Few bloggers keep me, or anyone else, interested for long. When one does it is worth noting.

Geoff Livingston writes beautifully about marketing, and content marketing in particular, which is not easy to do.

Given the level of noise in the sector at the moment, I appreciate his insights and skilled delivery all the more. Here’s a recent clip:

Marketing is not the final product. Yet for some reason we treat it like a stand alone offering in our marketing conversations online. It’s frustrating to hear conversations about companies modeling after Red Bull, and then watch hundreds try to become a media company. Much of the resulting customer-centric content is created haphazardly with a blind eye to customer-brand relationship.

If I hear Livingston correctly, he’s saying don’t get lost in online engagement, as it may or may not be a brand-building activity. Duly noted!

In related news, Matt Kumin, founder and CEO of PublishThis suggests, “Developing an editorial voice is akin to building a brand.” Kumin also says you are what you eat, that “the content and sources that a company consumes define it as well as any outbound marketing or message that is communicated.”

Two lessons from Kumin’s piece: 1) Careful what you curate and 2) Seek out and digest highly nourishing media. The main takeaway from Livingston’s piece is concentrate on relationships with customers and then use media judiciously to support and/or enhance the brand experience.

Photo credit: Flickr user, technotheory

The post Optimize Your Content To Support Marketing and Drive Sales appeared first on AdPulp.

People become bloggers on a whim. Yet, sometimes one’s whim is more like a bolt of inspiration. Such is the case for fashion blogger turned media entrepreneur, Geri Hirsch.

Hirsch created a fashion blog, because i’m addicted, and ran it as a side-project. But she also used the blog’s popularity to propel herself forward. According to Ad Age, when Hirsch wanted to pivot and work fulltime on Leaf.tv — a series of DIY, style and cooking videos created with Erin Falconer — she used her influence as a blogger to appeal to investors.

Leaf worked with YouTube-funded video channel StyleHaul. One video, “How to Tie a Turban 3 Ways” garnered more than 250,000 page views. In July StyleHaul became Leaf’s lead investor.

Since forming the partnership with StyleHaul, Leaf has made branded video content for retailers The Gap and Ann Taylor. Leaf was also commissioned by Redbook and starting in June, Leaf will have a monthly column in West Coast magazine Foam, which will be accompanied by a video series.

Note to self: For maximum return on blog investment (ROBI), choose your blog’s topical categories wisely.

The post Geri Hirsch’s Fashion Blog A Gateway To Bigger Things appeared first on AdPulp.

Jaron Lanier, author of Who Owns The Future?, asserts that the rise of digital networks led our economy into recession and decimated the middle class.

Looking forward, he says it is time for ordinary people to be rewarded for what they do and share on the web.

In an interview with Nieman Lab, Lanier argues:

If you have universal backlinks, you have a basis for micropayments from somebody’s information that’s useful to somebody else… Every backlink would be monetized. Monetizing actually decentralizes power rather than centralizing it. Demonetizing a network actually concentrates power around anyone who has the biggest computer analyzing it.

Monetizing decentralizes power. Perfect! Americans love freedom and money.

I also love to provide information that might be useful to somebody–like this very article–thus, I am fully behind a workable micropayments system that rewards me (and others) for being prolific and readable.

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We all know what a mess digital advertising is. There are privacy concerns, ad blockers and quacks in every direction offering their innovative new solutions that are far from it.

The good news is brands can play effectively in the people’s sandbox — provided they learn to play a different game, a game with new rules.

Banner ads and YouTube videos are print and broadcast constructs, respectively. The need to push past these formats has never been more clear. But what else can we do in digital? What else should we do?

Dan Hon, an Interactive Creative Director at Wieden + Kennedy, is a champion of brands building out digital services like Nike+ Running.

A general mistake in thinking around digital advertising is that there are two binary choices: either provide utility and essentially create products; or create fluff or entertainment that reinforces a brand and relies on paid attention.

That ignores the tremendous but difficult space in the middle.

I do know what Hon means by the binary choices. I’ve laid them out for clients, and our readers here, for years. What I don’t accept is the notion that building digital services fails to fit into this simple equation. I hate to dwell in semantics, but Nike+ is also a product, and an excellent example of branded utility.

The truth is people are actively charting their own courses in digital via a plethora of mostly free and some paid tools. We are managing our real lives from a digital dashboard. It’s how we keep in touch with friends and family, pay our bills, shop, plan vacations, book travel, make dinner reservations, find dates and so on. Nike+ found a way to be useful, and that’s a fantastic thing. I would love to see this model repeated a thousand fold.

I will merely add that the brand who launches a lifestyle magazine or produces a feature film (both large scale content plays) is also finding a compelling way to be useful. Entertaining and informing people are both hugely useful.

The post Are Digital Services The New Ideal? appeared first on AdPulp.

What has Twitter unleashed with its new video platform, Vine?

For one, instructional video now comes in six-second bites, care of Lowe’s, BBDO New York and director/photgrapher Meagan Cignoli.

Here’s another tutorial from Lowe’s, also in six second frames meant to be digested on Twitter. And here’s a non-branded Vine from Ms. Cignoli, an artist busy exploring what the platform offers.

The post Micro Spots Are Growing On Vine appeared first on AdPulp.

Every company is a media company. No, that meme is incomplete and out of date. This is longer but more accurate: Every company needs media, a.k.a. brand storytelling to create and sustain long-term interest among key constituents.

Whichever angle you prefer, the need for media, a.k.a. content marketing, is a given. The question is “How the hell do we do this?”

For PepsiCo’s Mountain Dew brand, the answer is we outsource content production to a media company.

According to Stuart Elliott of The Times, Complex Media — publisher of Complex.com, Do Androids Dance, Four Pins, Nice Kicks and Sneaker Report — can now add Green-Label.com, to its list of titles and Mountain Dew to its list of clients.

Score another one for the media companies. This is work that could be done by an agency — an agency with journalists on staff. But no.

Elliott helps puts the project into historical (and modern day) context:

Green-Label.com will be billed by Complex Media as “presented by Mountain Dew,” echoing an earlier era of content marketing in which radio and television shows were “brought to you by” sponsors’ brands. Other Web sites in the same vein carry similar designations; for instance, The Adrenalist has articles about adventure sports that are sponsored by the Degree Men antiperspirants sold by Unilever.

I wonder, will Mountain Dew’s Green-Label.com compete with the best media in existence? The new online magazine covers action sports, style, art and music. That’s a crowded field and it won’t be easy to gain traction. Regardless, my contention is a brand like Mountain Dew can compete, because it has the money to compete. Of course, money alone won’t get the job done. The brand team also needs vision, taste and patience to get it right.

I might add that American Express gets it right with their two newsstand titles, Food & Wine and Travel & Leisure. Red Bull gets it right with RedBulletin.

There’s a lot of room for growth and for greatness here.

The post Are You Down With This Concept Yet? Media Is A Marketing Service. appeared first on AdPulp.

Is digital a direct marketing medium or a brand building medium, or both? It’s a question that will continue to be asked by befuddled clients and their agency helpers alike.

Personally, I think digital is a radical transparency machine that challenges brands to become better at marketing, product development and community relations. But back to digital as a marketing opportunity…

Direct marketers have data on their side, and have made many persuasive cases that digital is a direct channel, first and foremost. Which is why I want to thank Simply Zesty, a digital marketing firm in the U.K., for firing an arrow into the heart of digital ROI.

We need to think about the process of how we buy something versus what we engage with online. A recent study released by Invodo found that consumers are 174% more likely to buy something after watching a video about it online. While this is a wildly encouraging figure that will probably need to be toned down a bit, this finding in itself is significant.

The fact that we’re more inclined to buy something from a brand after engaging with it online is what’s important. An increased likelihood to buy is all that should ever be asked of an online campaign, particularly one that is content led.

The issue for marketers is distinguishing where a digital visitor is in the sales funnel. If the site visitor is in research mode, expecting a purchase is unrealistic. “This is why having a data strategy is important,” argues Simply Zesty. Conceivably, if a marketers knows where people are coming from and what their intentions are, the likelihood of an e-commerce transaction can be greatly increased.

For me, the takeaway here is a click doesn’t mean much, because clicks are blind. What are the intentions of the person doing the clicking? Is she seriously shopping or casually browsing? Knowing the difference changes the score.

The post Do Digital Right: Create “An Increased Likelihood To Buy” appeared first on AdPulp.

Native advertising is a stupid name for a decent development in media circles. Regardless, sponsored content is on a lot of media and marketing minds today, because online advertising is a disaster from a brand building perspective.

Native is definitely on the mind and the desktop of Jonah Peretti, MIT grad and co-founder of BuzzFeed and Huffington Post.

Andrew Rice, writing for New York Magazine, reports that “beneath BuzzFeed’s cheery gloss lies a data-driven apparatus designed to figure out what makes you click.”

Peretti doesn’t care whether a post is produced by a journalist or sponsored by a brand, so long as it travels. He’s a semiotic Darwinist: He believes in messages that reproduce.

“To me, advertising is fascinating, partly because it’s part of culture, and partly because it sucks,” he told me one evening in February. “There’s a bit of the geek mentality, which is that when you see something that’s broken, you try to fix it.”

Of course, Buzzfeed is also home to Mark Duffy, a.k.a. Copyranter. Duffy’s lastest offering: 18 Meat Ads. It’s not highbrow content, but it is network-friendly; therefore, it is money.

Let’s revisit the infamous words of A.J. Leibling, “Fortune lies not in the main stream of letters, but in the shallows where the suckers moon.”

I’m not making a judgement, merely an observation, and one I might learn from. Buzzfeed has millions of readers, AdPulp has thousands. If we were to take a page from the Buzzfeed book, we’d start posting tons of lightweight “contagious” material, which would then coexist with our thought pieces and original reporting.

Of course, doing so would also take us way off-brand, and remove us from our Reasons Why. The things we have to do to make money these days…

Previously on AdPulp: Can Journalism As A Civic Good And Native Advertising Live Side-by-Side?

The post Buzzfeed Spreads Content Around Like Butter On Toast appeared first on AdPulp.

I don’t know how they did it, but Glamour magazine has gathered a massive audience on Google+. With 1.5 million readers on this platform, the door is now wide open to sponsored content opportunities.

According to Mashable, the fashion title is using the Goggle+ Hangout feature in new ways:

Glamour magazine is launching a month-long series of Hangouts featuring staffers, online personalities — and products. Eight of the nine Hangouts are sponsored by a company, whose products are featured centrally in the content. In a Hangout for Unilever-owned Suave, for example, DIY blogger Erica Domesek will show how to make hair accessories for hair styled by Suave stylists. A L’Oreal-sponsored Hangout with Glamour stylist Annabel Tollman will show viewers how to wear ombré hair, as colored by Loreal’s Féria Wild Ombré product.

Some of the Hangouts will invite viewers to converse; others will be closed sessions, during which users will be asked to comment on social media networks using hashtags.

In other Sponsored Content news, The New York Times unveiled some interesting tidbits about Mashable’s successful use of sponsored posts. For one, Mashable sees its sponsored posts as something other than advertorial.

“These are not advertorials,” said Lance Ulanoff, the editor in chief at Mashable. “I know what an advertorial is. These are pure editorial.”

Semantic argument, or no, the price for a sponsored series on Mashable can run close to six figures. A sponsored series of posts on AdPulp, however, is considerably more affordable. So, I ask you — yes YOU — what topic do you want to “own” and consistently present to AdPulp’s sophisticated MarCom readership?

If you run a search firm, we can run a weekly series on SEO. If you’re a headhunter, we can run a weekly series on job hunting. If you’re an editing house, we can run a series on working with directors and editors. And so on.

Unlike banner ads on the site, a sponsored post on AdPulp.com reaches our 6500 RSS subscribers. Inquire within.

The post Glamour Makes Good Use of Google+ Hangouts appeared first on AdPulp.

Content is the substance of real-time social media marketing.

Now, how do we make it good and make it current at the same time? Isn’t that like walking and chewing gum?

#DeliciousPairings Happy SPAM meat clouds and soft bread pillows. I wrote a haiku about it! bit.ly/W6pBpS #BreakTheMonotony

— The SPAM® Brand (@SPAMbrand) March 26, 2013

According to the Star-Tribune, the social media campaign is the work of Minneapolis-based BBDO Proximity, which has served as Hormel’s only advertising agency for more than 80 years.

The SPAM team meets daily, constantly surfs the Internet to see what topics are generating buzz on any particular day and then social media posts — usually less than 15 seconds in length — are developed. The voice of Sir Can-A-Lot comes from a professional voice-over actor in Los Angeles. The animation work is shipped to a specialty shop in Portland, Ore.

“It’s almost like a newsroom,” said BBDO executive creative director Brian Kroening of the immediacy of the campaign.

A newsroom that produces haiku for canned meats, that is.

Happy SPAM Meat clouds
Recline on soft bread pillows
Glorious it is

Is your brand part of the zeitgeist? Say it is so.

By the way, sales for the nation’s #1 canned meat product are up 7% for the year.

Previously on AdPulp: Glorious SPAM, Two Words I Didn’t Expect To See Together

The post #BreaktheMonotony Social Media Campaign from SPAM Rolls Out in Real-Time appeared first on AdPulp.