Scrub ‘Content is King’ it should be ‘ Creating Creative Content is King!’…

We are lucky, most of our clients are from the music / entertainment industry, so when we are online conducting campaigns for clients it is a fairly easy task to engage people, after all who doesn’t like to chat about music, or get involved in some kind of online campaign to interact with their favourite band or artist…? But the interaction has to be clever and also add benefit to the user… We have been involved over the years in many very successful campaigns ranging from remix competitions that see the winners have their efforts released on various labels, through to attending exclusive, secret gigs for a small, lucky audience… We have found that by creating prizes that money can’t buy or appear to be out of the reach of joe public, the level of interest and support is large!!! By creating these wonderful prizes you are also creating an element of social kudos for the participant… Social kudos can be traded as a form of ’school yard’ currency… How cool am I for attending the secret show by XXXX band…!!
I dont know about you, but I have noticed that at gigs lots of people are taking photos on their handsets and uploading to Facebook and Twitter as the show is going on around them, this is them achieving social kudos, showing off to their peers and social connections how cool they are for attending such and such a show… This obviously then translates to positive WoM for the artist / brand / product etc… win win all round me thinks…

Now this approach has worked well for us on short term projects, maybe the release of an album or the launch of a product, but what about long term campaigns, what is the best approach for these affairs…? Well unless your client has bottomless pockets, and as we all know, thats certainly not the case in the music industry for example, you need to box clever…

All campaigns are there to sell something, one way or another, it may not be apparent on long term campaigns, but believe me, finding, engaging and keeping people engaged for a brand or band is inevitably about ensuring your clients fans / consumers are aware of what they have to offer and how to purchase… The message may not be so much of ‘released now, or coming soon’ but more of a long term relationship building project that ensures when the consumer decides to spend their money they are spending it with the clients offering, be that the latest album release from an artist or when they visit Ibiza and hit the clubs…

One of our long term, and much loved clients, is We Love in Ibiza… to say they are forward thinking is an understatement, from day 1 they have opened themselves up to the concept of social media and networking, also the idea of creating exclusive content to disseminate to their fanbase and to be used to attract new fans is second to none… They produce exclusive content ranging from pod and vod casts, provide exclusive DJ mixes and interviews, competitions to appeal to all areas of their demographic, be that clubber, DJ, music producer etc… The content they create is also relevant, through the Summer it is very much geared towards the club events and the DJs they have appearing, come the winter months the tone of content reflects the things that go on around We Love on the Island of Ibiza and what things float their boats, be that music, art, fashion, food, travel… Its a real inside look at the minds and lives of all involved… By creating this content, it makes it very simple for us to then place this across the internet with relevant partners and also in areas that are frequented by potential fans and consumers.

Check the examples below…

Summer Content

Winter Content

Now a lot of this information may appear quite basic, but believe you and me, we meet many businesses who struggle with this concept, they see social media as another tool for ramming the sales message home rather then a great way of attracting potential new consumers and building a long lasting relationship that over due course will lead to brand loyalty and sales… We like to compare campaigns like an evening down the pub with old and new friends. We take centre stage and offer up entertaining tit-bits that keep everyone entertained and engaged and thinking to themselves, ‘oh that chap was great, so much fun, I must hang out with him again…’ anyway, you get my drift…

Right enough of my ramblings…

Work to be done…

Mostly today I have been listening to Jazz… check this SPOTIFY playlist!!!

I am currently reading “Out of Our Minds” by Ken Robinson, I highly recommend it…