This presentation will cover content marketing, what it is, and, especially, we're going to explore key elements of it. What is content marketing? Let's define it first. It's creation and distribution of digital marketing collateral. That's a generic description or definition and its goal can be to increase brand awareness, that's important for many, if not all marketers, or it may be to improve search engine rankings, which is also important to marketers, and/or to generate audience interest. If you look at this image here on the left-hand side, you've got traditional marketing and television advertising, radio advertising, newspaper, it essentially interrupts us. If you look at the writing inside of the image, it says content marketing nurtures. We're going to explore that a little bit more, and, especially, as it relates to storytelling. Why is storytelling important in content marketing? That's because storytelling makes an audience feel something. The stories have a narrative structure that our brain follows easily. Then we follow it easily because that structure is something we recognize, we've been told stories since we were infants, so we're used to that pattern if you will. Telling a story is powerful because it has excitement and tension built-in, and most stories have that. Storytelling appeals to our emotions. The emotions we feel about a product tend to draw us to it. Emotions can be happiness, fear, sadness, and we'll talk about some more of those and why that's important. But now we're going to establish another cornerstone concept here and that's the why or the why statement. The why concept was developed by Simon Sinek about 10 years ago. The why is a statement that should be clear, should be understandable to our audience or to our customers, and it should also be clear to our team or our employees. It's something that we are involved with. It's why we exist. Some companies have a clear purpose and some don't. We're going to be talking about the why statement in-depth and the reason it's so important, and the reason companies need to express their why. If you look at this diagram, it says what you do is on the outside, how you do it, and then why you do it is in the middle. The why is something that needs to resonate with our audiences. Understanding the why. It's the core belief of the business. I'm going to give you some examples of this. There's also a how, so: the what, how, and why. The how is how the business fulfills a core belief and the what is what the company does, what they do to fulfill that belief. If you look at Apple computer or Apple company, what do they do? They produce great products. They have long life cycles, they're more expensive, but they're better quality products than their competition according to a lot of experts. How do they do that? That's what they do. How do they do that? They have state-of-the-art processes, and they have the best raw materials, and really good management system, and a great production system. That's how they do it, but that's not why people buy Apple computer or Apple products. They buy it because of the why. It's the core beliefs of the business. Earlier on in the history of the company, their why statement was in everything we do we believe in thinking differently. We believe in challenging the status quo. That is of message that resonated with their audience. That's a brief description of why as it applies to Apple. Determine the why if a business has to ask itself, what's the business' purpose? What's the cause they're working toward? What's their core belief? If they want to challenge the status quo and that's what Apple's is, that's their core belief, and their audiences and their employees buy into that. That's something that is really important. Now let's look at the why and as it relates to storytelling. If you get a chance, if you could just go to YouTube and for Nike, and Nike stands for athletic excellence not sneakers and sports equipment. The what is sneakers and sports equipment but the why is athletic excellence. They also put forth the notion that everybody is an athlete. It doesn't matter where you are, who you are in the world. You could be somebody who is overweight, you're still an athlete. You've probably seen videos that express that. When you go to look at Nike products on the shelf in a store, that might be in your mind that is more than just a well-built product. It means something else. It brings an inspiration, innovation to every athlete. Now Disney has a very clear why as well, and it stands for family happiness. What they do is they make fun theme parks and movies. How they do it, they develop these entertainment mechanisms and they're very, very well-researched and they do a great job with them. But why they do it, again, is they represent happiness. The mission statement is not really the why statement, but there is some commonality. This mission statement, as it's expressed here, "The mission of The Walt Disney Company is to entertain, inform, and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling, " here again, storytelling is a major factor here, "reflecting the iconic brands, creative minds, and innovation of technologies that make our world's premier entertainment company." What they've included is the what, how, and why in this statement, which is not a typical straight why statement. But that's what Disney does. If you're working for a company, can they express their why statement? Let's look at another brand. It's Patagonia. You may have heard of Patagonia. They produce outdoor wear, is their principal products. That's what they are. That's what they do. They produce outdoor clothing for outdoor activities, but they have a higher calling. By the way, how they do it, it's they use the best materials they have access to. But that's not why they do it. ''At Patagonia, we appreciate that all life on earth is under the threat of extinction. We aim to use resources we have; our business, our investments, our voice, our imaginations to do something about it." They are responding to a higher calling. That higher calling is part of their marketing. It's a major part of it. They want their audience to feel something. They want their audience to feel that when they invest in Patagonia, they're investing in more than just a quality piece of clothing. They're investing in a cause. That's why they exist, ''The Why.'' Again, there's an ad that says, "Don't buy this jacket." That's pictured here. What they're saying is that that's their jacket, but according to their why statement, they'd rather have you reuse what you have before you buy the new jacket. In doing that, you're going to steward up the environment. If you look at the environmental pyramid if you will, the top of a pyramid is reuse. Recycle is below reuse. Reuse is, you're doing the best thing for the environment. There's another image, it says, ''Number 1 for the Planet.'' There's a guy making clothes. He's actually repurposing clothes. That's what he's doing. What they're telling you is that that's what they believe in, that's their values, that's their why statement. If you believe in that, you buy into their why statement, then you're going to support their clothes. When you need new clothes, you know that they're doing the best thing they can for the environment. Not everybody cares about the environment, but that's an issue. Now we have storytelling in social media. The one thing about social media is that you can tell stories in social media. The storytelling is important because it expresses the why statement of a business. In this case, this is a hotel. The why statement of this hotel is to offer their guests a world-class experience, but that's really not their why statement, that would be their mission statement. The why statement is, they want them to feel something and they feel it through storytelling. This hotel has a lot of history. The history is the unique selling proposition of the hotel. What they want to do in their social media is to try to tell stories as much as they can, that incorporate their why statement into their content marketing. You would see if you look at this company's website, if you look at their social media, one of the key elements is their history and that's where they focused their storytelling around the history. Their history of related social media content is the most well-received and the most popular content in their social media. That's their purpose. That's their mission. That's part of their why statement. Again, the Top Gun part of it was filmed there, some really key scenes in the movie. There's a storytelling based around that. Then John F. Kennedy drove in front of the hotel in his motorcade the year he was assassinated, so they like to tell that story too. Through this presentation, we looked at content marketing and we broke it down into areas that you really should focus on and that is, every business company should understand their why statement. Not only should they know what they do and how they do it, every business knows that in total view, but why they do it. Then integrate storytelling into the why statement and then you have a more powerful effect for content marketing.
