Chapter 9: Content Marketing for Brand Curiosity
Content marketing is not an ordinary piece of content. It is not a marketing using heavily-loaded information printed on brochures. It is not a native ad or even a viral video in itself. Content marketing is a marketing approach that involves creating, curating, distributing, and amplifying content that is interesting, relevant, and useful to a clearly defined audience group in order to create conversations about the content.
Content marketing is very different from advertising. Advertising means occasionally interrupting the content your audience actually wants, in order to sell them a product or introduce your brand. Many of us opt-out of unwanted advertising because it is not something we typically want to read and share. Advertising is how publishers monetize their traffic. Content marketing on the other hand revolves around the idea that marketing is not about selling, but about the conversation we have with our customers.
One good and effective content marketing was the Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign. The campaign started in Australia back in 2011 where it was still internally known to the company as “Project Connect” based on its ambition to both strengthen the brand’s bond with Australia’s young adults – and inspire shared moments of happiness in the real and virtual worlds – became known as “Share a Coke.” The first-of-its-kind campaign celebrated the power of the first name in a playful, social way by swapping out Coke branding on bottles and cans with the 150 most popular monikers in Australia.
The campaign was based from Coca-Cola’s research which showed that while teens and young adults loved that Coca-Cola was big and iconic, many still felt that the company was not talking to its customers at an eye level. And to address such problem, the company thought of an idea of having first names swapped with Coke’s branding on bottles and cans. This campaign strategy gave everyone the opportunity to personalize their favorite drink. It was a massive hit of marketing and word-of-mouth. Everyone went crazy for the campaign; many people seek buying the product to search if their name is printed on the bottle. Everybody was talking about it, making it even spread all around the world reaching more than 70 countries to date.
The “Shake a Coke” campaign resulted to a huge success mainly because it presented the brand as personal. It made people buying the product special as if it was just “you” and “your bottle” against the world. It mainly targeted one of the most important thing to customers that most marketers ignore – their name. Everyone’s favorite subject is themselves and seeing a brand talking about your name, calling out to you with your first name, is surely a great place to start to catch your attention and eventually end up buying the product to let others see it and thus create a bigger pattern of sharing and experience to larger group of audience.
The “Share a Coke” campaign was able to revolutionize emotional connections by asking people to “share” its product without them knowing. The customer’s buying process was not just for self-satisfaction, Coca-Cola was able to urge customers to share their experience as if the product and themselves are one.
