Jan 3, 20153 min read

This Week in Content Marketing: Content Marketing Predictions for 2015

PNR: This Old Marketing with Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose can be found on both iTunes and Stitcher.

In this week’s episode, Robert and I look into our crystal balls to foretell the future of content marketing in 2015. Our prognostications include some non-traditional channels, an all-hands approach to content marketing, and demonstrating its value to C-level executives. In addition, we discuss why the decade-old medium of podcasting is finally taking off and the controversy surrounding Facebook’s automated “Year in Review” feature. Rants and raves include an IKEA holiday commercial and controversial Christmas tweets from Neil deGrasse Tyson. We wrap up the show with a #ThisOldMarketing example from Tealium’s clever book series.

This week’s show

(Recorded live on December 28, 2014; Length: 1:11:55)

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1. Content Marketing in the News

Ten Years of Podcasting: Fighting Human Nature (4:05): Blogger Matt Haughey shares his musings on why it has taken a decade for podcasting to hit the mainstream. He also outlines some fascinating ideas to improve the processes of finding, sampling, subscribing to and sharing podcasts. Robert and I reflect on our experiences consuming podcasts and why it seems to be a solitary medium. We agree that it has much more potential and discuss why it will continue to grow in 2015.
Inadvertent Algorithmic Cruelty (14:47): Eric Meyer takes Facebook to task for designing its relentlessly upbeat “Year in Review” app without considering the mindset of people who didn’t have a great year. Meyer’s daughter passed away six months ago, but her face keeps popping up in his news feed as Facebook’s algorithm repeatedly encourages him to publish an annual summary of his most popular posts and images. Robert and I agree that Meyer’s unfortunate experience is a cautionary tale about the perils of content automation.
10 Ways Content Will Change in 2015 (26:00): John Rampton shares his thoughts on the ways in which content will change in the coming year in this Forbes post. Robert and I agree that these same predictions could have been listed last year and will probably still be relevant a year from now – a sign of how slowly marketers change their strategies and tactics. We share our top predictions for 2015, including opportunities in book publishing and print magazines, employees as part of marketing, the death of the customer journey metaphor, and demonstrating audience value to the C-suite.

2. Sponsor (55:55)

This Old Marketing is sponsored by Acrolinx, which builds enterprise linguistic analytics software that helps brands intelligently translate and manage their content in multiple languages. Acrolinx is promoting a new eBook called Speak with One Voice: How to Gain Competitive Advantage in the Content Era. It answers questions such as how can you make your content stand out? And, how should companies align their marketing and technical content so they speak with one voice to their prospects and customers? This eBook answers these questions, shares best practices for creating great content, and points you to technology that can help streamline the process and make it more efficient. You can register for it at http://bit.ly/pnr-acrolinx2.

3. Rants and Raves (57:27)

Joe’s Rave: IKEA has produced a brilliant Spanish-language Christmas commercial in which it asks a group of young children to write two letters: One to the Three Kings (sort of like Santa Claus) and the other to their parents telling them what they want for Christmas. What they wanted from their parents had nothing to do with toys, video games, or other things. It’s a touching commercial that emphasizes the importance of focusing on your family.
Robert’s Rant: Neil deGrasse Tyson lit up Twitter with several Christmas Day tweets in which he appeared to be critical of religion. They caused an enormous outpouring of vitriol toward the famed science geek, who was unrepentant. What got Robert upset is that the media pounced on this spat and considered it to be newsworthy. It’s not.

4. This Old Marketing Example of the Week (1:04:10)

Tealium: When digital marketing management firm Tealium wanted to differentiate its services, it used an unusual tactic: It launched a children’s book called Taming the Digital Marketing Beast that looks like something from the Little Golden Books series. It does a brilliant job of communicating a complex topic in a simple and engaging format. The characters in the book encounter cleverly named marketing problems, including the Signpost of Chaos, Tag Mountain, and the Cloud of Confusion, which Tealium promises to solve. The company’s primary use of the book is as a trade show giveaway. Based on its early successes with this distinctive storytelling format, it plans to publish a series of books like this to help promote its services.