Create your very own Auto Publish News/Blog Site and Earn Passive Income in Just 4 Easy Steps
Fragmentation.
This word best describes today's landscape of entertainment and information consumption.
Two years ago, user-generated content accounted for 39% of time spent on social media, according to a study by the Consumer Technology Association. Last year, time spent watching online videos overtook television for the first time in history. And if you think Netflix is the top streaming platform this year, think again. YouTube wins with 8.6% of streaming TV consumption, surpassing Netflix's share of 7.9%.
This fragmentation of content consumption deprives people of shared media and cultural experiences and places them in echo chambers, making it difficult for new content experiences to break through. Almost every viral, popular, or culturally resonant outburst seems to be an accident – a flash of content in a bottle.
Successful marketers follow the same principle. They understand the impact of fragmentation on paid advertising, search marketing, social media and owned media.
So how can you innovate in fragmented terrain?
Where do you focus your hard-earned marketing budget in a world where reaching your customers feels a bit like playing Dungeons and Dragons? You know, when you wake up early in the morning among the failed remnants of your competitors' content marketing campaigns. You need to create content. What are you doing?
We asked this question to Robert Rose, CMI's chief strategy advisor. Read on or check out his opinion:
Experience a complete content experience like Progressive and Lenovo
Over the last few months, I've been talking a lot about moving your content experiences to the edge. In this article and a subsequent webinar, I discussed the content and marketing trend of delivering valuable content experiences in their entirety beyond your website.
As much as I found it annoying, I said it was because of the oxygen in the room. You need to focus more on designing the experiences on your “rented properties.” This is marginal content. It increases the pressure to make your own media experiences even more valuable, for example by adding the special content you can only get here to the FAQ.
This week, Digiday made this point in a discussion about fragmentation in marketing and media consumption: “Brand marketers are increasingly receptive to alternative advertising options to reach consumers.”
While Digiday refers to these options as “non-traditional formats,” you know them better as content marketing efforts.
The article relates to Progressive's “Will we become our parents?” campaign.
His wonderful fictional advisor, Dr. Rick (played by Bill Glass), has appeared as a guest on “Hot Ones,” the popular YouTube series in which the hosts interview celebrities while eating increasingly spicier hot wings.
Digiday also talks about the Pop-Tarts Bowl, the college football bowl game introduced last season and returning on December 28th, as a wonderful example of a differentiated owned media approach.
I would cite things like Autodesk's State of Design & Make report, which is a key focus in the company's go-to-market strategy, and Lenovo's Late Night IT series on YouTube as great examples.
Create greater value when you reach for the fences
But back to the Digiday article. The highlight for me were two quotes from Evan Giordano, a strategist at the creative and advertising agency Mother New York. “You can no longer rely on advertising around a piece of culture and expect everyone to see it,” he said.
Eric followed with his approach to alternative formats: “It's quite liberating because your creative team and your strategist have to think like product people; You have to conceptualize the exterior of traditional formats.”
Yes, that has long been the focus of how content marketers can create value in today's world. In my Content Marketing Strategy course, I dedicate a module to thinking like a product manager.
In any case, the essence of these alternative format trends is to create interesting, unconventional experiences and deliver them on purpose-built platforms at the margins and in your own media.
Here's my question to you: As you plan for 2025, can you plan for uncompromising, content-driven experiential products? You can design them for YouTube, other social media, your own media, or all of the above.
Think about what you can do to go beyond another year of incrementally moving up one more place in search, reducing your cost per lead by 5%, or testing a hundred button shapes and colors to increase conversion rates by 2 % to increase.
These expected goals are undoubtedly important. But maybe in a world of fragmentation you can try something that doesn't work as, well, piece by piece.
Want more content marketing tips, insights, and examples? Subscribe to CMI weekday or weekly emails.
HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
Create your very own Auto Publish News/Blog Site and Earn Passive Income in Just 4 Easy Steps
