There’s a horrid wretched sink hole in the United States. In this metaphor, journalistic integrity, truth and information, and all manner of justices for all are sinking, sinking, sinking away!
But we have to write about content marketing! So let’s, as I once did in 2016 as a mere 20 year, old, frantically distract myself.
Though, that being said, I do recall in 2016. I was coming back from a date on the GO bus, and my phone was dead. I couldn’t know about the results until I got home. I took the wrong bus and arrived about a kilometer away, in Hamilton. I remember walking with anxiety so palpable that I felt it deep in my guts. I remember taking a deep breath and just sprinting, sprinting, run run run to the next intersection and get home.
Not that it helped.
But now here in 2024 I’ve never received better evidence that my anxiety and depression and ADHD and all that mumbo jumbo are 500% better dealt with because I did not have nearly that painful of a reaction. In fact, I had very little panic at all. Just a kind of curiosity. And dread, yes. Ohhhh yes there is dread. But it’s more like a distant feeling than anything that is immediately tearing my insides apart.
And why is this relevant to content marketing?
Well, besides (as Ursula K. Le Guin once put it) the seemingly inescapable divine right of kings that is our current economic system, it is as simple as:
“No one wants to be advertised to”.
I talked briefly at the start of the course about how to remove the dirty connotation from ads. In an ideal world we would be able to have ads that didn’t pop up in our face, perhaps even seeking them out on our own, in order to be informed on decisions that we have chosen or will subsequently choose to make.
Now of course no one has the answer to that question. Seeing a billboard annoys even the most diehard capitalist (Especially while someone is driving? That just seems like billboards are a road hazard). However, Chanele came up with an idea at the start of her whole shebang that, while being much easier said than done, is a consistently effective strategy.
When a marketing strategy feels new and fresh, it will naturally be compelling.
Let’s look at mobile ads. Fifteen years ago, smart phone games were a brand new market of genuinely intriguing light weight concepts. About five to eight years ago the current shlock of games, state of decay, that one with the king who keeps dying from easy puzzles, rose to prominence as the mobile market was positively flooded with low quality garbage. People began to use click bait, rage bait, or just gross-out shock and awe to get you to click their ad and hopefully give them enough ad revenue to fill the developer’s failing corpses with another shot of sweet, sweet, life giving caffeine. Ads about seeing someone mess up a game while you can see the easy solution became so dull and repetitive that people began blocking every single account they ever see posting these ads.
Well that’s just counter productive to an effective ad campaign isn’t it?
So how do you make an effective ad campaign that doesn’t piss people off?
Well, our next example is Chii-tan on Twitter. chii-tan is the “crazy japanese mascot” that buys out ad space with videos of her doing absurd stuff that has nothing to do with the product at hand (herself). The ad specifically says “Hi! I’m Chiitan! Japan’s crazy mascot who bought an ad space so that you wouldn’t have to see any more annoying ads!”
And people love Chiitan! Me included! Sure I haven’t bought a plushie, but I’ve followed Chiitan, I’ve given Chiitan ad revenue that they received through Twitter Blue. By making a– yes okay it’s a random XD brand of humour kind of ad, but it’s an ad that speaks to how annoying ads have become, Chiitan has gotten ahead of the game. Chiitan has come out with something new, something fresh.
On twitter I block every single ad that comes up like clockwork. No matter who it is. Important charity? blocked. Game I actively play? Blocked. Celebrity? Oh you’re definitely blocked.
But not Chiitan. Because Chiitan says “Hey I get how you’re feeling, look at this instead!”
And it’s genuine. It’s not some fake pre-roll youtube ad that wastes the 5 seconds before I skip it saying “Don’t skip this ad!”
Someday Chiitan may be purchased by some company that wants to monetize her harder, and when that day comes, I will tearfully depart from my fallen comrade. But not yet.
God speed Chiitan.