The Britain’s Got Talent Guide To Content And Context Marketing
When you place context into the subject matter, the world changes in front of you.
Whilst not being one for the Reddit topical headline chasing angle of ‘what David Beckham can teach marketers’ or ‘what Game Of Thrones can teach us 9 things about social media’ I have to stick my neck on the line here and say that the new series of Britain’s Got Talent does give a formula that explains why content and context can transform perception and to make a connection.
The Content And Context Marketing Angle
In the words of Robert Rose, ‘the stories that we tell are the only differentiator we have left.’ When context is placed in the individual that a story relates to then a new angle is created of empathy and a much more emotional stance.
It happens every year on Britain’s Got Talent, where we see someone who now merely blends in with every classically trained singer or dance troupe, but the moment when that person with the same voice as generally everyone else has a story behind them based on some kind of hardship, dream, promise, expectation and emotional pull, can then guarantee more air time and greater audience approval. This is exactly what content marketing represents, where having a skill set in a particular area cannot stand alone, it has to be enabled by a personal story, to stop becoming recognised as the same as everyone else. Content marketing works when you have the method in what you do AND the story behind it. Both have to work together, one cannot stand in isolation.
Many of us have great projects that are coming to fruition, but the one thing that they may be lacking is the story that goes behind why you are doing it. Similarly telling a compelling story on it’s own is not enough, it needs to have a reason or an action to be made.
A Formula
What you provide as a business is nothing unless it has context that others can relate to. Here is the formula:
YOUR METHOD + YOUR STORY = ASSEMBLED AUDIENCE
When a narrative is injected into an individual you get a sense of who they really are. This applies for all businesses looking to find their space by having a story behind what they do. This may be a point of view, a belief and a way that contributes to a better way of working for others built from personal experience. You need to understand yourself and the story that you represent, rather than being like everyone else, or the hoards of singers or animal trainers on Britain’s Got Talent who are all the same.
The Places We Own
If you place a story into the skill sets that represent what you do and is expressed in the platforms that you own from your website, to blog articles, to a newsletter, you begin to sound like you and not the competition. The world has moved on from being defined by a logo and a font size to represent who you are and what your brand stands for. In an age where we can now share a point of view through a host of channels whenever we want to and control is completely bestowed upon us, this is far more important than the time sat down deciding which of the four logos are going to be the one that takes a company to the ‘next level.’
Making A Human Connection
By having the ability to support your product or service with storytelling, makes the move from a business transaction to a human connection. People want to work with people and this hasn’t changed for hundreds of years.
What we see on TV on a Saturday night can sometimes be like pulling teeth, but it’s clear that a story that is unique to an individual, makes that person shine in an orchard of the same tasting apples.
