Hasta La Creative!

Content marketing is a powerful way to get your audience’s attention and build trust. It might seem difficult to get started but it’s pretty easy to grasp when you break it down into a few steps. If you are struggling, just remember the 3 C’s of Content Marketing – Create, Curate, and Circulate.

1. Create

Creating quality content is the heart of content marketing. Relevant, valuable content is what will make your audience stop to think and behave differently. This kind of positive engagement is what separates content marketing from traditional marketing.

Have a goal

There must be a purpose to content creation; a goal. Creating content for the sake of creating content is a waste of your readers time and yours. Your content marketing goal should align with your overall marketing goals.

Give your visitors what they want

Understand who your audience is and what they want to know. You can create the most visually stunning, data driven infographic on nuclear fusion but it won’t benefit your audience if they are small business owners looking for information on how to grow their business. Jake Athey, in his Bad content is worse than no content: How to create stuff that doesn’t stink article, suggests the following litmus tests for your content:

• If someone emailed you the content you just created, would you be grateful?
• Does your content have any sentiment or piece of information you would repeat while out socializing with your friends?

If your content doesn’t meet either of those, maybe you should revisit it.

Offer what no one else can

There is so much information out on the internet, readers aren’t going to just be looking for a reason to kill some time on your page. If you are struggling to come up with some original content, shed some new light on a popular subject. If you’ve got a successful business, you likely have something that makes you different. Use this knowledge and personality to differentiate your content as well.

2. Curate

Creating content isn’t the only way to provide your audience with valuable information and resources. You can become a source for industry news and tips from others as well, through content curation. Mark Sherbin says to be the “go-to feed for audience members interested in your topic” in his article Should You Curate Content? The Essentials Every Content Marketer Needs to Consider.

Add value

Part of content curation is providing extra value to the content. It could be as simple as providing key points for those who don’t have time to read through the whole article or taking a fresh look on the topic.

Build connections

When you are sharing others content, you must make sure you are giving credit to where credit is due. Including snippets in a blog with credit or re-Tweeting is a nice way to curate content. When you are sharing others content and giving them credit, you are creating a good opportunity to build a mutually beneficial relationship. They might start sharing your content with their audience which helps expand your efforts.

Save time

Save your audience time by giving them one location to find all of the news they want to see in one location. They don’t have to comb through numerous sources, you’ve already done that for them. Be thoughtful on the content you curate, sharing too much unwanted content isn’t beneficial.

3. Circulate

Get your content seen. It can be difficult, at first, to develop a following. People aren’t going to just search out what you have to say. You’ve got to start by having quality content. Then you share it wherever you can.

Share via many channels

The more places you share your content, the more opportunities people have to find it. Your blog is one obvious place to start sharing content. Your social networks are another great place to share content. Each network has a different emphasis which allows you to share content in different ways.

Share multiple times

You finished up an article and feel really good about it. You shared via your social channels but did not get the response you hoped for. Now you are wondering, did I share it at the right time? Should I have shared it with different messaging? Don’t worry, it’s a good practice to share your content multiple times. Experiment with what times are best to share and what messaging best resonates with your audience.

Share via multiple forms

Your content doesn’t need to be held to just one format. What may be a great step by step instructional slide presentation could make a great video or blog as well. People have preferences on how they like to consume information. This also helps you produce more content without requiring as much of your time.

If you’re looking to build more content in your marketing plan for 2014, just remember the three C’s.

Nate Holmes is the marketing coordinator for Smartimage, a brand of Widen Enterprises.

More from Honda today, this time with news of RPA’s new “One More Thing to Love About Today” campaign — featuring “print, digital and TV spots, speaking to the optimism of today’s youth.”

Like Orci’s “Gol!Gol!” spot for Honda’s Hispanic campaign, “Today is Pretty Great,” the campaign’s full-length online debut, centers around an original song — in this case by blues rock band Vintage Trouble. The band begins by focusing on the negative, claiming “Yeah it’s worse than ever, but that’s just where we’re at,” before being interrupted by a young woman who answers, “Except, it’s not.” Her thoughts are soon echoed by a chorus of optimistic young people. The remainder of the spot focuses on all the things to love about today: mostly cultural references designed to appeal to Millenials, like Adventure Time and Nyan Cat (which, strictly speaking, is more 2011 than today). Around halfway through the spot, Vintage Trouble change their tune, seemingly convinced by the unbridled optimism of the chorus of young whippersnappers. The 2014 Civic Coupe and Si Coupe are featured throughout the ad, which ends with the hashtag #LoveToday, designed to draw Millenials into the conversation.

A 30 second TV spot debuts today on network and cable television and will run through February. Appropriately, the campaign is complemented by mobile and social media endeavors, such as “sole sponsorship of a first-to-market digital scrapbook on…Spotify,” offering full-song previews on SoundHound, “sole ownership of MTV’s Artist to Watch 2014 program, featuring a live digital stream of the Artist to Watch concert,” homepage takeovers on MSN and Yahoo, and mobile placements in popular games like Scramble With Friends and MoviePop. Stay tuned for the 30 second TV spot and credits after the jump. continued…

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Is there anything more heartwarming than watching children of all ages fall over repeatedly?

From Proctor & Gamble and W+K comes “Pick Them Back Up,” a new spot that’s part of the “Thank You, Mom” campaign running during the length of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. If you’ll recall, P&G and Wieden have been leaders in mom joy, child guilt and intermittent bouts of crying since a 2010 Mother’s Day campaign, which set the stage for the very viral 2012 London Olympics spot “Best Job.” Since the initial broadcast of “Best Job,” most of the world has been stuck in a routine of enthusiastic weeping followed by hugging their mom until it hurts.

Adding a little humor to the affair (this is, if you’re a sociopath like me), “Pick Them Back Up” sees attractive young mothers repeatedly watch their children fall down before picking them up, thus transforming them into successful Olympic athletes. For those mothers whose children didn’t grow up to be competitive in winter sports on an international scale, well, your time was better spent leaving your kid on the ice and just working on you for a while.

Of course, this spot also begs the question, how did they film so many babies falling over? Were they stunt babies, or did they trip them with invisible wires or something? In any case, after seeing this on TV, your mother’s gaze will slowly drift over to the photo she has of you as a baby on her nightstand, and she’ll sigh a million disappointed sighs because you were once so cute and loving and now you apparently don’t “have the time” to give her a call once in a while. She’s right, you know, because you just watched this and it caused you do to nothing. Credits, and one in a series of new athlete-specific video, follow after the jump.

continued…

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David&Goliath, perhaps most well-known for their Blake Griffin and now Jack McBrayer-co-starring spots for Kia, have decided to celebrate the new year a little differently. Instead of focusing on empty resolutions and self-improvement, they’ve created a “post-holiday card” thanking friends, family, clients and colleagues, which they’ve dubbed “The Gratitude Wall.”

David&Goliath invited employees to “appreciate and thank those who have helped us get to where we are today” via posts to Instagram, then assembled the Instagram images on The Gratitude Wall webpage. It’s a nice, positive message that D&G designed to “look back on our combined challenges and successes and to look ahead with a sincere thank you to all involved.” We appreciate the shift from the normal New Year’s naval gazing, new diets and resolutions that will be broken before February rolls around towards gratitude and appreciation. Plus, D&G can refresh the page with new photos next November for an easy Thanksgiving card.

If you need some affirmation that not all is wrong with the world this gloomy, snow-covered Friday, head on over to The Gratitude Wall for something unabashedly and straightforwardly nice. How often do you get to see that?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Creative director Nate Naylor, who’s worked at the likes of W+K Amsterdam and Modernista! during his career, was recently diagnosed with lymphoma cancer and some friends set up a fundraising page to help pay for his astronomical medical bills. The response has been very positive: with 74 days left, they have already surpassed their goal by almost $15,000.

The fundraising effort was organized by Chris McPherson, Scott Murphy, and Jeff Church, who report that Nate had surgery back in October and “is currently into his 4th treatment of Chemo.” McPherson, Murphy, and Church, however, remain confident that Nate will beat lymphoma, noting that Naylor is “tough as nails and his attitude has been upbeat.”

While Naylor faces a tough holiday season in the hospital receiving chemo treatments, he can rest assured that he has the support of friends and colleagues. And before you feel too sorry for the guy, remember that he dated Scarlett Johansson for awhile.

Update: The above comment was meant ironically, and intended solely to inject some lightness into a very depressing subject (and not, in any way, to make light of Nate’s condition). I apologize if this offended anyone, especially those close to Nate. We here at Agency Spy wish Nate all the best, and a quick and full recovery.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Making bad advertising is easy. But, every now and then, somebody produces something so atrociously heinous that it almost makes you want to stand up and applaud.

Congrats, Samsung. “Are You Geared Up?” may be the absolute worst thing we’ve seen this year. You found rock bottom, and you dug even deeper. You combined bad acting with a nonsensical script, added in a dash of uncomfortable pacing and stretched the whole thing out to a cringeworthy two-and-a-half minutes.

Not only did you create The Room of online advertising, but your ad was so shitty that it went viral. Your spot was featured on the front page of Reddit under the headline “Hands down the worst ad I’ve ever seen. Take a bow, Samsung.” On top of that, the online legions have taken to your Samsung Mobile YouTube page, where you’ve received 13,000 thumbs down votes to 2,000 thumbs up votes. And, some genius left the comments on, which just adds to the chaos of terrible. Here are just a smattering of some of our favorite comments:

• “There’s no way this is a real ad from Samsung. That would mean someone from Samsung had to actually watch this train wreck of a commercial and approve it. So it has to be fake. Right?”
• “I feel like I just watched porn without the porn.”
• “I’m almost speechless because of how terrible this is.  I’m embarrassed that it’s for an Android product.”
• “Thanks Samsung, I forgot for a moment that women are prizes that can be won through the creative use of technology and being creepy as fuck.”
• “HAY GURL CHECK OOT THEESE COOL PICS I TOOK OF YOU SEECRETLY WHILE I FOLLOWED YOU. TEE HEE YOUR PICTURES OF ME ARE SO FLATTERING HERE IS MY CONTACT INFORMATION ANONYMOUS STRANGER I WILL BE ALONE IN MY HOTEL ROOM TONIGHT. HAHAHA I AM GOING TO HAEV SEX WITH YOU BECAUSE MY WATCH IS A PHONE!”

In other words, it’s been a pretty fun morning. However, one Reddit-er has an interesting theory for why this terrible, terrible thing exists:

This was shot in Korea (that’s why everyone has a Russian accent). It was probably never meant to be seen in English. The main audience will see this with a Korean dub (that’s also why the actors speak so slowly).

The English script was probably written and edited by non-native speakers, and the company probably doesn’t give a shit what the English version sounds like, because the Korean dub is the one that will be seen. All that matters is that the white people look cool and pretty. It’s like that other commercial with the Samsung hard drive or whatever.

It’s an interesting theory, but as one commenter replied, “I wonder if Samsung has heard of the Internet.” Judging by this, it seems unlikely. If anyone has any info on the agency behind this, or would like to nominate anything else for Worst Ad of the Year, please do so in the comments.

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So the movie, Love Actually, is becoming a Christmas classic. And who can resist the sicky sweetness of that scene where Rick Grimes professes his for for Keira Knightley using flash cards? I mean, really. It rivals the boombox scene in Say Anything, right?

Well, Erwin Penland is putting that scene to good use for Denny’s this holiday season with an animated gif in which a piece of bacon professes his love for am egg. We all know bacon and eggs should be together, right?

Leo Burnett Chicago (and, we hear, New Zealand digital shop Resn) have created the Holiday Home Decorator for Allstate.

The site lets you enter your home address or use a standard house, and then decorate with a number of items including lights, candles, trees and presents. You can also control the intensity of the snowfall. Depending on your actions, you will be interrupted by a different kind of mayhem, which acts as an extension of a readily recognizable Allstate campaign. If you put up a bunch of lights, for example, you’ll probably get faulty wiring that causes the house to catch on fire. It’s a fun little diversion, and probably the only holiday site that will let you burn your house down. What’s not to like?

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Recently, Orlando-based Ikonik Studios filmmaker Luke Aker created a luxury car ad to sell his 1996 Nissan Maxima, as reported over at HappyPlace, and it’s pretty clever and hilarious.

Utilizing pitch-perfect voice-over, the ad begins by declaring that “the most iconic monuments seem to be those that stand the test of time.” It isn’t until about twenty seconds into video that the object of the ad is revealed: a used 1996 Nissan Maxima GLE. The ad then begins touting the vehicle’s features, bragging that the Maxima is “fully loaded with an engine, wheels, tires, and an automatic transmission: a thrilling combination that has lasted over a decade.” The Maxima can “guarantee that it will get you from point A to B — most of the time.” The video manages to be simultaneously a perfect satire of the typical, ridiculous luxury car ad and an ode to shitty used cars.

If you’re interested in purchasing the vehicle (and who wouldn’t be after a sales pitch like that?), it appears to still be available, as Aker’s Craigslist ad is still up. On Craigslist, Aker mentions a few extra features, such as “steering fluid that has been designed to leak out from underneath the car when it has been exhausted from the majestic work that it has done.” He’s asking for $900, or best offer. That’s right: this majestic ride that is “as smooth as a Pegasus’ backside” can be yours for under one grand. What a steal.

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This one’s a bit personal…

Seeing as how we’ve covered two spots using the poem commonly referred to as “‘Twas The Night Before Christmas” in just the past two days, we couldn’t be happier that someone created a Tumblr called “Stop Using “‘Twas The Night Before Christmas.” We get that it’s something of a quintessential Christmas story, but it’s simply been done to death, and it’s not like there’s a shortage of Christmas material to borrow from.

The Tumblr produces a convincing list of the poem’s overuse, featuring the two we’ve covered in the past couple days and a long list of other ads using the poem, both old and new. Maybe a visual record of the poem’s overuse will help convince agencies to finally retire the practice. Whether or not they successfully curb the use of the poem, we applaud ”Stop Using “‘Twas The Night Before Christmas” for their much-needed public service. If you come across an ad using the ubiquitous poem, you can join the cause by uploading it to the site. Or you can just peruse their archive of ”‘Twas The Night Before Christmas” spots.

Since the site doesn’t offer up alternatives to the over-used poem, we thought maybe we could ask our readers what they’d like to see used in its place. Personally, if we must borrow from the classics, I wouldn’t mind seeing a few more homages to O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi.” Please share your ideas in the comments section. If the proper creatives see it, you just might spare us all another ”‘Twas The Night Before Christmas” commercial.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.