Before I give my 3 suggestions to avoid Buzzword Drowning Death (BDD,) I'm going to stick my neck out somewhat today about some popular buzzwords that I'm hearing about more and more .
The first buzzword : 'Content Marketing.'
Here are 4 definitions :
- Content marketing is an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation and sharing of content in order to attract, acquire and engage clearly defined and understood current and potential consumer bases with the objective of driving profitable customer action
- Content marketing is a general term for Article Marketing, Audio Marketing and Video Marketing where you get traffic by giving away free content.
- Content Marketing is owning, as opposed to renting media. It's a marketing process to attract and retain customers by consistently creating and curating content in order to change or enhance a consumer behavior.
- Your customers don't care about you, your products, your services...they care about themselves, their wants and their needs. Content marketing is about creating interesting information your customers are passionate about so they actually pay attention to you.
All of these definitions are rather nebulous and simply suggest that content has an important role to play to capture consumers attention and engage.
But that's really nothing new, is it?
Well, I'm sorry, but isn't my job and the jobs of everyone like me who works in this incredibly exciting industry that we call advertising/marketing in 2012 and going forward, to:
create content that consumers are going to find :
- enjoyable and/or
- useful,
that is delivered to them at the right moment, in a seamless way, in order create love marks for our brands (as Kevin Roberts called them) that will lead not only to an eventual sale, but also to repeat business, positive endorsements and positive sharing of their ongoing brand experiences among their peers.
So I propose that our industry does the following before we and our clients die a horrible Buzzword Drowning Death.
So let's do the following :
- Firstly, remove the term, Content marketing and use the term Modern Marketing , and recognize that this requires adjustments to how most marketers currently do business: to allow for the creation of more real time content, cleverer use of the multidirectional media channels available to consumers to amplify their experiences and smarter use of technology and media where appropriate, and more agile processes on both the client and agency sides to permit this to happen.
- At the same time and to avoid a buzzword death epidemic, let's stop segregating Digital and Traditional advertising any more - it is simply Modern advertising. With time, the majority of consumer touchpoints will contain what we currently identify as digital elements - let's simply recognize that there are different skill sets required for seamless, holistic communication that has consumers at the core, but that we must no longer separate the terms. Advertising has simply evolved, as everything in life has.
- So while we're at it, why not remove the word Social Media from our advertising terminology and call it Modern Media which encompasses what we currently call traditional media, digital media, social media, earned media (consumer generated), owned media (client generated). It requires brands and agencies to culturally adapt to the new reality of communications in 2012 by recognizing that all of these may have a role to play, depending on the clients communications/marketing/media/CRM/PR objectives
So when will SocialMediaToday.com be launching their new website, ModernMediaToday.com? The domain name is available - Hehe. Only kidding - love your site!
What do you think? I would love to hear your thoughts.