R&B Special Feature: Engaging Customers With Captivating Content (Cornell University)
The maker of Red Bull, the world’s largest selling energy drink, adopted a different formula. To promote the beverage, which was launched in Austria in 1987 and introduced to the United States a decade later, the Red Bull company established its own media organization. Red Bull Media House produces a print magazine, video games, feature films, records, mobile apps, and programming for television, radio, and online media. Red Bull also owns several auto racing teams, as well as professional soccer franchises in the United States, Europe, and Africa.
Illustration: Daniel Hertberg; courtesy Cornell University
Joseph Guzik, MBA ’11, is senior vice president of promotion and integrated marketing at Red Bull Records, which since its launch in 2007 has become an important force in indie music. Based in West Hollywood, with studios in major cities around the world, Red Bull Records signs and promotes up-and-coming artists, sells CDs and mp3s, produces music videos, and operates a YouTube channel. “What we do is create content,” Guzik says. “We make videos, which can be seen as content marketing for the music so that people stream it and radio stations play it.”
According to Guzik, Red Bull is a lifestyle brand. Music has long been a way to engage youth culture. “We are really the only brand that has a major record company that delivers — quote-unquote — hits,” he says. “If you want to create passion for your brand and be in the lives of your customers, you have to create content that people care about.”
Although few companies have adopted an approach as far-reaching as Red Bull’s, more and more businesses are adopting the strategy of content marketing. Marriott International, the world’s largest hotel company, recently announced it would establish a content studio that will produce television shows, Web series, concerts, and movies. This year, IKEA took its marketing efforts well beyond its bulky catalogue by publishing a global “life at home” report. The interactive online document analyzes the results of a survey conducted by the company’s research arm into the daily home lives of 8,000 respondents in Berlin, London, Moscow, Mumbai, New York, Paris, Shanghai, and Stockholm.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, which supports and promotes the industry, 90 percent of business-to-business marketers surveyed in 2013 reported using some form of content marketing.
“Content marketing today has become one of the important ways for businesses to communicate about the company to customers,” says Vithala R. Rao, professor of marketing and management at Johnson.
Content marketing can take many forms — from white papers to online video, blogs, podcasts, webinars, and social media posts. Some businesses have gone so far as to establish their own newsrooms and research departments.
“Smart brands share their stories, and they create content people love,” says Farland Chang ’84, MS ’85, CEO and executive producer of WorldBizWatch, a video production and media strategy firm. “Companies are leveraging their expertise to produce content that gives audiences ‘news we can use.’ Useful content creates loyalty. It cultivates communities.”
LETTING THEM COME TO YOU
There is no widely accepted definition of content marketing, and most attempts to define it start by saying what it is not — traditional marketing. “Traditional marketing and advertising is telling the world you’re a rock star. Content marketing is showing the world that you are one,” reads one of a series of definitions offered by the Content Marketing Institute.
A more expansive definition used by the Institute calls content marketing “the technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined target audience in order to drive profitable customer action.”
“Different people use the term in different ways,” says Jonah Berger, visiting professor of marketing at Cornell Tech. “When I think about content marketing, I think about rather than trying to sell someone directly or push a product, you share useful content that makes the recipients’ lives better. In doing so, you also show that you have expertise or knowledge in the domain.”
Johnson Marketing Professor Stijn M. J. van Osselaer suggests using the concept of inbound versus outbound communication to understand how content marketing and traditional marketing differ. From the perspective of the company doing the selling, content marketing is inbound, while traditional marketing is outbound.
“Instead of going out and interrupting people through cold calling or advertising, what you are doing with content marketing is letting customers come to you by providing them with information that is attractive to them,” van Osselaer says.
The inbound nature of content marketing is a big reason why it works, according to Melinda Byerley, MBA ’02, CEO of Vendorsi, and an expert in marketing technology.
“The purpose of content marketing is to draw you in and make you feel so engaged and enamored of the company that you continue to the salesperson,” Byerley says. “It’s inbound because the customer picks up the phone to call the salesperson. That then becomes a much easier conversation.”
A TIME-HONORED STRATEGY
Although the term content marketing first came into usage in the 1990s, the practice has existed for more than a century.
In 1895, John Deere launched a farming magazine called The Furrow, which is still published today. In 1900, the Michelin tire company began publishing its popular guides, which remain a trusted information source for travelers around the globe.
Other early examples of content marketing are Jell-O’s recipe book, first published in 1904; Sears’ World’s Largest Store radio show, launched in 1922; and Paramount Records, the pioneering label that recorded African-American blues and jazz artists of the 1920s and ’30s, started by the Wisconsin Chair Company to boost sales of its wooden phonograph cabinets.
For many years, one of the most widely used forms of content marketing was the white paper, typically a learned treatise on matters of interest to an audience that included potential customers. Some businesses issued white papers to generate sales leads; others used them to demonstrate thought leadership in their field.
“In the early days of content marketing, it was all about writing great blocks of enriching content in white papers,” Byerley says. “Then the Internet changed everything.”
With the Internet came email newsletters, search engine optimization, blogs, podcasts, e-books, online video, and webinars. The Internet even gave the white paper a boost.
“Content became much easier to find,” says van Osselaer. “In pre-Internet times, it would be difficult to find a white paper, and even if I knew there was a white paper somewhere in the library, it would be hard to get. Now, you can use Internet search to find a white paper and then just download it.”
Before the Internet, content production was largely the province of major publishers — mainly newspapers, magazines, and radio and television stations, according to Berger. “The Web democratized the content creation process. For a brand, it’s much easier to create content,” he says.
ADVERTISING EVOLVES
At the same time that new technologies were boosting content marketing, they were inflicting damage on traditional approaches. “You can’t really depend on advertising anymore,” says Karolina Kocalevski, MBA ’08, a marketing executive in the U.S. office of the professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. “People circumvent it. They record their TV shows. They’ve learned how to avoid ads on the Internet. You have to engage them in different ways, and social media is now a big part of that agenda for many industries.”
Guzik of Red Bull Records says that while traditional marketing strategies still have their place, a generational shift is underway. “My son just turned 8, and he has never watched a commercial in his life. He also doesn’t understand that some show comes on at 8 o’clock. Everything is on the DVR, and he can fast forward through the ads.”
With the Internet also came search engines, and with search engines came search engine optimization or the crafting of website content to get higher rankings in search results. Byerley sees a close connection between the rise of content marketing and search engine optimization. “If you had specific content that people liked to read, that content would arrive on the page of the search engine,” Byerley says. “You have more people coming to your site, and you didn’t have to buy an ad. You might have to pay a copywriter or a visual designer, but you weren’t paying for the advertising per se.” Search engine optimization has the added advantage of generating inbound communication, since people come to sites of their own volition, Byerley notes.
The next stage in the evolution of content marketing in the Internet era was the spread of broadband, which made feasible the use of video. With video, marketers could create appealing, attention-grabbing content, which viewers would share on social media and on mobile devices. Kocalevski, who oversees marketing for her company’s mergers and acquisitions group, says she produces content using video, audio, and text.
“These are different formats with the same idea behind them: storytelling,” she says. “They replace the old idea of having a brochure with features and benefits about your product or service. In professional services, we have almost done away with the brochure. Our partners and sales people lead their discussions with a point of view on a pressing business issue or leave behind a white paper after a discussion, not a brochure. It’s how they effectively ‘demo’ their expertise. And behind the scenes, the marketing team takes that point of view and we generate carefully crafted content for white papers, podcasts, webcasts, and video clips. They all demonstrate our thought leadership on the topic, and we also distribute that content more broadly to our target market through various channels.”
“We’re at another tipping point due to the rise of mobile devices and social networking, which give content a new distribution channel,” Byerley says. “Because mobile devices now outsell PCs, and more than 40 percent of social media is consumed on a mobile device, content is a major marketing channel for most brands, especially in the business-to-business space.”
CRAFTING A CONTENT STRATEGY
An organization attempting a content marketing strategy of course has to have content, and for many, this is a challenge. “Probably the biggest thing people struggle with is just creating enough content,” says Steve Peck, MBA ’09, co-founder of Docalytics, a firm that produces tools that help marketers determine how customers interact with downloadable content. “I talk to a half dozen marketers every day. I hear it again and again. It’s tough to continually create compelling content that’s going to keep people engaged with your brand.”
Rao says that firms must be willing to commit substantial resources to content marketing if they want it to succeed. “To develop a website and to maintain it well is a very expensive proposition,” he says. Whether a company’s content is video, audio, or text, it has to be useful to prospective customers, and it also should demonstrate that the company is a leader in its field, according to Chang. “People don’t want the hard sell any more,” he says. “Companies have to use their expertise to be a trusted source of content.”
Sometimes companies make the mistake of launching content marketing without first developing a strategy, notes Berger. “If all we do is post a lot of content on the Web and nobody shares it or reads it, it’s not going to be very effective,” he says. “Understanding how to design content is very important.”
Berger has spent the last ten years studying how social influences promote the spread of ideas, behaviors, and products. He explains the process in his best-selling book, Contagious: Why Things Catch On. Berger identifies six principles that explain why people share things and why contagions happen. He captures these principles with the acronym STEPPS:
Social currency: People are more likely to share things that make them look good.
Triggers: Things that are top of mind are more likely to be at the tip of our tongue.
Emotion: The more we care, the more we share.
Public: The easier it is for people to see what others are doing, the more likely they are to imitate them.
Practical value: People share things that help others.
Stories: Information often travels under the guise of idle chatter.
Companies that incorporate these principles into their content marketing are in a position to succeed, according to Berger. “When something goes viral, it’s not random, and it’s not luck,” Berger says. “There is a science behind it.”
SUITED TO ACADEMIA
Content marketing is a natural fit for universities. Research is part of their core mission and most have well-established news offices and publishing operations.
For eCornell, Cornell University’s online education division, content marketing is a way to attract new clients and engage current students and alumni. The program offers online certificate programs and courses taught by faculty from Johnson as well as the School of Hotel Administration, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and several other schools.
“At least 75 percent of my content marketing efforts are focused on webinars,” says Chris Wofford, digital media business development manager for eCornell. “They work on a few levels. We get a lot of prospects and leads from them, and the material we produce dovetails nicely with our courses.”
Webinars on eCornell are typically faculty-led hour-long discussions, with time set aside for questions and answers. Recent webinar topics include “Marketing Strategies: Driving Demand and Connecting with Today’s Buyer,” “HR Technology in the Era of Drones, Robots, and Infinite Data,” and “The Influence of Reputation Analytics on Hotel Revenue and Financial Performance.”
The marketing department at eCornell uses marketing automation software to track the effectiveness of its initiatives. When visitors come to the website, click on an email, or visit eCornell’s blog, their engagement is tracked.
“Content marketing operates like a hub. All of the elements and assets need to be talking to each other, ultimately to best serve the customer. In short, we don’t try to sell anything to anybody until they are educated about the product and ready to buy,” Wofford says. Producing webinars and other content for eCornell is satisfying work, Wofford says. “I like content marketing because it’s honest, educational, and really valuable to people. It prepares and empowers them to make informed decisions.”
BULL MARKET
To be effective, content marketing needs be tailored to the particular business using it. The approach to marketing an indie rock band will be different from the approach to marketing a team of financial professionals. “In professional services, you really can’t demonstrate the product,” Kocalevski says. “What you have to do is build the brand through really strong content.”
One of the main ways that Kocalevski promotes the professionals in PricewaterhouseCooper’s U.S. mergers and acquisitions group is by producing one-hour webcasts. “We take a business topic, and we talk about it for an hour,” she says. “It’s not just random content — we choose a topic that’s important to our audience. We identify a business trend, challenge, or opportunity. Next, we discuss the implications, including pitfalls and possible actions that could be taken. We end by talking about winning practices and the potential impact of taking a recommended course of action.” The webcasts are produced professionally and partially scripted, Kocalevski says.
“There’s a lot of effort that goes into how we deliver the message. It’s a way of storytelling – capturing the audience’s attention and making sure we don’t lose them along the way.”
Red Bull Records uses a multipronged approach to marketing its artists. Social media play a big role – all of the label’s bands have a presence on Facebook, Twitter, and the other major platforms. Another key component is video, played on the company’s YouTube channel, which Guzik likens to a music video jukebox.
One of Red Bull Records’ up-and-coming artists is Twin Atlantic, a Glasgow based band whose “Heart and Soul” video became a YouTube sensation. “There is a tremendous amount of earned media — media you don’t have to pay for — you can get with music,” Guzik says. “That video had more than a million views on YouTube. It became a really big hit in the U.K., and it’s starting to get on radio in the U.S. It is generating millions of earned media impressions every week.”
Guzik says music is well suited to content marketing. “It would be hard to do the same thing with a company that makes couches,” he says. A song that becomes a hit in Britain can quickly become popular in the United States, Australia, and Japan, as fans send music files and links around the globe, according to Guzik.
“The beauty of music is that it is the one piece of content that that truly can go viral and can travel the world.”
(Originally published in Cornell Enterprise, a magazine of the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University; Printed in CRII’s Retail & Business with permission from Cornell University; Retail & Business is India’s leading retail publication)
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