Showing posts with label story telling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label story telling. Show all posts

Monday, 7 May 2018

Why A Quiet Place is a great piece of content ? (A Digital Marketing eye on silence)

Other than dominating the movie theaters by becoming the number 1 movie in USA,
getting recognized by the king of horror himself,
being the second highest domestic opening of the year.

A Quiet Place is a great piece of content and digital marketers can view this movie

not just as a successful cinematic experience but a great piece of content as well.

According to Think With Google there has been 60% Growth in mobile searches

for "__ for me" in the past two years and 80% Growth in mobile searches for "__ should I __" in the past two years.

This leads to more personal and intimate approach of marketing,

where the audience receive tailored marketing message that fits their personal criteria.

Even the B2B world is adapting this personal approach through

ABM (Account Based Marketing);
ABM is when an organization takes an individual prospect or customer account
-- these are companies, not individual people -- and treats it like its very own market,
or a market of one.


In this post I am looking at two factors that made this piece of content uniquely different.
personalized content and the way that the audience consumed the content.


Personal vs. Personalized Content


With the rise of personal search
comes a rise of personal content & personal marketing campaigns.


A Quiet Place has created a personalized not personal experience,
the actors didn't call upon the audience by name,
instead they have invited the audience to share the experience
with the small family since scene one.


The first line that the audience read is day 89
then a cut into more or less of a ghost town then another cut into a wall of missing people.

This is not personal content yet it is deeply personalized,
as you as a part of the audience is invited to write the beginning of this story,
you get to create a personalized story based on personal experience.


If you believe in aliens then that's day 89 after the invasion,
if you lean towards dystopian apocalyptic nuclear war world,
then that's day 89 after the incident happened.
 
This is an open invitation throughout the movie,
you unfold the story with the characters of the movie,
the deep silence lets you decide the danger sources,why does this family the way they do?


Being part of the story plays an even bigger role in the second point;
which how the content was consumed in the film?


Content Consumption


Neurologists identify nine or more human senses, and some list as many as twenty one.
Some of these other senses are the sense of balance,
the proprioception sense which is the ability to tell where your body parts are,
relative to other body parts.


One of the senses that was very active during the movie were the Tension Sensors:
These are found in such places as your muscles
and allow the brain the ability to monitor muscle tension,
by not relying fully on visual triggers;
the film allowed the audience to consume the content differently.


In the age of massive video content production,
the thumb stoppers, the scroll blockers and the extremely polished shiny superheros,
this movie was able to transform the experience
from visually stimulating to cinematically pleasing.


Part of telling a good story is to manage expectations,
one of the ways for digital content creators to manage the audience expectations
is through the way these audience consume their content.


If a brand is choosing to implement a specific digital tactic like live-streaming features,
ephemeral content,UGC, podcasting. How this story will be delivered,
consumed and most importantly felt by the audience is vital.

A Quiet Place created an immersive state.
Every close-up, every subtle gesture,
every facial expression meant something to both the audience and to the storytellers.

If the question brands are asking is what reaction we would like to get from the audience?
What emotion we would like to evoke producing this content?


Then start by watching A Quiet Place.


Written by: Fouad Khafaga
Twitter: @Fouad_Khafaga



Thursday, 24 December 2015

There is Nothing New Here (2016 resolutions & trends)



There is Nothing New Here
(2016 resolutions & trends)



With the arrival of a new year and a departure of an old one social media tends to be filled with business and personal resolutions , new year goals , analytic of the past year and sometimes we can see “I told you so “ articles.


In their very important report  training industry magazine did a great job looking at the top trends in the training world for 2015, let take a look at the top 4 trends:

  1.  Story telling.
  2.  Use of big data analytics.
  3. Formalization of mentoring and coaching.
  4. Work force readiness.

This could be great from a business or training prospective yet what interest me the most while reading the top 5 trends is that there is nothing new here, in terms of human thought.

The art of storytelling is as ancient as the human existence, the neurological effects of storytelling can make new neurons connections through combining both logical and metaphysical thoughts, it makes connections between reality and fantasy and between metaphorical and direct communication. Yet storytelling as a practice has been with humans as old as they can remember.

The second trend mentioned in the report was the use of big data analytic, in his book the organized mind DanielJ. Levitin mentioned a story of a Romanian student that visited the states to do her studies.  Daniel mentioned that he meet that Romanian student and she was overwhelmed by the choices of pens , she said that back home you had only 3 choices and most of the time there was scarcity of them yet in the states the choices seems to be overwhelming.


What happened to that student happens to companies and corporate daily they get overwhelmed by data to either outsource or keep the services in house, to spend more on certain kind of actives or to be conservative this year. Because by the end of the day companies are just the collective minds of the individuals working within them.

Our ancestors suffered the same overwhelming big data dilemma during the agriculture revolution around 12,500 years ago, which crops should they plant? , where should they plant them? How deep should they dig? And which crop to plant first?



The third point of the report was the formalization of mentoring and coaching actually Wikipedia did a good job on the history of the same topic and here is the quote.
“The roots of the practice are lost in antiquity. The word itself was inspired by the character of Mentor in Homer's Odyssey. Though the actual Mentor in the story is a somewhat ineffective old man, the goddess Athena takes on his appearance in order to guide young Telemachus in his time of difficulty.

Historically significant systems of mentorship include the guru - disciple tradition practiced in Hinduism and Buddhism, Elders, the discipleship system practiced by Rabbinical Judaism and the Christian church, and apprenticing under the medieval guild system.

In the United States, advocates for workplace equity in the second half of the twentieth century popularized the term “mentor” and concept of career mentorship as part of a larger social capital lexicon—which also includes terms such as glass ceiling, networking, role model, and gatekeeper—serving to identify and address the problems barring non-dominant groups from professional success. Mainstream business literature subsequently adopted the terms and concepts, promoting them as pathways to success for all career climbers. In 1970 these terms were not in the general American vocabulary; by the mid-1990s they had become part of everyday speech”.

Coaching has been embedded in most religious teachings and it’s a cross cultural practice that is certainly way older than 2014.

Finally in the list of 4 we have the readiness of the work force which is a question that was asked repetitively. We can track business school of thought back to the 1880’s to what is known as the scientific school of management In the late 19th century, management decisions were often arbitrary and workers often worked at an intentionally slow pace. There was little in the way of systematic management and workers and management were often in conflict.

Scientific management was introduced in an attempt to create a mental revolution in the workplace. It can be defined as the systematic study of work methods in order to improve efficiency. Frederick W. Taylor was its main proponent. Other major contributors were Frank Gilbreth, Lillian Gilbreth, and Henry Gantt.

There are some questions that are un answered. Is these topics of such an importance that time doesn’t affect its virility?

Could it be that with every new management generation we ask the same questions that were asked before and we have a slower learning curve than we think?

What makes things trend and why do topics become viral?
I will attempt to answer this question in part 2 of this article.

Twitter : @fouad_khafaga


Sunday, 25 October 2015

15 Digital Marketing Podcasts That Deserve Your Undivided Attention

Name: Albert CostillSource : http://bit.ly/1CQHolL

Last September, SEJ introduced Marketing Nerds, a weekly podcast that discusses everything from SEO to social media and entrepreneurship. The podcast was created because SEJ’s audience wanted to listen to the advice that the SEJ community provides. And, who can blame them?
For anyone who has enjoyed listening to their favorite show, whether it’s SerialWTF with Marc Maron, or The BS Report, you already understand the convenience of podcasts. You can listen to them while commuting to work, when working out, cooking dinner, or during a break from work. In short, you can listen to a podcast whenever, where ever you want to.


As for marketers, podcasting has some major potential to reach new audiences and advertise your products or services. Consider the following:
·         17 percent of US adults had listened to a podcast during the month leading up to annual survey in 2014. That was a 9 percent increase from 2008. (Source)
·         In 2013, Apple surpassed 1 billion podcast subscriptions. (Source)
·         1 in 4 podcast listeners plug their smartphone or MP3 player into their car audio system. (Source)
·         By 2025, 50 percent of cars will have Internet connectivity. (Source)
·         As of 2014, 58 percent of Americans own a smartphone. (Source)
·         67 percent of podcast listeners don’t mind sponsorship messages and occasionally find them useful, compared to only 6 percent positive sentiment expressed for the advertising approaches of television or commercial radio. (Source)
·         Only 3 percent of marketers are currently using podcasting in their social media marketing strategy. However, 32 percent have a desire to learn how to use podcasting in their marketing efforts and 23 percent have plans to increase their podcasting activities in 2013. (Source)
In other words, it may be worth your time to investigate whether or not a podcast can improve your marketing efforts.
Besides using podcasting as a marketing tool, what can you me fellow marketers learn from podcasts? On top of Marketing Nerds, here are fifteen other informative marketing podcasts – in no particular order – that every marketer, small business owner, and entrepreneur should follow.
This weekly podcast is hosted by Joe Pulizzi (founder of the Content Marketing Institute) and Robert Rose (Chief Strategy Officer for the Content Marketing Institute ). The hour-long podcast features Joe and Robert discussing the latest news impacting the industry, a one-minute rant, and past example of an amazing piece of content marketing. Joe and Robert also take questions from their audience by using the #ThisOldMarketing hashtag on Twitter. This Old Marketing Podcast is consistently rated as one of the top marketing podcasts on iTunes.
Ryan Hanley launched his content marketing blog on 2009 to share his real-world marketing knowledge in the insurance industry, which has now grown to include this powerful podcast. Every week Ryan shares the secrets of increasing your online visibility, telling your brand’s story and achieving success through content marketing, social media, and podcasting. Ryan also conducts interviews influential guests like Jay Baer, Mark Schaefer, Chris Brogan, Gini Dietrich, and Marcus Sheridan. You can subscribe on either iTunes or Stitcher.
Fully titled “Social Pros Podcast: Real People Doing Real Work in Social Media,” this weekly podcast features two of the industry’s leading thought leaders Jay Baer (Convince and Convert) and  Jeff Rohrs (Salesforce). The podcast contains insights from a leading social media strategist and highlights the work people are doing for real-word companies – a recent episode featured Natanya Anderson (Global Director of Social Media, CRM, and Customer Service at Whole Foods) on how the company uses social media to address customer needs. One of the more unique features of this podcast is  the Social Media Stat of the Week, which is either debunked or verified by Jay.
Hosted by John Jantsch, the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast has been going strong since 2009. It’s a weekly podcast that shares advice and interviews with some of the biggest names in marketing and startups. Guests have included Guy Kawasaki, Neil Patel, Ann Handley, John Lee Dumas, and Pat Flynn. A more recent episode featured Ted Wright, CEO of word of mouth marketing firm Fizz, where the definition, origins, and best practices of word-of-mouth marketing were discussed.
Brian Clark’s Copyblogger is one of the best resources for anyone wanting to learn how to compose engaging content and copy. The Copyblogger brand has now expanded to include this digital marketing podcast network. The network includes:
·         Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer – Content Marketing from Sonia Simone.
·         Editor-in-Chief – Stefanie Flaxman shares tips to help make you a stronger writer.
·         Hack the Entrepreneur – Jon Nastor provides advice and strategies for aspiring entrepreneurs.
·         Hit Publish – A great podcast for beginning online marketers with Pamela Wilson
·         The Lede – Jerod Morris and Demian Farnworth answer questions regarding content marketing, email marketing and copywriting.
·         The Mainframe – Chris Garrett and Tony Clark discuss the technology you need to use for effective content marketing.
·         New Rainmaker – Brian Clark and Robert Bruce assist you with starting your own digital platform for marketing and sales.
·         No Sidebar – Brian Gardner helps you remove the obstacles from starting your own business.
·         Rough Draft – Writing advice from Demian Farnworth.
·         Search and Deploy – SEJ founder Loren Baker shares the latest insights in SEO.
Mitch Joel is the president of the digital marketing agency Twist Image and is considered a visionary in the industry. He’s also the author of the book and blog Six Pixels of Separation, as well as the host of the podcast of the same name. Every week Mitch and his guests share digital marketing essentials and what to keep an eye on the future.
Hosted by John J. Wall (Vice President of Marketing at EventHero) and Christopher Penn (co-founder of PodCamp) this weekly podcast covers classic and new marketing aspects. The program also features special guests, such as HubSpot’s CMO Mike Volpe who discussed inbound and outbound growth. This is a great listen for seasoned marketers. And, if you’re curious about the name of the show, it’s because it’s recorded at a coffee shop just outside of Boston.
Hosted by Mark Schaefer (author of Social Media Explained and founder of Schaefer Marketing Solutions) and Tom Webster (Vice President, Strategy and Marketing of Edison Research), The Marketing Companion is an informative and entertaining show that is published twice a month. Mark and Tom answer important questions, such as what determines the success of your marketing program, to covering controversial industry topics like ad blocking and banning social media in the workplace.
Social Media Examiner doesn’t have just one podcast, it has two powerful shows for all of your business and marketing needs. The Social Media Examiner Show is a 10-minute daily show that provides quick and effective social media tips to help market your business. The second show, the Social Media Marketing Podcast, is a 45-minute show that is published weekly. This podcast shares successful examples of marketing, new marketing strategies, and interviews with leading social media marketing experts.
Hosted by Bob Knorpp, who is also the founder of the Cool Beans Bean and host of the Ad Age Outlook podcast, this is an award-winning program that covers the latest industry news, as well advertising, marketing, and public relations perspectives through a weekly roundtable discussion. One of the most recent episodes featured Tedd Aurelius, Saul Colt, and Peter Corbett who discussed Google Fiber, social media BlackOps and the boundaries for religious advertising.
After helping his family liquor store grow to a $60 million business, thanks to WineLibrary.com, Gary Vaynerchuk began to share his business knowledge on Wine Library TV. In 2009 Gary and his brother launched the strategic creative agency VaynerMedia. With the The #AskGaryVee Show, he answers questions regarding social media, marketing, and entrepreneurship on an almost daily basis. You can ask a question at #AskGaryVee on Twitter. While the show is primarily intended for video use, it is transcribed for podcasts.
Hosted by Chris Burres (owner of E-Webstyle and formerly SES Research) and Charles Lewis (Internet Marketing Specialist at E-Webstyle), this podcast is one of the most popular internet marketing podcasts on iTunes. The hosts answer questions ranging from what content is the most valuable, how to use relevant links to avoid Google penalties, why you should use email marketing, and what the most promising online marketing strategies are going to be in the coming year.
The Harvard Business Review is an incredible resource for marketers, managers, and business owners. With this weekly podcast, however, you can take those key findings found in the publication and listen to them wherever you go. The podcasts include interviews and discussions with leading thought leaders who provide insights and advice in their respective fields. Recent episodes include Set Habits You’ll Actually Keep, Goldie Hawn on Female Leadership, and Be Less Reactive and More Proactive.
In 2001 Marcus Sheridan founded River Pools and Spas, which lead him to become a HubSpot Partner and author the Sales Lion blog. His Mad Marketing podcast is an extension of his blog where Marcus dishes out some top-notch advice on marketing from questions that were asked of him. Without many interviews, Marcus discusses everything, including SEO Tips, selfie sticks, getting sued for content marketing, how to motivate employees, family, and the secrets of content marketing.
Hosted and produced by Kerry O’Shea Gorgone, an instructional design manager and enterprise trainer at MarketingProfs, the Marketing Smarts podcast is a weekly podcast that features in-depth interviews with leading marketers who share their success with real-world marketing. Recent episodes have included Guy Kawasaki discussing the Art of Social Media and How Happy Employees Make for Better Marketing with author Chris Reimer.
Conclusion
That was our list of fifteen amazing marketing podcasts that you should listen to. Is there a marketing podcast you’re a fan that we left out? If so, please let us know in the comments section.

Featured Image Source: Pixabay