Outsourcing Your Interesting?

Advertising has been a great way to shout consumers into submission and get them to love & buy our products for years. Publishers create good content – funny, entertaining, educational, informational, news, etc – to attract viewers, readers & visitors, and Advertisers buy time & space in and around that content to shout at those viewers. The way I see it is that Brands have been Outsourcing Their Interesting since advertising was invented. This works, some will argue to varying degrees, but it works.

We can argue all day about consumers getting smarter, more cynical, angry or annoyed at advertising, and new words like engagement, community & dialogue will continue to add ambiguity & confusion to the marketing industry. While all that’s happening some Brands are starting to change their approach all together.

These Brands are cutting out the Publisher and building the content themselves,  viewers, readers & visitors are attracted to the brand for being Interesting.

Is there a business case in being interesting? I believe Consumers WILL tolerate brands being uninteresting while there’s no alternative, however, when a Brand does take the time that Brand will become a category leader, gain trust & repsect, and ultimately sell lots of product.

I know there’s value in this kind of marketing as over the last few years we’ve been privilaged to help lots of Brands be more Interesting with Defence Jobs Games and Cheese Matters. Through this we’ve gained huge insights into consumer behaviour & smashed our targets.

There’s lots to learn from Brands overseas like Kraft helping with all things food related and Dell helping small businesses & locally Ubank (NAB) had a go at it last year with Money Box. Check out the AdAge video with Mark Stewart from Kraft who’s championing the concept.

In short, I hope more Brands realise the value and  stop Outsourcing Their Interesting.