On the Illuminating the Future blog, I just read an interview with Paul Dunay, of BearingPoint.
The interviewer, Britton Manasco, asked Paul about three important trends marketers should be paying attention to. Not surprisingly, ROI and Social Media were included in Paul’s response.
The third item, though, caught my attention — the “Content Factory.” I think that what Paul is describing about the Content Factory is important, and to explain why, I’ll tell a story about how successful — truly successful — photographers have applied content factory-like practices for years.
Going back 20+ years ago, when I was a budding photographer, I attended workshops at the Photo Expo shows held in New York City every year. I attended one that was led by Roger Ressmeyer in which he described the importance of presenting funding partners with a vision for “multipurposing” content – in this case, photography – in as many ways as possible to extract the maximum value of the investment.
Photographers are excellent examples of content producers who have had to be creative in order to get the funding they’ve needed. They often have big visions of fulfilling big, personal projects and have to reach into a toolbox of multiple uses for their images in order to get the levels of funding to realize dreams.
For a photographer like Ressmeyer, this would mean demonstrating to a client — let’s say, a corporate sponsor — how the photography from a project would have a wide range of uses, from books, to slideshows, to exhibits, to annual reports, and so forth, and so on.
One of the most consistently successful photographers in getting large, visionary projects funded based upon multipurposing photography in the ways described above is Rick Smolan.
The point is that multipurposing of content is not new. I’ve pointed to photographers as an example of professionals who have had to rely upon creating a “multipurpose” content strategy because they’re probably more representative of a lot of small businesses, small non-profits, etc., that could benefit from a “multipurposed” content strategy.
As more and more marketing directors, CMOs, etc., understand how online based content can be multipurposed, then the investment in quality content will become less like a “nice to have, but can’t afford” feature and more of a mandatory requirement of their integrated marketing strategy.
But, in reality, “multipurposing” of content has been applied widely by Hollywood, the gaming industry, publishers such as National Geographic, companies such as Nike, etc., for decades.
What’s new, in today’s world, is that every marketer needs to be thinking like a publisher, movie or game promoter, etc. What’s new, in today’s world, is that contemporary marketing professionals need to begin viewing their own content strategies through the lens of maximizing the value of their content investments by using multipurposing strategies.
For example, we’ve shared a diagram with clients in which there is a diverging line extending from the “Content Development” box. One line goes to the client’s “Web Site” box, to indicate how the content is used in the web site. The other line goes to a box labeled “Multipurpose.” In that box is a bullet point list of additional ways the same content may be used — PR, advertising, broadcast, theaters, museums, education, Social Nets, blogs, postcards, etc., etc. Implementing on the multipurpose uses increases the value of the content investment.
An interesting element of this concept is that we draw a line from the Multipurpose box back to the Web Site box, because all of these multipurpose uses serve as a means of driving traffic back to the site.
So, in some ways, this becomes less like a Content Factory, and more like a fine tuned, Content Engine.
As more and more marketing directors, CMOs, etc., understand how online based content can be multipurposed, then the investment in quality content will become less like a “nice to have, but can’t afford” feature and more of a mandatory requirement of their integrated marketing strategy.