Save the consumer!... and then make them fall in love with you.

  

Aaaah Content marketing….  

Is the stuff we’re all unwillingly walking into on a daily basis, making our heads spin faster than our compass points. At some point of the day there’s bound to be someone in the office fighting off the tangled mess of branded content they suddenly find themselves in.

There’s no escaping it really.

The general consensus is that consumers hate content marketing because:

•     It’s disruptive
•     It’s always in my face
•     It talks too much
•    You can never trust it

Interestingly enough also, here are a list of symptoms commonly associated with paranoid personality disorder:

•  Aggressive

•  Hostile

•  Judgmental

• Suspects, without sufficient basis, that others are exploiting, harming, or deceiving him or her

Maybe the problem with advertising is not really if it lies but rather where it lies.

We are all responsible for the paranoia we harbor against marketing campaigns because we all want things we don't or can't have. But to be fair the majority of bad content we’re forced to consume on a daily basis does little for our neurosis. Unfortunately in the information age knowing what you want is a rare advantage and getting what you want is just plain spooky – especially when you’re using the Internet.

Trouble is, 88% of all brands rely on content marketing to boost their street cred, which means there's an even greater surge of content ready and waiting to drown the masses in gobble-di-goob. It’s a desperate situation really because in an ideal world we’d all just… know. I’d know how you really feel or know what you really need. But we don’t know which is why we find ourselves feeling our way across the cyber abyss in search of answers only to fumble upon adverts disguised as direction.

The word advertising originates from the French word advertiss meaning “to warn” and the latin word advertere meaning to “turn toward”. So when you’ve stripped advertising down to the shivering naked mass that it is, it’s really just someone trying to communicate that we should know better.

So fact is we’re all lost in information and question is: how do we write great content that’ll stand out from the rest and guide the common ignoramus toward knowing something a little better without leaving anyone feeling manipulated and paranoid?

Let’s think about Tarzan for a moment…

We love Tarzan because he’s that good- looking naked guy whose philosophy is to return to the true nature of things – and so should content marketing be.

People love content that wants to reach out and save them from the terrifying grasps of the cyber jungle and its chaos. Tarzan shows a genuine interest in not only helping you – but a genuine interest in… well, just you. Good content should be curious of you, it should smell of sweat, of hard labour, of discovery – of the raw essence of man. It should be filled with wild brilliance, revealing beautiful new views on the world and it’s products you never knew existed. Finally, good content does little to cover the naked truth of desire and above all, its unabridged honesty is so endearing you just have to lean in closer and want to know more

So, it may seem obvious but here are three ways you can save your consumers from the content marketing deluge:

• Be honest. Reveal your ignorance alongside your wisdom and make your consumer your equal.

• Be adventurous. People don’t mind being led down the garden path if they know it’ll be entertaining.  

• Be more curious. Questions are everyone’s kryptonite. Thomas Barret, ‘the father of advertising” began his most famous advertising campaign with the simple question of “Good morning. Have you used Pears soap today?”

We are all in need of saving - especially time and money. But to every advertiser out there, begin with saving your words first. Your customers and your pocket will thank you eventually. 

Cornerstones.

Copy writing.

A bag

of words hang

tight round my neck.

It’s free of yeses and no’s and filled instead with maybes. I close them up 

and protect them from the simple - from the direct - From the sniper rifle thought and it’s logic.

But when time comes for testing it comes as Sometimes and refines the tongue to speak only in points. Sometimes the tongue gets too sharp and pierces the bag - allowing it’s contents to pour out of it like a

Ruptured artery

creating panic

at the

exposure

of pure

liquid

vernacular

power

opened

to the

elements,

to the

pollution 

of

propriety

to the 

opinion

to the 

edit

to the

merciless

purge

of

loquaciousness.

Hands are on it – smothering it trying to stop it from spilling - from depleting the bag of its natural linguistic nutrients only to reel back in horror at the stain of wasted words between their fingers.

But eventually the blood stops.

The bag is emptied.

and the words fail because they have no other purpose but to flow out and away like 

                                                                                                                               caged pigeons.

There. 

It’s done. 

Two flies

Two flies

Fly past my face and double back
as we make eye contact in passing.

They come back to taunt me
and my inability
To focus.
To prepare.
To strike.

They twirl around my head
like drunken school girls –
Trying to find the most invasive ways
to get inside it.

I try sit as still as I can –
but I know they know.

My heart is beating outside of my body 
– in the air and around me –

The fly sits. Finally.

My fingers part.

I’m ready. Or am i?

On the corner of empire and Barry Hertzog.

My fish is dying. 

It floats sideways sometimes

gulping at nothing but the 

pure, white absoluteness of 

water in which its life is planted.

Sometimes i just sit and stare at it -

wondering how i let it get this bad, 

the slow floating. 

I stir the water with my finger 

and watch as it's 

taken up by the movement

involuntarily.

Each time its wild eye comes

round the fish tank in what i think is panic

i catch it with my own

and we end up staring again

but this time to the cycling end

of swirling water. 

I don't think i'm good with fish. 

Worst part is, i don't think anyone knows.  

For our future sons and datas.

I recently had the privilege of visiting the 52^nd floor of one of Africa’s tallest buildings – The Ponte. Standing 173 meters above ground, beneath the red glow of Vodacom’s crowning pledge to keep me connected, I couldn’t tear my eyes from the expanse before me. Studying the cityscape made me wonder about it’s parts, the apart’s and the apartments we’re all living in.

South Africa is ranked as the fifth largest mobile market in the world, making us Africa’s leaders in digital technology and social networking. It seems we’re all suckling on the giant tweets of the digital age – a mothership of information relentlessly spawning new media and devices designed to transform and enhance our daily acts of communication. Why is it then, that in a country renowned for its “connectivity” we’re still so disconnected from our national community? In our efforts to embrace diversity, we instead find ourselves clawing through the thickets of Diaspora, quasi culturists and tribal imperialists in search of solidarity.

The Rainbow Nation is a widely celebrated description of South African identity but it’s also a good description of its rarity. Our disconnection from man and country is painfully evident from the recent taunts of violence ravaging our fragile society. South Africans are in need of a pick-me-up and after receiving a phone call from the top of Ponte; I was reminded that people gravitate towards that “buzz” - that thing that makes people talk. What if the pick-me-up or solution to our disparity is currently vibrating right in the palm of our hands?

All modern forms of business, research and social strategy are designed around the precepts of digital communication and it’s focus on User experience.  Good UX design is responsive and interactive so that it enables you to access and view content wherever and on whatever digital device you use.

See, your popularity or brand exposure feeds off the efficiency and generosity of your online presence. It’s about how much you share, contribute and communicate with everyone in cyberspace.

The Stanford encyclopedia suggests the digital age is a form of higher evolution, a new path of social, cultural and political development based on the building wealth of online information. This evolution is not so much about survival of the fittest but rather survival of the fastest…internet connection.

The growth of your digital body is based on the speed at which you connect and the generosity of information you’re willing to share with the online community. The strength of our digital body depends upon how comfy our digital shoes are, how they make us feel, make us look and how they carry us well into the future by leaving behind digital footprints that are immortal.

At no other time in history has society been so blatantly confronted by the duality of our existence. Homo sapiens have entered a new age – a new irony age – where we expect to find our tools of development scattered across the vast shadowy plains of cyberspace.

Digital technology gives life to our existence through interaction. In other words, in the digital age, I am because we are….

Sound familiar?

“I am what I am because of who we all are” – that’s what the centuries old African philosophy known as Ubuntu believes.

Desmond Tutu sums it up well:

“Ubuntu is the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can't exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can't be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – Ubuntu – you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole World. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.”

With regard to our national disconnectedness, perhaps this generosity, this “higher evolution”, this pervasive reliance on the digital realm, is just the inevitable return to Africa, to Ubuntu - to the cradle of humankind – to the DNA of real community. If this is true, it means South Africa has the potential to redefine human solidarity, which in the Digital Age is suitably ironic because the only thing this country seems to know about itself is its dangling presence off the bottom of Africa.

With Ubuntu in mind, here are two ways we can use digital technology to help us become better connected South Africans:

Be responsive:

You are always connected to someone somewhere who requires a response. It is your response- ability that determines the strength of your connectivity. The better you respond to your environment the better your community.

Be interactive:

We cannot exist alone. Our digital and social interconnectedness demands generous acts of communication in order for our online identity to survive and grow.

So next time you’re stuck staring out the window of your apartment at the hundreds of other apartments and their faceless occupants, try remember that your identity is mobile, it’s fluid and it’s connected to a community begging for your response ability – so stop staring, start sharing and get talking.