What Willy Wonka can teach you about Content and Social Media

Modern companies must begin to think and act like publishers/producers if they expect to succeed.  Marketing has become interactive, stealth and content driven.  Consumers expect more than a features and benefits; they want to be told a story.  Stories are what make the modern marketing model work.  Whether you tell the story in a book, a blog or 140 characters at a time on Twitter it is the single most effective way to market products today.

Thinking and acting like a publisher or a producer is not as easy as it sounds, especially if you have never done it before.  Aside from having to learn to publish, companies need to develop a process to consistently create, manage, update, deploy, assemble and deliver content for multiple purposes.

In order for any business to start thriving in the new media world they must first shift their thinking from a traditional production process that is event or project driven to a continuous publishing process.  This is not a quota activity; it is a daily message that tells the story of your company. Be patient with it and learn to truly tell a detailed story that has a goal.  It is worthless to tell a story that is not meant to sell.

Businesses also need to think of content as assets to continuously acquire, edit, convert and store for sharing and re-use.  This is the modern era of marketing and content is truly valuable.  Use content to create value within your business model.

Some brands have even used their content to develop other lines of revenue, which will become more prevalent in the future.  Here are a couple great examples of content/story marketing that we have seen over the past 30 years:

Soap Operas: The soap opera was not created solely as a vehicle for viewers to watch a new show with bad acting; they were created to sell detergent.  Yes their intention was to create a show that people could watch five days a week, but in the end the ultimate goal the creators was to sell their products. They used the ability to hook people on their story to sell more units.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory:  There was, of course, a book in existence before the movie, however, the candy was created around the film.  The creators saw an opportunity to build a brand from a story and the rest is history.  This is the most interesting and useful marketing example for social marketers today.  They used a story to create a brand and sell units, the opposite of a Soap Opera, but just as useful.

Get the picture?  Marketing doesn’t have to be boring or stale; it has the ability to take on its own life.  By no means am I suggesting that you write a movie or a TV show to sell goods, you just have to think the same way.  By treating your marketing efforts the same way a Hollywood producer would treat their movie you can begin to grow a brand that will stick.  If not, be prepared for 1% or less returns on marketing dollars for a long time to come.