Interest in content marketing is growing in the venture capitalist community, but are other marketing-focused organizations starting to strain under the weight of competition from
owned media strategies? Read on for our view of these, and other, key content industry issues that took shape this week.
PNR: This Old Marketing with Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose can now be found on both iTunes and Stitcher.
This week’s show
Download this week’s PNR This Old Marketing podcast.
Show overview
1. Content Marketing in the News
Unilever Slashes Marketing Jobs: Unilever, the multinational consumer goods company, announced this week the slashing of over 800 marketing-related jobs. Joe and Robert discuss the impact of owned media strategies on the marketing organization, and how larger, not smaller, companies are feeling the pain of content marketing from a structural standpoint. (Contributing article: AdAge)
The Rise of VC Content Marketing: The huge movement of brands to content marketing has finally gotten the attention of the venture capitalist (VC) community. It’s easiest put this way: Content marketing technology is hot, hot, hot. The PNR team talks about the different categories of content marketing technology (collaboration, native advertising, workflow) and which categories stand the best chance of seeing the most VC money. (Contributing article: Forbes)
Facebook Ads: Organic Content Getting More Diluted: Yes, it is absolutely correct that brands will increasingly have a hard time cutting through the clutter of content that is Facebook. So much so that Facebook came out with a report telling brands that the best-case scenario for making an impact on Facebook is to buy advertising. Now there’s a surprise. (Contributing article: AdAge)
Google+ Now Adding Social Ads to Its Network: Google just began to test social ads on its Google+ platform. And here’s an interesting quirk: Fan comments will be contained in the dialogue around the advertising. Everyone better set their preferences for this advertising roller coaster ride. (Contributing article: All Things D)
Our sponsor
Special thanks goes out this week to our sponsor, FusionSpark Media, and to nonprofit software provider Blackbaud and its support of the 2014 Nonprofit Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report. This year’s report found that even though 92 percent of nonprofits leverage content marketing, just 25 percent actually have documented content marketing strategies.
2. Rants & Raves
Robert’s Rant: Robert’s rant this week is on FAILS — and how he’s hoping that those who are influential in the space can make a New Year’s holiday resolution to focus on the positive… We’re too quick to point out failures, and there’s a big difference between FAILS and things that didn’t work out as expected… and Robert hates that we discourage experimentation…
Joe’s Rave: Joe applauds Newsweek (which first launched in 1933) on its recent announcement that the magazine will once again be offering a print version, starting in 2014. Joe believes that there is still a place for print, especially for brands, and runs through the reasons why in this LinkedIn post.
3. This Old Marketing Example of the Week
Force Cereal was first produced in 1901 and was advertised using the character Sunny Jim. Minnie Maud Hanff, a freelance jingle writer, was tasked by Force Foods with the challenge of creating a campaign for healthier breakfast options. Rather than creating traditional advertising for the campaign, Hanff invented the character of Jimmy Dumps, an overweight, morose man who, upon eating the cereal, was transformed into the energy-filled Sunny Jim. The jingles, stories, and poems she created caught on and were wildly successful, lifting Force to levels of selling 360,000 boxes of cereal per day. Curiously enough, Force just stopped production of the cereal in 2013. (Contributing article: Wikipedia)
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