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I've heard that more organizations are ramping up their content marketing strategy lately, which is a welcome change from last year when teams were scrambling to understand generative AI and all the changes in social media and search.
But too often I hear these teams say that they try to rebuild their planes on the fly.
I don't know where this phrase came from, but a 22-year-old ad campaign by Fallon for digital consultancy EDS helped popularise it. The comical TV and print ad showed people assembling an airplane in the air and explaining how much they loved their work.
The ad’s slogan explained that EDS could help you “build your digital business while it’s already up and running.”
Fallon created the commercial as part of an integrated campaign with two other fun videos: “Cat Herders,” about navigating the complexities of digital business, and “Running With the Squirrels,” which claimed that EDS could help established companies be as competitive as disruptive startups.
Each of these ads would be relevant in 2024.
But let’s explore why it’s time to abandon the “build the plane while you fly it” approach to new content marketing projects once and for all.
The frustration of construction during flight
The to-do list for implementing a new (or newly launched) content marketing initiative includes:
That's a lot. Frustration sets in quickly when team leaders realize they can't turn things off while they're working on implementing all the new ideas. And everyone else is busy too. They all still have to launch campaigns, write blog posts, create event materials, and get content on the website, all while trying to master technology they haven't fully implemented yet.
I recently worked with a B2C e-commerce company that identified an exciting new project: a new physical event supported by a digital hub and newsletter that could build an addressable audience.
The problem: It required cross-functional support from multiple marketing and technology teams. No one on those teams had extra bandwidth or resources to dedicate to the new initiative. And no one wanted to abandon existing projects to make room for the new one.
They didn't want to build a new aircraft and fly the existing one at the same time.
So what's the answer? It's simple: stop building airplanes for a while.
New strategies, no new tactics
When marketing teams cite the airplane cliche, I recommend a variation of the metaphor: Don't try to build a new airplane while flying the existing one. Instead, keep the existing airplanes flying while you build an airplane factory.
Let me explain.
I recently worked with a client in the B2B technology space, and enabling content (learning content that helps customers do their jobs better) is a hot topic in that space.
My client had originally planned to engage their digital and PR teams to modify the existing PR newsrooms on their website and create a new online learning platform. However, neither the newsroom nor the website fit this content marketing strategy.
Everything from the hierarchy of the site to the audiences it was targeting and the technology platform it was running on presented challenges to the success of the new project. The content team wanted to create a new learning objective using other technologies.
But the company's existing processes were designed to focus all digital activity—as well as paid and earned media—on the website, so company leaders resisted.
They said, “We already have this technology and this team with this expertise. Why don't we just use what we have?”
It was as if the company was saying, “OK, you can take us into the jet age – as long as you do it by repairing and upgrading our propeller plane while it's in the air.”
Instead of continuing to explain why the new project needed this or that, the content leaders found another answer. They stepped back and reviewed all the existing teams, workflows, technologies and processes used for content marketing across the company. And they realized that the company had room for something new.
To stay with the metaphor, they realized that by changing the manufacturing processes for all aircraft, they could upgrade their factory for new projects without having to rebuild old aircraft in flight.
Dealing with sustainable vs. disruptive innovation
The idea for my airplane factory metaphor comes from “Meeting the Challenge of Disruptive Change” by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael Overdorf.
When the article appeared in 2000, companies were facing disruption from the growth of the internet and globalization. And his advice remains relevant today as companies grapple with the disruption of generative AI.
The article examines how to respond to disruptive innovations that create something entirely new (e.g., launching an online university) versus sustainable innovations that improve something already considered valuable (e.g., replacing stock photography with AI-generated images).
The authors advise against approaching disruptive innovation as changing something existing, but instead as building something within a new organizational space.
This is what my client, a technology company, did.
I know – because I meet them every day – that content and marketing professionals are fierce, resourceful and innovative. Requests to develop the content equivalent of new airplanes come in all the time.
And I know that content teams can cobble together airplanes and make some repairs and changes in flight. But when you're launching a new content marketing project, it's more productive to set up a new room.
Christensen and Overdorf outline three possibilities for creating this new organizational space:
- You can create a new team within the existing organizational structure.
- From the structure you can create a new and independent organization.
- You can acquire another organization that becomes a new part of your existing structure.
Create a new space for new content projects
Every successful new content strategy follows one of these three options. Here are some examples of each approach.
- A new content team within the existing organizational structure: When a new content team is formalized, named, and documented, the odds of success immediately improve. Red Hat Linux is a great example. At Red Hat, for example, Laura Barnes (2019 B2B Content Marketer of the Year) created a new strategic team to handle all of the company's content marketing. Over the years, the team has grown, changed, and morphed as the company has evolved. And it remains a core part of the company's strategy.
- A new organization, separate from the existing structure: Content as a strategic function in an organization is a powerful business model. For example, when ServiceNow wanted to build an audience through thought leadership, it didn't add new e-books, videos, or white papers to the work of the marketing team. Instead, the company assembled its own content product team and launched Workflow, a digital publication, along with online learning programs, a print magazine, and an email newsletter.
- A newly acquired group: Acquisitions of content brands continue. For example, software company Pendo has acquired Mind the Product, a product management community that provides content, training and conferences to serve a global audience of more than 300,000 product managers, designers and developers.
Regardless of the approach your company takes, the first step toward content marketing success is to create a factory where you can build any type of aircraft you want.
This doesn't completely eliminate the need to build planes while flying, but if you want to stay in the air, you'll occasionally need to return to Earth to build something from scratch.
It's your story. Tell it well.
Updated from a post from January 2022.
Robert Rose consults and runs workshops to help marketing teams adapt their marketing processes to all kinds of technologies – including generative AI. Contact him to learn more about these programs.
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Cover photo by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
Create your very own Auto Publish News/Blog Site and Earn Passive Income in Just 4 Easy Steps
