Marketing Thingy

Super Bowl 57 Grins and Groans

Nader Ashway3 Comments

Congratulations (choke!) to the (cough!) Kansas City Chiefs on another (gag!) well-earned Super Bowl victory. Sorry, but when you’re a fan of another team, it hurts to give props to anyone else. #GoBills.

Aside from the football, there was, of course, the advertising. And it was anything BUT super this year. Really just a strange mix of blah ideas, very few risks taken, heavy on celebrities, light on diversity and originality. So here goes.

GRINS

While there was not much to celebrate, there were a few ads that stood out this year. Like the game, it was pretty slow going in the first half, and then revved up after the halftime show. While we’re at halftime, I don’t know enough about Rihanna’s music to say if it was good or bad, but I was pretty impressed with the floating stages, the drone shots, and the visual intrigue that was created. Also, she basically put on a 15-minute commercial for her fashion and beauty brands Fenty and Savage X Fenty, while announcing her pregnancy to the world. Good on her. At least SOMEBODY got the idea about marketing during the Super Bowl.

I’ll give it up to Ben Affleck, shilling for Dunkin’ at the drive thru. JLo ordering him to “bring me a glazed” was pretty funny. ETrade brings the babies back again this year, but at least it was funny, with a few killer lines and lots of cute kids being AI’d into silly dialogue.

In a meta spot for T-Mobile, Bradley Cooper and his mom couldn’t finish the commercial, but still managed to get some important feature points across about the Price Lock guarantee. And Michelob Ultra revived Caddyshack (twice, actually) with Brian Cox, Serena Williams and Tony Romo standing in for Ted Knight, Chevy Chase and Bill Murray. Probably completely lost on anyone born after 1975, but still, beer and golf play well together.

Adam Driver was tongue-in-cheek enough to deliver a pretty solid message for Squarespace, repeating the core premise “a website that makes websites.” And Super Bowl 57 was heavy on 90’s nostalgia with Diddy doing a sort of it’s-not-a-jingle commercial for Uber Eats. Oh, and Jennifer Coolidge is just plain funny. Her over-the-top antics for E.L.F. cosmetics, using the “sticky” gag was delicious!

And while we’re talking about celebrities being a little self-effacing, props to Sarah McLachlan for spoofing herself in a beer ad for Busch Light, where she – almost – launches into one of her “save the pets” PSAs, only to find out it’s the “wrong shelter, Sarah…also, that’s a wolf.” Funny. And I have to say, John Travolta reviving “Summer Nights” with Zach Braff and Donald Faison for T-Mobile in-home wifi was well-executed and had some really funny lines, (and a nice three-part harmony!) including feature points like “it’s just fifty bucks.” Mr. Peanut also allowed himself to get “roasted” by Jeff Ross and others in a smart turn of phrase. And Dave Grohl (who is a great comedic pitchman) celebrated all the exports of Canada in a cheeky spot (and a nice not-so-serious approach) for Crown Royal. A refreshing detour from typical spirits ads.

Three honorable mentions:

Nick Jonas for Dexcom, a diabetes monitoring device and corresponding app, was remarkably well-done and should be an indication that they’re targeting a younger demographic. After all, that target is more likely to embrace lifesaving tech without a second thought, and more likely to know who this kid is. And having a JoBro deliver the message actually makes it seem fairly cool. Smart!

The Pop Corners spot, which was executed wonderfully by Aaron Paul, Bryan Cranston and Raymond Cruz (known colloquially as Jesse, Mr. White and Tuco,) of Breaking Bad fame, was hilarious and well-played, especially by Cruz doing his over-the-top hyper-excited drug dealer shouting “SEVEN!” for the amount of flavors he wants. Be careful; the joke is a little lost if you don’t get the references, but if you do, it’s gold.

Tubi used a few sneaky tactics to get our attention. The best was the eerie spot of giant rabbits kidnapping humans and tossing them into “rabbit holes” of content. Pretty out there, and pretty good. We all use the term “I went down a rabbit hole” when we talk about binging, and this was a smart callback to that vernacular. But their “and now back to the game” cutoff, where we thought we were going back to Super Bowl coverage (with Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen) and then got duped into another spot was masterful. It helps that Tubi is a Fox-owned streaming service. They would win the under-the-radar advertiser of the year for sure.

THREE CLEAR WINNERS:

KIA – “Binky Dad”

Kia goes big on a situation that virtually every dad can relate to. They turn it into a determination story, with a hero, a challenge, (not to mention the Bill Conti “Rocky” theme song in the background,) and lots of excitement along the way. This is good advertising: just slightly over the top, but with enough truth and substance at the heart of it that it’s totally believable, even if exaggerated. The SUV has all the capability it needs to turn off road, jump through a concrete water main pipe, and generally haul ass in the service of “getting the baby’s binky.” Cue the poor-dad-you-got-it-wrong-anyway joke at the end, and you have a very satisfying, super entertaining and moderately informative Super Bowl commercial.

DORITOS – “Triangle”

Pop/rap star Jack Harlow seeks something “different” in this spot for Doritos. He ditches rap, and instead takes up playing the triangle, which sets off a national phenomenon. People go crazy for triangles, Harlow starts giving triangle lessons, and he hopes to win triangle player of the year, until he’s usurped by Elton John. Over the top, funny, and sneaky on point: Doritos are, of course, triangle-shaped snack chips. Although the brand is widely known, it’s a return to a simple “what makes you different” focus. That’s good strategy, and it turned out to be very good advertising.

WORKDAY – “Rock Stars”

Corporate types like to call each other “rock stars.” In this spot, some actual rock stars take offense, and provide background to remind Workday, the corporate Finance and HR software platform, that just using it to your advantage does NOT make you an actual rock star. Joan Jett, Billy Idol, Gary Clark Jr, and a hilarious turn by Ozzy Osbourne (“Hi, I’m Oswald,”) make this a glitzy, big, funny, and SUPER memorable spot. I often talk about performance, and how important an element that is in good commercial-making. Paul Stanley plays it perfectly – a little miffed faux-seriousness and a well-delivered comedic performance by him in particular. Best spot of the night, and it wasn’t even close.

GROANS

Sorry to say it, but this Super Bowl was full of groans. Most of it was just boring, or unremarkable, including all the movie promos. Anna Faris in a tired Garden of Eden trope for Avocados from Mexico…hard to follow, which just didn’t make you want to buy or investigate the product in any way. Some gaming company (LimitBreak) did another QR code trick in the first pod, which is the definition of “too soon” after last year’s semi-groundbreaking approach from Coinbase (which crashed their servers, btw.)

Generally, most of the spots just relied too heavily on celebrity to (hopefully) make an impression. Most were misses, like Hellmann’s (Jon Hamm, Brie Larson and a creepy Pete Davidson,) Skechers (Snoop Dogg, Martha Stewart and a funny Tony Romo,) and Paul Rudd as Ant-Man for a non-alcoholic Heineken beer.

The most egregious celebrity-filled spot was the DraftKings “name” spot, where Kevin Hart and others work through a script that was written JUST for the celebrities in the spot. This is a celebrity ad for celebrity ad’s sake kind of approach. Hart says “I’m not an under-taker” just as WWE star Undertaker appears. Or “that’s ludicrous,” when rapper Ludacris appears. Or worse yet, “I’m watching you like a hawk” as skateboarder Tony Hawk tries to get into the party. Just not great advertising, and expensive too!

BIGGEST GROANS

GM and Netflix teamed up in one of two co-branded spots Netflix did on the night. (The other was a decent pitch for their upcoming “Full Swing” reality show about professional golfers with Michelob Ultra that reprised the Caddyshack theme.) In this spot, Will Ferrell (whose comic genius was utterly wasted in this spot) drives around in an all-electric truck through various scenes of popular Netflix shows. Each line of the script is crafted around popular Netflix shows, but if you a.) don’t have Netflix or b.) don’t watch those particular shows, you’re out of the jokes completely. It’s confusing at best, and self-congratulatory at worst.

WeatherTech continues their participation in the Super Bowl, although most of us wish they wouldn’t. The ad starts out with promise, with various people telling WeatherTech “you can’t do that” when they want to build a factory in the US, and hire bright talent in the US. But it veers off into more patting of their own backs. The ad says “ha! See? We did it, and we’re successful, so there!” There’s nothing of value there for the consumer to hear. Nothing about translating those higher costs and more expensive employees into great quality products, or shorter shipping times, or that you can find the products at stores where you live. Nah, just “we’re awesome. Go America.” Sadly, some people will say it was a great commercial for that exact reason. Ugh.

Pepsi Zero Sugar wins the ignominious award for worst spots of the Super Bowl. There were two of them, actually, which makes it doubly disappointing. Here’s the setup: Ben Stiller and Steve Martin do some acting in various comic and dramatic situations, and talk about the “craft” of acting, and how you never know what’s real and what’s acting. Okay, we’re listening. But then, they take a sip of Pepsi Zero Sugar and exclaim “wow – that’s delicious!” (And this is where it goes awry.) Then they turn to the camera and ask, “or was I acting?” Now, in their defense, the setup is built to deliver the next line “only way to find out is to try it for yourself.” So you could argue there’s a strong call to action to go out and try the product. That’s fair. But let’s remember that the mind is the marketplace when it comes to advertising, and even the mere suggestion that an actor is faking it creates too much doubt. We are all willing to suspend our disbelief when we see commercials, but you never want the consumer wondering if the actor was indeed acting. If you think the pitchman was bullshitting you, and then he admits he might be, I don’t know…that just doesn’t seem like a strong selling idea to me. The better angle would have been to go over the top, and try and plead for the audience’s understanding by saying “no, really…I’m NOT acting right now…this stuff is GREAT!” They got too cute, and I think it cost them.

Until next year…yay advertising!

Here’s mud in your A.I.

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If you’ve been paying attention to the industry news, there’s been a LOT of chatter about AI, (artificial intelligence,) and its various applications. And some of them are really intriguing and useful. With the ability to run predictive diagnostics, artificial intelligence (better described as data-driven machine learning,) is ideal for applications that can benefit from robust and speedy automation.

As is our way, it doesn’t take long for something useful and intriguing to be repurposed into something base and silly. Case in point: AI is also being used now for some fairly sophisticated parlour tricks, like recreating the Mona Lisa.

(Moves soapbox to the foreground.)

But the application of AI in marketing, and most specifically in the creative process, is really (in this sentient blogger’s opinion,) an overreach.

There’s no data set for creativity. In fact, there are no rules. What makes something “creative” is that it is indeed CREATED. By a human being. Part of why we buy paintings, and music and novels and sculpture is because we know there’s a backstory of someone who sweat it out in a studio or at the typewriter. Someone whose fingers bled. Someone who made mistakes, and tried variations, and threw whole passages in a trash can. We celebrate that humanity and that pain and the entire process when we consume anything creative. Not just the end result.

The same is true in marketing. Writing anything – an ad, a blog post, a commercial script – is hard. It’s taking business rules and mandatories into consideration and asking a creative person to then do intellectual gymnastics, linking sometimes disparate ideas in unexpected ways, without a net. Can you write an algorithm for that? Sure, but the results are likely to be shit – the kind of shit a hack would conjure.

For instance, you’ve probably seen these kinds of promotions for having AI write your next blog post.

What’s really happening there? I don’t claim to have knowledge of any of their algorithms, but I’d bet my last dollar that these are search bots that crawl the web for every piece of content written in the last 10 years about a particular subject. They ingest this huge data set, pick out bits and pieces using sorting criteria that prioritize those with the most clicks, comments and instances, and then rearrange and reconstruct a new version for you.

That’s not creating. That’s recreating at best. And theft at worst.

ChatGPT, the latest and supposedly greatest iteration of AI language prowess, has added a sexy wrinkle into their algorithm. Instead of just swiping content and repurposing it, it adds a level of dialogue formatting to make it sound more conversational, and thus more natural and believable. It claims to “answer follow-up questions” and “admits its mistakes.” And given that it is machine-based learning, it gets “better” the more often it’s used. (It’s driving educators crazy, as students who use it can be deemed to be cheating, not researching.)

What a paradox: a machine learning model that improves the more often it’s used, but also degrades the craft proportionately in the process. [Some disclosures: OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT is funded in part by Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and just got a billion dollar injection of capital from Microsoft.]

In a recent viral kerfuffle on social media, recording artist Nick Cave (throaty lead singer with The Bad Seeds) reacted to a song that was “written” by ChatGPT “in the style of Nick Cave.” He could not have put it any better:

“Songs arise out of suffering, by which I mean they are predicated upon the complex, internal human struggle of creation and, well, as far as I know, algorithms don’t feel. Data doesn’t suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing, it has not had the audacity to reach beyond its limitations, and hence it doesn’t have the capacity for a shared transcendent experience, as it has no limitations from which to transcend. ChatGPT’s melancholy role is that it is destined to imitate and can never have an authentic human experience, no matter how devalued and inconsequential the human experience may in time become.”

Okay, back to marketing, and particularly the art of writing good advertising. Part of the craft is developing a sense of counterintuitive thought and embracing lateral thinking. Another big part is the symbiotic relationship of the headline and the image. But so much of modern advertising is about contextualizing the brand into the cultural moment from which it arises.

Think of how many great headlines and taglines would never – could never – be written by AI, by virtue of this necessity for divergence and a sense of the cultural periphery.

“Think Small” from DDB was a radical notion at the dawn of the 1960s. As Americans – less than two decades removed from World War II – were upwardly mobile, one of the most pervasive (and comical) trends in automobile-dom was an oblique obsession with size. Bigger was better, and American cars looked like ocean liners. The nation was also wildly nationalistic at the time, and DDB’s assignment was to sell a small, quirky German car to this audience.

To get to the heart of these cultural undertones and suggest an opposite notion was a radical idea. And paired with the spare art direction (bless you Helmut Krone) and that sea of white space, it became a touchstone for our industry. Could AI ever reach that level of insight? Of rebelliousness? Of sheer chutzpah?

“Think Different.” When this campaign (from TBWA/Chiat/Day) was released in the 1990s, it was paired with images of pioneering artists, thinkers and doers, like Einstein, Picasso and Miles Davis. It also featured zero body copy. What’s so interesting about the head/tagline is that it’s not even good English. But it was a fine encapsulation of the Apple brand in that moment and what it stood for. Would AI dare to break grammar rules to create an emotional response?

I suppose it’s mildly ironic, or at least cheeky, that I chose two classic advertising examples that use the word “think” in the headlines. And perhaps that’s exactly what I’m driving at, and what Nick Cave was fuming at.

Maybe I’m an old fart, but I prefer the consternation. The suffering. The pacing and the waiting and the wondering if this “idea” has legs. Give me time to think about what’s going on in the world. Give me the sudden burst of insight when the neurons start to fire. Give me the end of the sentence that starts with “wouldn’t it be cool if…” Give me a person, thinking about another person, and getting them to actually think different.

There’s nothing artificial about that.

The reports of the cookie’s death have been grossly exaggerated.

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“The death of cookies,” to borrow a phrase, is (mostly) fake news. I wouldn’t be concerned with this topic, except that so many reputable media outlets have been publishing misleading and sensational headlines about it.

Take a look:

Adweek sent an email special report with the headline:  “The Death of Cookies.”

AdAge with Cheetah Digital posted on social with the same frenzied phrase: “The death of cookies”

And Segment (Twilio’s customer data platform) went even further with this social gem: “Digital Advertising in a Cookieless World.”

But here’s the problem: It.  Isn’t. True.

So let’s get to the bottom of why all these authorities are spewing all this gunk.

The first thing that’s important to know is that there are two primary kinds of cookies:  these are called “first-party cookies” and “third-party cookies.”  (I know, it’s weird that there’s no “second party cookies.” Somebody got ripped off in this deal.)

First-party cookies are data files that are shared between your browser and any website you visit.  When you visit a site, especially a site that you may go back to multiple times, say a news site like NYTimes.com, a small text file is generated and stored on your browser. It contains information about you (nothing too personal, unless you choose to save passwords via your browser, and please don’t do that,) like the browser you’re using, the operating system, where you’re located (via your IP address,) and even the browsing history.  They were originally created to optimize the performance of websites.  Since there’s a history encoded in the cookie, the website does not have to fully reload each time you visit it – it sort of restores the previous session, and then updates the site with its latest content. This is why your shopping cart on e-commerce sites is “remembered” and preferences on other sites are stored.  Each time you go back to the site, the cookie is updated with more information.  So it’s a bit of a history log between your browser and a specific domain. 

Disclaimer: This is an oversimplification of first-party cookies, but it will serve to help distinguish it from the other type.

Third-party cookies are different in many ways. First, and most important, they are stored under a different domain than the one you are visiting. They are typically “shared” from the domain you’re visiting with – you guessed it – third parties. The most basic example is this:  you go and visit NYTimes.com to read the news, and you see banner ads on the top and along the right side from a brand like Toyota. Since NYTimes is a publisher, and has sold advertising space to Toyota, they may have also agreed to share your data, and allow Toyota to drop a third-party cookie to track your browsing behavior.  The thinking with this was “it would help Toyota to know what other kinds of sites readers of the New York Times might visit, and what their browsing behavior is, so we can build a better profile of potential targets.” 

Disclaimer:  this is also an oversimplification of third-party cookies, but it should serve to help distinguish it from the other type.

Okay.

So, the headlines you’ve been reading are misleading, because they leave out a very important qualifier: the only thing that’s “dying” is the third-party cookie.

Pushing out headlines like “the death of cookies” or “a cookieless world” is like saying “music is dead” just because we’ve banned Justin Bieber. It’s sensationalizing the story at best. It’s clickbait at worst.

First-party cookies are here to stay, and there’s no way they’re going away, since it would cut off hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue being transacted every year. First-party cookies form the basis of ad targeting, retargeting, (yes, you can still be retargeted via first-party cookies,) display advertising (banner ads,) most social media platform algorithms, and the mighty Zeus of them all, search engine marketing and its associated retargeting.

[The post ends there, but I have a few words to say about WHY third-party cookies are getting the axe.]

The whole kerfuffle over third-party cookies is generally about privacy, and not having one’s data shared without one’s knowledge. But who are we kidding? Our data is getting shared every day, all over the place, whether we a.) like it or not and b.) know it or not.  Did you ever Google yourself? I’m sure you didn’t actively and purposefully put all that information there – it was aggregated from across the web without your knowledge or consent. How do you think data marketing companies make money? They go and mine data they already have, or it’s getting shared with them from retailers, credit card companies, and others. Yes, GDPR legislation has been adopted, but all it effectively does is add another annoying click before I get to the content I want on any new website. Ugh. And if the last year has showed us anything, (since third-party cookies have started phasing out and Apple’s iOS tracking regulations have been adopted,) it’s that you can still run effective and even mobile-friendly ads without third-party cookies and nobody is any worse for wear.

This author’s preference is to have his data shared (no social security numbers, credit card numbers or bank account numbers, thank you very much,) so that my general Internet experience is more carefully curated and more fully tailored to my preferences. Killing third-party cookies was accelerated as a knee-jerk reaction to the 2020 election and fears of the “echo chamber” effect, and more sensitive issues like child welfare, gender identity, and other possibly incriminating privacy gaffes. All the while, forgetting that you can still be retargeted via first-party cookies. They could have worked that stuff out and still made the Internet an interesting and contextualized place.

If Toyota wants to follow me around for two weeks to find out that I’m not a fit for their brand, so be it.  At least I won’t see ads for the 2022 Camry hybrid anymore.

Facebook’s Meta transition. A mashup that proves hardware is the new tech.

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Late last month, noted CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook is changing its name to Meta, and changing its official stock ticker from FB to MVRS.  The name Meta is a shorthand for the metaverse, which is itself shorthand for an almost fully immersed online world, where people can play, work, and gather in groups in the virtual sense. Zuckerberg is betting big on building it, even though it’s been tried before. (More on that in a bit.)

That this massive shift away from one of the world’s most recognizable brand names comes amid a slew of scandals is indeed curious.  But let’s leave all the political soundbites and sexy headlines aside for the moment.  This is not about the Facebook Papers, nor about Russian disinformation, nor about Cambridge Analytica, or data collection, or facial recognition…man, they do have a lot of shit swirling around the campus out there, don’t they?

Nah, this smells like a big bet hardware play, plain and simple.

This whole Meta rename is nothing more than a cosmetic corporate restructuring that will now control Facebook and its other well-known brands, including Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Oculus.  A lot like when Google changed their name to Alphabet, and rolled up all their brands, including Google itself, under the holding company.  (PS – only investors care about this stuff, and THEY still call it Google. And the stock ticker for the company known as Alphabet is…GOOGL.)

So why isn’t Zuckerberg saying that?

I have an idea. Maybe it’s because the metaverse isn’t a great idea.  Or, rather, maybe it isn’t a great idea to shelter it under the enormous loads of cash that the artist formerly known as Facebook has at its disposal.  It’s been widely reported that the year one budget is over $10 billion, and that 10,000 people, mostly in hardware, will be recruited to make it go.

When any entrepreneur wants to launch a new idea, especially a broad and ambitious one like the metaverse Zuckerberg envisions, it’s good practice to prove it can actually accomplish something on its own merits.  It’s a good practice to seek capital from investors and show milestones that prove the concept.  In the absence of that kind of oversight and objective grownups in the room that business incubator model provides, it’s just another lavish vanity project.  The Metaverse is to Zuckerberg what space is to Bezos, Musk and Branson: a vast unknown that he hopes to monetize.

And let’s remember two important things about Meta’s metaverse:
First, the road to the metaverse was paved by Second Life way back in 2003, a full year before Mark Zuckerberg’s “hot or not” turned into “thefacebook.” It is a metaverse full of avatars and provides an almost identical experience to what Zuckerberg envisions: an interesting alternative online environment, where you can have virtual meetings and other whatnots.  (Kinda mostly trying to ply a virtual shopping mall, though.)

Second, and far more interesting: Meta’s virtual world will require, not suggest, that you purchase some very real and very significant pieces of hardware to access it. Oculus VR goggles are currently retailing at around $300, and may not have the full range of capabilities to access what will eventually become the Meta metaverse. It’s a long way to go to sell a bunch of accessories, but it sure sounds like a hot hardware play, doesn’t it? Build the metaverse, get a lot of good press, then tell those who can afford it that the only way to get on board is to buy some rechargeable VR binoculars, now available in six avatar-worthy colors!  All of this is coming right on the heels of Facebook (can we still call it that?) inking a deal with Ray-Ban to sell some fancy Smart Wayfarers that take photographs and play tunes, also for about $300.

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear Zuckerberg was trying to emulate Steve Jobs in some way. After all, Apple’s most successful product was/is the iPhone, not the Macintosh, its former flagship. It required the purchase of a significant piece of hardware. It was an ambitious project and came decades after the company launched. And Jobs didn’t just have the phone developed with a base OS and software.  He outsourced the smartphone “experience” to third party developers via the app ecosystem so every user could customize their device to their liking and have a uniquely personal interaction with it. It’s what ignited the phone’s insanely fast global adoption, and may be a route that Zuckerberg is similarly exploring.  The metaverse will require the purchase of significant hardware.  It, too, is an ambitious project that will launch decades after the Facebook flagship. Let’s all pay attention over the next couple of years and take notice when third-party developers – under a watchful eye and strict guidelines, of course – are invited to curate and broaden the metaverse experience in various ways, like shopping, gaming, utilities, fitness, and others.

Other tech CEOs have also profited marvelously in various ways on and off the Internet, and have pivoted to hardware in the process. Brin and Page monetized consumer intent with paid search advertising. Then they sold us Pixel phones and Google Home and acquired Nest for broader reach with devices. (And they’re betting big on Waymo.) Musk made his money online with PayPal when it sold to EBay, then monetized major hardware with Tesla electric cars. Bezos is a retailer and monetizes markup. He also likes hardware – Kindle and Echo both do just fine, thank you very much. With Meta, Zuckerberg seeks to do all of the above, just in the opposite order. He’ll first sell hardware to access the metaverse. Then he’ll sell advertising (likely highly contextualized) with a new model that combines search history, affinity, and basic demographics to a mostly Gen Z audience. He’ll build in some exchange system (maybe crypto-based) in the metaverse that costs real offline dollars. And he’ll most definitely build some kind of online shopping component.

So…what color would you prefer for your new goggles?

CONTENT CATEGORIES: fuel your funnel with the right stuff

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Funnel marketing is back in fashion, and dozens of new ideas are popping up around this classic business concept.  The marketing funnel (or the consumer journey, or the conversion pathway, as it goes by many names,) is simply a conceptual construct to illustrate the broad phases of how leads are generated and then move from one place – where a consumer is typically unaware of your concept or brand or product – to another, more desirable place, where that consumer is ready to buy (or recommend) your specific product, and hopefully, right now.

It usually looks something like this:

Another concept – content marketing – has also been blogged to death in the last several years. The basic idea here is that brands can and should be generating and distributing a constant stream of content in many forms to attract and retain their target audiences.

Both funnel marketing and content marketing are relevant and valuable. Both concepts are basically applicable for just about any audience in just about any category, and that includes b-to-c or b-to-b. (That’s neat.)

But what I’ve noticed recently is that there isn’t much discussion on how content and marketing funnels can or should work together.

If you decide that it’s time to create content for your brand (and yes, it’s always a good time to do that,) you may also realize it can be quite difficult.  Questions abound about what to create, when to create it, where and how to distribute it, and whether or not it’s a good investment of critical resources, such as time, talent, and capital.

One important strategy is to create categories for your content that line up with your funnel marketing goals. In this case, the illustration would look more like this.

Let’s explore.

Almost every marketing funnel is illustrated by the letters A-I-D-A to represent awareness, interest, desire (or decision) and action. But in broader terms, the consumer journey is encapsulated by three broad categories: evaluation, consideration, motivation.

When the consumer is in the evaluation stage (becomes aware, develops interest):

In the early (high-funnel) stages, a consumer may be evaluating a purchase or interaction in this category.  In some cases, that consumer may be wholly unaware of your brand at this point. If your brand is new, or has just launched a new feature, or a new line, or has been dormant for a while and is back in some way, you want to communicate to the consumer set that you have options that might be worthy of review. 

For this I recommend creating generalized content.  Think about ways to show the consumer simply that your brand belongs in the category and has something interesting (or better yet different) to offer. This is a great time to educate/inform the consumer.

Some examples would include social content, blog posts, listicles, product reviews (to outline the basic brand/product traits.)

When the consumer is in the consideration stage (has interest, develops desire):

In the middle (mid-funnel) stages, that same consumer has probably become a bit more educated as a result of their exploration, and they’re now considering which options are the best for him/her/them. Note that this can only occur with brands that the consumer is aware of, and knows something about. They may circle back and look to check off important boxes, such as features, availability, time to delivery, and other (buying signal) particulars that are now important to them. 

Also note how the consumer, from a psychological perspective, gets more and more self-interested as they proceed down the funnel.  The conversation tends to move from “what does this thingy do?” to “what does this thingy do FOR ME?” 

This is where you should consider more specialized content. Help the consumer see your brand from the perspective of its superiority points, or better yet its unique points.

Some examples would include infographics to position your brand in the category, video or animated product demonstrations, info sheets/brochures or White Papers for b-to-b (to highlight the brand/product difference relative to other choices.)

When the consumer is in the action stage (has desire, ready to act):

Finally, the consumer reaches the moment of truth.  They’ve moved into the mode of desire and are ready to act in some way.  As mentioned above, they’ve considered this from a fairly self-interested point of view, and come to believe that maybe only one brand can really satisfy their needs.  Very often, they may whittle their choice down to two brands (because binary choices are easier for consumers to make,) and run a final A vs B competition in their minds, and yes, maybe even in their hearts.

Whenever you hear someone say marketing is emotional, they’re talking about this critical juncture in the funnel.  Consumers – especially if they’ve reached this binary choice phase – tend to go with the option that “feels” right for them.

If you’ve made it this far, be sure to have some contextualized content ready to go to motivate that consumer to choose your brand.  Take out any remaining guesswork. Show that consumer what it will be like to interact with your brand every day, and how that relationship will progress.

Talk about expectations, get specific on policies and procedures, warranties and registrations, and smooth the path to get the action (which may not always be a sale, by the way) you desire most.

Some examples would include consumer testimonials, case studies, and any customized or educational content like webinars (note the very personalized and specific complexion of these options.)