As people tune out the shoutfest in traditional media, how can a brand try to get some love in a media world that’s increasingly social? Content marketing is the answer, but easier said than done. In my last post, I discussed ego as the top problem in content marketing, because no one cares about you you you. The solution is empathy—but how, exactly? Here are three ways.
Let’s take a boring category as an example: toothpaste. (No offense, Crest, Colgate, and others, but there’s not a lot of obvious zip.) Empathy here means thinking about the world based on your audience’s concerns and interests—and these generally don’t include toothpaste. So how to engage them when they don’t care about you?
Find a hook that matters
The dentist’s office has been recast as a “smile center” because people care about their smiles. So it’s no surprise to find a toothpaste brand using smiles as a content marketing focus. Colgate does this: people can upload photos of their Colgate Smiles, and there are photo e-cards, apps, and more. This connection with smiles is nice—but it’s linear and obvious, and it’s been done. How else can people be personally engaged?
1. Connect with emotionally-rich aspects of your customer’s lives.
Smiles are linked with photos, and kids’ photos play a special role in family’s lives. Connecting with kids’ smiles via photography can provide content for parents to care about. A few possibilities:
- Tips from famous photographers on capturing great smiles in snapshots or composing casual portraits.
- Real-life stories (good, bad, and outrageous) from school photographers. Similarly, a place for parents to share their own stories shooting milestone family moments—potential fodder for a “Modern Family” episode?
- Photo contests of kids’ toothless grins during the tooth-fairy years, of kids with pumpkins carved as self-portraits, etc.
2. Lead in an area of aspiration
Parents want their kids to have a great education, yet school budgets everywhere have been cut. Where do smiles fit in?
- Arts programs are usually the first to go when budgets are slashed. Use famous smiles from world art masterpieces as the basis for an arts education curriculum that can be delivered multiple ways. Mona Lisa is only the beginning! Content can be spun for adults as well.
- Smiles could be the entry point for other educational initiatives: Glimpses of history through news photos of smiling historical figures, for example. Smiles are universal, and the possibilities are rich.
- Quizzes, games and contests can make these approaches fun and interactive.
3. Commission truly original creative content
Smiles may be the easiest route to engaging content in this category, but there are others. When approached imaginatively, even toothpaste can play a role in compelling moments: a first sleep-away camp, a road warrior’s tool kit, even a one-night stand.
- Challenge a group of writers to come up with series of micro-stories involving toothpaste, and you’ll have content aplenty to grab attention and differentiate your brand.
- Tying in with top creative writing programs can offer emerging writers some visibility as well as an interesting challenge.
- Providing a creative charitable contribution (plenty of opportunities to help children via oral care) will make it easier to attract established writers.
Bring in the Artists!
Clever readers will have noticed a theme here: Bring in the Artists. Art gives brands opportunities to create fresh content while offering sneaky advantages, like:
- Cutting through commercialism. A celebrity pitchman is a shill. A writer creating an original vignette in which toothpaste appears is still a writer.
- Signaling leadership: Great world and business leaders as diverse as Napoleon, Andrew Carnegie and JFK have also been great patrons of the arts. Brands can do this, too.
