The evolving mobile mediums offer a never-ending platform to deliver relevant content to brand loyal consumers. Consumers are barraged by information, messages and noise from television to radio to the Internet. The three areas of innovation for marketing agencies will be in creating mobile content that is relevant to the brand’s audience. The three types of mobile media that have begun to create a new paradigm shift in the way marketers speak to their audiences are mobile advertising, branded content and branded entertainment.
Mobile advertising may manifest itself in the form of Pre-roll, the ad before a web cast or sponsorship of web-based entertainment such as on many of the mass media web sites that offer free video content. (i.e. http://abc.go.com/fsp/index.html?lid=ABCCOMMenu&lpos=Video).
Branded content has been developed for years in the forms of in flight magazines, pushing destinations, Retail outlets such as Williams-Sonoma offering content that features seasonal recipes next to its serving platters. CareerBuilder.com offers resume building and job-search advice for site users. Those selling beauty products publish profiles of the people behind their most popular brands, and booksellers interview authors to entertain online shoppers and ultimately boost sales. Such content can appear just as easily in print, online and in video.
And last but not least branded entertainment. Branded entertainment has taken flight in many forms. One of the more successful marketing case studies is ABC’s Extreme home make over sponsored in part by Sears. Look closely; every tool that is used to rebuild broken lives is a Sears’ craftsman series tool. This form of branded entertainment has netted Sears with record sales in the last two years.
The important factor in each of the above examples of conent is that neither of them is an Advertorial. Today’s online and mobile consumer is way to savvy to buy off on the infomercial model. That is not to say that the day of the infomercial is dead. It is not. There is still a ready made audience waiting with baited breathe for the next Richard Simmons “Deal A Meal” kit or my personal favorite would be former Miss America turned actress, Vanessa Williams selling Proactive a miracle zit cure.
Creative marketing execs like myself predict that branding opportunities of the future lie in filtering, repackaging and ultimately paying for quality consumer or brand generated content. Distribution is the key to providing creative content producers the audiences that will drive sales for their brands.
With the billions of pages of blogs, consumer generated content and the other millions of noisemakers out in cyberspace consumers will need a way to filter the noise down to relevant levels. After all, we have limited time and attention, and if we make too much effort searching for good content, we won't have any time to consume it once we finally get there. Brands who figure out how to filter, repackage and distribute content will stay ahead of the crashing waves of consumer-generated noise.
The filtering process I am describing here is not much different from the role an assignments editor or televisions producer plays at CNN or ABC. TV Network programmers used to be credible sources of filtering, but they have lost credibility by delivering inconsistent quality over the years. By taking cues from the early days of radio and TV, where advertisers actually created the programming, interspersing it with marketing messages, is a gold mine for the marketer or creative agency that lands Fortune 500 backing.
Today, large agencies are just waking up to the possibilities, but will inevitably fail at this because it will fall outside of their core expertise. I recently did a stint at an agency that struggled to wrap marketing strategies and pricing models that created a profitability model for the agency. Sources inside other large agencies have reported to me that the same scenario is taking place large agencies across the US.
My assumption is that niche agencies that concentrate on content development will make out like bandits because they will be more inclined to look at revenue share and broker models that allow the brands to create new streams of revenue. It's not a huge leap of faith to imagine marketers paying on a cost-per-play basis for content that attracts other consumers to the marketer's or brands website.
This hypothesis is not only worth challenging but also provides the springboard for the next big idea.
That's where we're headed: The branding opportunities of the future lie in filtering, repackaging, distribution and ultimately paying for quality content.
A company that figures out how to help consumers get to “News/content/entertainment you can use” will be rewarded handsomely.