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As marketing budgets tighten, the danger of falling into the trap is not creating long-term content plans. I've seen it: The budget gods come at the beginning of the year and announce that X amount has to be enough.
Now the “X” is often well below the team’s requirements. But this number will not change. Well, until that changes and the number goes down.
In my experience, many teams look at their plans and make big plays. Or they have their plans compromised because of the way the budget is allocated. In many cases, marketers give up on creating an exceptional experience because they can't remember to allocate the right budget for the right level of creativity. You think you can “wing it.”
The same cuts are not always the same
I recently worked for a global healthcare company. They planned a new digital magazine to create brand awareness and affinity and focus on great health-related content. They planned 12 issues, including featured articles. But budget cuts occurred and they opted for bi-monthly rather than monthly editions and eliminated six editions. Was this the best way forward? Probably not.
Last week's Oscars highlighted this approach to planning. In Cord Jefferson's acceptance speech for Best Adapted Screenplay for American Fiction, he pleaded with studios for more, smaller films. “Instead of making one $200 million movie, try making 20 $10 million movies or 50 $4 million movies,” he said.
However, I think you can use a different method when budgeting your overall content plan, based on the way a television series has handled it.
Showrunner lessons from Friends
The sitcom Friends, which turns 30 this September, is still very popular today. In 2023, viewers streamed 25 billion minutes of broadcasting, almost double the 14 billion minutes in 2022.
The show has found new fans among Generation Z audiences who see themselves in these characters and their situations, even though the show premiered before most of them were born.
The more relevant point to the budget discussion is that Friends was one of the most expensive television shows. In the first season, each of the six actors earned about $22,500 per episode. In the last two seasons, they received more than $1 million for each episode.
At the 2021 reunion, co-creator Marta Kauffman shared a fascinating story about how they planned “bottle episodes” for each individual season to better manage their budget for the stories they wanted to tell.
The term “bottle episode” originated in early television production, particularly by Leslie Stevens, creator of the 1960s television series The Outer Limits. In a Bottle episode, everything is shot on one stage or one location. It does not contain any guest stars or any additional things that would increase the budget. In other words, they're intentionally designing the episode to save the budget for more extravagant episodes in the rest of the season.
Create a contents plan for the bottle
It might seem like this is an intuitive approach to marketing, but that's not the case. All too often, marketing silos, internal politics or no time for strategic planning cause the budget knife to cut into equal pieces.
Many companies still manage their marketing budgets based on an annual or quarterly budget, divided equally between each month. This calculation continues down to the level of wealth creation.
For example, I recently spoke with a content marketing director at a technology company. As you might expect, they planned a thought leadership series that would include research from influencers/subject matter experts in their field. They had budgeted a total of six independent projects and split the costs evenly. However, when they set out to find subject matter experts, the costs varied greatly. Therefore, they planned to only engage SMEs that fit within the budgets of each project.
Instead, we talked about an alternative plan. What if we combined the Leadership Series into two content “seasons” with three episodes each? For the first two papers, the lion's share of the budget would go to the influencer subject matter experts. The third would be a summary of the best results – and some additional material from the first two – and would not require an influencer. So you would have six contiguous episodes of thought leadership, and two of them would be “bottle episodes” so they can afford the top-notch influencers.
Back to the healthcare company I mentioned earlier. We discussed how they could stick to the original plan for a monthly magazine by planning some “bottle” editions to optimize the budget. You would have thought the answer would be, “Well, that sounds great.”
That wasn't it.
Instead, this company said it could not allocate the budget this way. Business processes could not allow spending more in one month and less in another. In other words: the budget must be divided equally.
In another example, a marketer was tasked with producing six thought leadership papers within two quarters. He did the math and divided each newspaper's budget equally. When I asked why, he said he wasn't sure about the newspapers' topics. Therefore, he planned to do the first job as inexpensively as possible and save money in case he had to “overpay” for another job.
No. Does not work like that.
It's simply harder to create exceptional content if you let the budget dictate (more or less) what stories you can tell than if you plan your stories first and then figure out which ones deserve a bigger (or smaller) budget.
Imagine you're planning a new TV series – 10 episodes for a budget of $10 million. You can't tell what will be created and in what order. So without information, you determine that each episode will cost an average of $1 million. It gets approved, but then they come back and say, “You know what? The budget will be half.”
Would you reduce the number of episodes to five? No of course not.
In most companies, budgeting is a quarterly or annual task where managers outline their needs. Then in many cases you will receive slightly less than the request. But once you know the budget, you can focus on planning your content and marketing platforms like a TV showrunner.
Find the right budget for creativity
What are your tent-pole episodes? Is the Prime Minister? The season finale? In these super-expensive articles, you round up a famous analyst or influencer to write something. Then which episodes will be your “bottle” episodes? In these posts you interview the CEO or a customer and don't show a video.
On the “Friends” reunion show, Marta Kauffman's bottle episodes weren't just about being budget-conscious. She pointed out that some of these bottle episodes were some of the series' best.
In other words, don't look at your bottle contents as a way to save and do less. Rather, think of these episodes as a prompt to think creatively about presenting your content in a way that makes the most of your smaller budget.
You don't need a big budget to consistently create exceptional content. But sometimes you do it to be extraordinary. Knowing which stories to get and having the flexibility to create a content plan tailored to them are key components of the modern content and marketing process.
It's your story. Say it well.
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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
