I have been seeing an increased use of the term “content marketing” and pondering how I can describe how it’s differentiated from “marketing” (without adjectives).
The Content Marketing Institute defines it this way:
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
CMI provided definition that could easily be communicated, the next step was to provide a good example. There is no other choice than C. W. McCall:
I was a teenager when the song ”Convoy” came out. I was starting to explore Led Zepplin, AeroSmith and David Bowie, to the extent that one can in a house with no turntable, or FM radio.
However, most of my exposure was to Top 40 songs of the day. “Convoy” stormed onto the airwaves and seemed to always be on. It was rather catchy, but it was so over-the-top: with talk of thousands of truckers, barreling down the highway at 100-mph-hour speeds, while scoffing at regulatory agencies, the police, and the National Guard.
Almost immediately it found its way into my collection of guilty pleasures.
But, this song sold a lot of citizens band (CB) radios, and in turn, that sold of 45s (that was how we listened to songs back then.) of this song, quite the virtuous cycle that content marketing pros dream of.
I’d often heard that the performer McCall (a pseudonym) was a marketing executive for a CB radio company and that song was intended to sell CBs. I haven’t been able to substantiate that claim, but I did find out that he worked as an art director in ad agencies, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility.
C. W. McCall was either the Miles Davis of Content Marketing, or perhaps its foremost one-hit-wonder.
Perhaps every organization should include a chart-topping song in their marketing mix. How hard could it be?