A week or so ago, I was asked if I could sit on this panel discussion about how some brands are starting to create their own content in lieu of, or along with, traditional advertising. The discussion was led by Alan Schulman, Chief Creative Officer at U.DIG – The Digital Innovations Group, and included myself and Scott Koehler, VP, OPEN Digital Prospect Media & Marketing, American Express.
Alan pointed out that API’s or “Application Programming Interface, was simply a mechanism for distributing content persistently – or having “always on” messaging. As a brand, it requires a change in how you message, going from a campaign mindset to a brand reinforcing content ecosystem. This is important because of consumers growing intolerance to traditional media – they are over-saturated with messages and becoming increasingly fragmented. So as a brand, you need to become a realtime content creator, curator, app developer, content distributor, content syndicator,and brand storyteller, instead of an “advertiser.” He used examples from several companies, including American Express and State Farm.
We discussed the importance of telling the brand story consistently, across all forms of media, not just in a TV campaign. After he shared the When Love is in the Air, State Farm is There video, and I talked about the importance of utilizing our agents and zones to find out and help tell the brand story. Scott shared his experiences with the OPEN Forum for small businesses, requiring the ability to handle editorial type responsibilities in-house to generate and curate the content on the site. We both talked about the importance of agency partnerships, as well as internal resources, to generate as much content as possible, while at the same time, making sure it’s on message and reaching an increasingly fragmented audience. Overall, it really made me feel very fortunate to have the skill and resources we have available throughout the company to help tell our brand story in unique and interesting ways.
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