a fact it’ll likely land with a thud?  And do you even care if your target audience thinks your content is good?  Jim says these are the questions that run through any content consumer’s mind when presented with a blog, video, infographic or whatever.  Is this for me?  Is it about something I care about right now?  Will I get something new, important, worthwhile, I don’t already know for my time investment?  How much time will this take?  And do I trust this source?  And the questions keep coming even after they’ve started with the content.  Is this any good?  Should I keep putting time into this?  And am I getting what I expected?

 

One way to get good is to follow the examples of the best, and congratulations to Samsung for being named the best when it comes to branded content, at least in one award committee’s judgment.  But it’s the Tribeca Film Festival so this one has a lot of cred behind it.  Kristina Monllos reports it’s the first time the festival has given out an award celebrating who’s getting the fusion of advertising and entertainment right.  Samsung won for its 5 minute short, Hearing Colors.  It’s about Neil Harbisson, a colorblind fellow that talked doctors into implanting an antenna in the back of his head so he could “hear” colors.  Tribeca Enterprise’s CEO Andrew Essex said, “This film exemplifies the kind of work we applaud in which a brand is telling a genuinely compelling story in a way that adds value to people’s lives.”  It was part of Samsung’s Vimeo partnership to show how today’s tech is changing communication.

 

There are some things that are just sacred, that you keep clear of branded content.  If you’re a child of the 70’s and 80’s and think Saturday Night Live is such a sacred institution, think again.  Next season, season 42, will have NBC removing 2 commercial breaks per show.  That means 30% fewer commercials, which sounds like a good thing, right?  Megh Wright reports in Splitsider the payback is that marketers will be able to partner with SNL to make branded content.  In other words, commercials in the form of sketches.  The combo of ads and sketches, which I suppose you’d call skads or commetches, are very exciting to NBCUniversal’s ad sales chair Linda Yaccarino.  She says, “By partnering, advertisers can capture an audience only SNL can deliver.”  Surely producer Lorne Michaels would never allow this.  Nah.  He says, “This will give time back to the show and make it easier to watch the show live.”

 

Are you a senior marketer whose forehead vein is usually prominently protruding, signifying the oncoming aneurism your job was destined to give you?  You probably want to know if it’s just you or if your peers feel equally as stressed.  Well relax.  Relaaaax, and I’ll tell you.  The Creative Group did a survey of 400 US marketing and ad executives and as it turns out, 63% say their job is somewhat stressful and 7% say it’s very stressful.  27% say their job’s not too stressful, and 3% of clearly Xanax-taking individuals say there’s no stress at all.  But Ayaz Nanji goes on to report that even for those who are stressed, not everybody thinks that’s a bad thing.  Nearly two thirds said the more stress there is, the more productive they are.  SO obvious this was a survey of Americans.  Only 8% think their productivity goes down if there’s any stress at all.

 

What do you advertisers think about Snapchat?  Well apparently whatever it is, its VP of Content Nick Bell says you’re wrong!  He calls out two big Snapchat misconceptions you might be walking around with.  One, that Snapchat is just for the kiddies.  He says 2/3 of the audience is older than 18 and half of new users are really big boys and girls, over 25.  Misconception number 2 is that ca-ching, Snapchat is a really, really expensive ad platform.  Lara O’Reilly reports in Business Insider that okay when Snapchat first went after ads, they weren’t really a big ad platform and the minimum ask was for 3/4 of a million dollars a day for a “Stories” ad to get the reach needed to move needles.  That kind of cost isn’t quickly forgotten so the belief is it’s still that much.  But now they can target so you can pay less to reach a smaller, more accurate audience.  The new entry-level…tens of thousands.

 

Likes sands through the hourglass, so are the days in the relationship between PR professionals and brand content makers.  A sordid story against the backdrop of a desperate desire to just be loved and accepted.  Collective Content and ResponseSource asked 266 UK PR people how they’re feeling about this whole brand content thing and found they’re slowly accepting its legitimacy, but I underline slowly.  Overall they still say there’s a big difference between traditional journalism and brand content and that’s the way it’ll always be.  Collective Content’s Tony Hallett says, “Our research shows the long-term trend is positive, with PRs already citing examples like the WSJ’s Cocainenomics native feature for Netflix.”  Still, PR peeps who remember being contacted by someone making content for a brand went down from 67% in 2015 to 58.1% this year.  There’s also some disagreement about what the terms “content marketing,” “native advertising” and “brand journalism” exactly mean.

 

YouTube’s got bumper cars now!  Oh wait, I read that wrong.  They have Bumper Ads now!  6-second ads sold using Google AdWords, and they can’t wait to see how creative you’re going to be with your 6 seconds.  David Cohen reports early adopters include Audi Germany and Atlantic Records, maybe they can market their ringtones.  But Google Product Manager for Video ads Zach Lupei would tell me not to scoff because snackable videos are great for mobile, and good things happen when you team Bumper Ads with TrueView and Google Preferred.  They did some testing and have seen Bumpers improve top of the funnel metrics like recall, awareness and consideration pretty impressively.  Adding TrueView gives it incremental reach and frequency.  Anyway, your Google sales rep is staring at their phone right now waiting for you to call.

 

How can such pretty pictures lead to so much tension and legal fighting?  Getty Images says Google is scraping images from 3rd party sites and encouraging piracy and they don’t like it.  Olivier Laurent reports they told the EU’s antitrust commission Google Images shows full-screen slideshows of high-res copyrighted images, and has been doing that since January of 2013.  They tried talking to Google but the response was, hey, you can always opt-out of image search if you don’t like how we do things.  Getty says if you can see the high res image on Google, why would anyone go to the source site to look at it?  And because they can be downloaded, Getty thinks Google is turning people into “accidental pirates” ha-harrr.  Getty’s general counsel, that means lawyer, says, “Google’s behavior is adversely affecting not only our contributors, but the lives and livelihoods of artists around the world, present and future.”

 

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