Content marketing is the new advertising. It is ubiquitous and often unloved — despite the desperate efforts of marketers to make people “love” their content. Everywhere we see signs of public fatigue with content marketing. Striving for the next hit, content marketing has become ever more insincere.
Sincerity is an old-fashioned concept that’s not discussed much anymore. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes how sincerity has become so unfamiliar to us:
“The older concept of sincerity, referring to being truthful in order to be honest in one’s dealings with others, comes to be replaced by a relatively new concept of authenticity, understood as being true to oneself for one’s own benefit”.
In other words, sincerity has largely been replaced by “authenticity” — which translated into jargon of marketing, is branding. No need to worry about the truth as others see it — just worry about what’s true as you define it yourself.
Branding is a game of association. Companies try to establish a brand image. They offer to convey that image to customers who are willing to buy their brand. Content has become major prop in communicating a brand image.
Stories Marketers tell themselves
When content involves stories, sincerity is considered negotiable. Seth Godin, the marketing personality, wrote a book with the title “all marketers are liars storytellers”. The implication is that people don’t care how truthful content is, as long as they like it. For some reason, stories seem immune to “black hat” manipulation. It’s just a story after all.
Some of the earliest, most pervasive, and most successful examples of content marketing comes from the cigarette industry. For some reason these examples have never make it into the Hall of Fame of content marketing. Tobacco companies are exactly the kind of company that would want to hide their involvement with the content. You had an undesirable product, cigarettes, attempting to become associated with desirable activities, such cricket, wine, food, art or horse racing.
- Do you like art? Read the Benson and Hedges exhibition catalogue of the exhibit at London’s Royal Academy.
- Do you like music? You can read the Benson and Hedges concert program for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
- Like theater? You can read the program for a production by Andrew Lloyd Webber, courtesy of Benson & Hedges.
- Like cooking? Read Benson & Hedges 100’s Presents 100 of the World’s Greatest Recipes by noted chef James Beard.
It’s laughable to imagine that a cigarette maker would have a genuine interest in such a wide range of high culture. But we see many examples of firms producing branded content that is far removed from their core business. Demographic driven content gives us things such as carbonated beverage manufacturers producing content about extreme sports, and toothbrush manufacturers dispensing parenting advice.
Who is the Hero?
A good deal of content marketing trades on the concept of the hero’s journey. Make the customer the hero in your stories, the advice says. I encounter unsophisticated hero-centered marketing each day, in the form of an email announcing various online certificates I can enroll in for a fee. The sender promises to make me a rock star or ninja in some career that’s red hot.
Mara Einstein writes in her book Black Ops Advertising that much content marketing “plays on what academics call ‘hope labor’ or ‘aspirational labor’ the expectation that we might be able to earn a living by participating in activities like this.” They promote hope, rather than discuss reality.
When content marketing appeals to hero’s journey, it promises to re-brand the buyer to become a better version of themselves.
Einstein says “content marketing is often about creating stories that present the customer as the hero not the product even to the point of taking the brand out of the story altogether.” This is why carbonated drinks manufacturers sponsors content about extreme sports. It is hard to make the product the hero. So they change the subject to imply consumers of the product can be heroes through their interaction with the product.
The hero’s journey in content marketing does not always involve pretending the customer is a rock star. Sometimes the pitch is to make you a hero by showing that you are a good person. This is the premise of “cause based marketing”. This form of marketing is especially difficult to untangle. It can be unclear who is meant to benefit, the consumer, the marketing organization, or the cause that is the subject of the marketing.
Imagine you become concerned about an issue such as the plight of donkeys. You’ve learned from a charity’s content marketing that donkeys are very sweet animals but they’re often mistreated. The charity producing the content is dedicated to helping donkeys. You like the organization but you want to do more than simply give them money. So instead of converting on their call to action, where they ask you give the money, you decide to help donkeys directly. You discover another charity that allows you to volunteer your time at a sanctuary overseas that also helps donkeys. The original charity that raised your awareness of the plight of donkeys doesn’t have volunteer opportunities. Does it have a right to be upset that you did not give it money? You supported their cause and broader mission. But you have not acted on their called the action or supported their organization financially. From the reader’s perspective, is the point of the content to help donkeys or to help an organization?
A cause can sound good, but it isn’t always what’s most important to act on. Content marketing is very good at optimizing how compelling a cause seems. But it has nothing to say about whether the cause is important to begin with. The people who give money to donkey charities typically live in countries like the UK where working donkeys are few in number, and are well treated compared to poor countries. As one news commentary noted, donkey causes are “one of those charities which raises money easily and out of all proportion to the relative urgency of its good works.”
Cause marketers may be authentic, in the sense of “being true to oneself for one’s own benefit.” But they aren’t always sincere, in the sense of putting their own self-interest to the side. They produce content too focused on the question of what inspires an individual, instead of what’s worthy of being inspiring.
Emotions and Disinterest
Content marketing talks in lofty terms about informing and educating audiences, attracting and delighting them. It all sounds lovely, even altruistic. The brand wants to be our friend. But friendship is a ridiculous concept for a brand to promise. Brands are organizations, not people, and are incapable of friendship. They can be liked by individuals, but they can’t return that emotion to individuals. Pretending to be friends with individuals strains credibility. And credibility is exactly what brands need in order to be considered sincere.
Organizations have measurable financial goals. They expect content to support those goals. In the past, content was often produced without clear goals. Organizations have become better defining goals for their content. These goals are not always the same goals that audiences have. So the organization may try to change the audience’s goals.
Organizations use content marketing to change how customers feel in order to get them to take action. The more that content marketing tugs at emotions, the more likely the content will become confused about whose interests are being served.
When marketing content makes promises or implies outcomes, it needs to be sincere if it expects the appeal to be sustainable over time. The firms that have built the strongest customer reputations over time are the ones that have remained true to serving their customer’s interests, and not just their own. Sincerity can be good for business.
Sincerity may seem like waffly concept. But it’s an idea that has been debated for millennia. Two famous ancient thinkers give us some guideposts to think about the concept.
Cicero believed that the right ethos (character) is necessary for audiences to
- Be receptive
- Be attentive
- Like and trust you
One’s ethos (internally generated) is not the same as one’s brand (externally projected). It’s about inside-out driven, rather than outside-in driven. It is not about how one wants to be seen. It is about one’s values.
Aristotle defined how ethos affected credibility according to three dimensions:
- Virtue — having the same values as the audience
- Craft — the confidence that the speaker knows what they are doing
- Disinterest — the speaker has no bias, is caring.
The concept of disinterest is especially important. Everyone knows that marketing content exists to generate revenue. How can brands demonstrate that they really care about the customer, instead of just wanting their money? It requires transparency.
The enduring wisdom of ancient philosophers tells us that character matters. That credibility rests on sincerity. To focus on values, rather than optics.
How can publishers be sincere? Is it in their self-interest to do so?
In the short term, brands face pressures to make customers feel powerful and worthy, even if nothing about them has changed. For companies selling fast moving consumer goods to adolescents, marketers expect a fresh cohort of their target market will arrive to replace any cynicism that could accumulate from the current cohort. Reality sometimes catches up, and the next cohort of prospective customers decides the brand is toxic. This happened to the feel-good branding of Nike’s “Just Do It!”, which got flipped when customers became concerned about their labor practices. The risk of making the customer the hero of your brand is that they feel personally liable for any shoddy behavior you may do.
When companies need to maintain a relationship with customers, the appeal of heroism is not sustainable. The long time customer realizes their life hasn’t been transformed, despite what’s implied in the marketing. Even Apple is finding that such a pretense is hard to keep up. Tens of millions of customers haven’t suddenly become creative by buying Apple products.
Making Content Sincere
The path to sincerity involves clarifying what the customer wants. Too often brands assume customers will share the same outlook that they are promoting. The goals of building an audience for a brand can get warped into making the audience into the brand.
Don’t confuse your brand with branding the customer. Individual people have their own identities, which are rarely identical to any company’s or nonprofit’s. Even religious organizations can’t push too hard telling people who they are and how they should feel. Those that try to do this are considered cults. Companies have also been accused of doing this as well.
Brands should talk about their values, and what they are doing to make those values a reality. Very few customers know what a firm’s corporate mission is, because it is vague and hidden. A mission doesn’t need to be original, but it needs to matter to consumers. And it needs to be simple, stressing one key idea, such as value, access, quality, or helpfulness. Avoid the “we are going to change the world” nonsense of some branding.
Sincere content avoids phony self-deprecation. It doesn’t say: “Because of you, we’re committed to…” or “You make what we do possible.” Sincere content articulates the organization’s own identity. It reveals the firm’s goals, and actions. Let customers choose if your values are their values.
Patagonia provides a counter example to hero-narrative cause marketing. They promote environmental causes because their management is committed to these causes. They suggest they aren’t motivated by self interest, to the point of discouraging people from buying their products unnecessarily. One can debate the merits of Patagonia’s strategy. But it is a refreshing change from the stealth marketing of other companies that attach themselves to causes or mine the insecurities of their customers. It is not typical lifestyle branding that implies people can confirm their identity by giving money to an organization.
Let people support a philosophy, rather than ask them to adopt one. Organizations should not use content marketing to promote themselves as gurus seeking followers.
Don’t confuse the hero’s journey with the user’s journey. Unfortunately, these two concepts get conflated. The user journey looks at what real people do. The hero’s journey is about what imaginary people ideally might do. The user journey is based on actual customer scenarios. The hero’s journey is based on escapism.
If organizations what to empower people, they should use content to help them practically.
Talk about what you can do for people. Don’t hide behind stories to imply you offer something that you don’t. Is that testimonial a commitment of what your brand can do for anyone, or is it a micro-celebrity endorsement?
Publishers should help people understand all options they have. Start with an issue and then present the options available. Help customers narrow down what’s best for them. Customers can DIY or do nothing. They can choose to use an option from a competitor. Or they can use to give money to a sincere organization that shows them what’s better about what they offer compared to the alternatives. Transparency brings valuable credibility to a brand.
Products don’t make people successful. Products merely solve specific problems. Content needs to focus on how the products help solve those specific problems, instead of promising to transform a life situation. That is real empowerment.
— Michael Andrews
