Why Content Marketing, Marketing Automation & Marketing Orchestration Is Like Making a Hollywood Blockbuster

By Fahima Miah

We're living in a society where films are already becoming the new face of content marketing, without consumers even necessarily realising it. We've blogged previously on this subject [see: here] in terms of how Lego have used their brand to manipulate consumers into viewing their own gated content through the release of The Lego Movie earlier this year and this just goes to show how content marketing already has a presence in the film industry. In fact, even TV advertising is becoming more and more “contenty” as old media desperately tries to jump on the content marketing bandwagon. This is something else we blogged about too [see here] not so long ago. 

This blog – written by our new content marketing intern Fahima - is a bit of an observation piece really which focuses on how the process of executing a successful content marketing campaign using marketing automation and marketing orchestration is uncannily similar to the process of producing an Oscar award-winning movie.  It’s actually a really interesting and incisive analogy from Fahima on what we actually do here at Superfluity Towers and why we're the difference between being an agency who creates The Godfather and those who create straight to DVD fodder like that on the left! 

As with many things marketing - and film making - there is usually some sort of roadmap to success – a blueprint if you like. Likewise, there are certain similar stages that come to mind when one embarks on making a movie or a content marketing strategy, including:

 

1. The ideas stage (the script)
2. The planning stage
3. The production stages (pre-production, production, post-production)
4. The distribution elements
5. The tracking and measurement of the outcomes (the sequel)

We’ll cover each in turn:

(1) The Ideas Stage

When directors conjure up an idea for an amazing new movie, they will generally have a rough idea of what the theme is going to be.  For example; if the film is going to be geared towards children then there’s no point creating an 18 rated horror movie. If the film is going to be geared towards 18 – 35 year old males then a rom-com is probably not the right way to go. They’ll have their fingers on the pulse of what movie goers are actually looking for (and this can be equated to some extent with SEO and SEM).   

Similarly, in the planning stages of a content marketing campaign, content marketing specialists like Superfluity  will usually have an idea of what kind of market the content will be targeted at. This will be done using the information gleaned from the client's bespoke customer persona's created by Superfluity which gives us a clearer idea of what sort of person/company the client is looking to attract - and engage with.  The persona's help create an end product that is designed with the individual in mind.  

So, with both film making and content marketing -  the theme must be appropriate for the ideal customer segment. Some content will be designed to be what Hollywood describe as having four quadrant appeal (i.e. it appeals to males and females, young and old), especially if it’s demand generation content aimed at a broad audience. You could call this the Michael Bay approach. Other content will be the equivalent of an arthouse movie because it is intentionally niche and specific. You could call this the Lars von Trier approach. Most content though will be somewhere in the middle – relatively broad in appeal but very, very high quality production values and an intelligent script. This is the Michael Mann approach.

"@SuperfluityUK are the Michael Mann of #ContentMarketing & #MarketingAutomation. It's about script, production values & smart distribution"
TWEET THIS

(2) Planning Stage

At this stage, the Superfluity team starts to really plan and map out the key features of the content.  This is a crucial part of the process because professional marketers and film makers alike both aspire to create content that will capture the audiences imagination through the art of storytelling.  

Conducting research in the film-making industry includes many things such as location scouting, finding the ideal format for the movie (digital, traditional film, hand-held etc.), costume design, speaking with subject experts etc.  For any director, finding the best location to shoot the movie is also imperative.  Shooting 'The Lego Movie' on a hand-held camera in the middle of the deepest, darkest, woods "Blair Witch Style" would be entirely inappropriate for both the audience and the theme. The same goes for a piece of content.  Good content marketers like Superfluity know from experience where the best locations to place any piece of particular content. At Superfluity, we know that if you're on a train and you open up a chunky PDF on your iPhone then you're probably not going to view it. In this situation we would instead maybe send an infographic or a meme since they’re both optimised to be more consumable from that location.  At Superfluity, we believe that content, context and format must always flow in unison. It's probably the same with a movie. Would you prefer to watch Gravity in 3D either at an IMAX or with BlueRay on a 70 inch LED TV or would you want to struggle to watch a tiny pixelated version of it on your smartphone?

"@SuperfluityUK we believe that content, context & format must always flow in unison #contentmarketing #marketingautomation #orchestration"
TWEET THIS

Given the complexion of our clients – many of whom are in the cloud/IT/technology sector (and thus often have highly technical products and services) – research really is a key element of what we do at Superfluity because our aim is to always create killer content no matter how complex, niche or technical the subject matter. It’s quite an art actually and is something that most agencies fall down on (by creating fluffy content that serves little or no purpose). However, given our unrivalled experience and our unique approach then it is something that we have proven to be tremendously good at - whether it’s writing content about Citrix XenApp hosting, creating guides on the environmental benefits of Microsoft SharePoint or demonstrating how Desktops-as-a-Service using VMware is the next big thing! We never forget too that you cannot sugar coat marketing content as content marketing because that’s the equivalent of a film that is absolutely littered with product placement!

(3) Production

During the pre-production stage, film makers begin to think about the cast that they want to feature in the film.  In content marketing terms, casting relates to the tools, techniques and resources we may use in order to achieve the desired results. For example, what marketing automation software will we use (e.g. Eloqua or SilverPop or Hubspot)? It's all very well paying £20m to have Sylvester Stallone in your movie (think Marketo) but if you're making a niche film which requires actual acting and a stellar, multi-layered performance then isn't it actually better to cast someone like Christian Bale for a tenth of the price (think Act-On Software)? Big and expensive is often not better.   

Film makers (the producers) then start to think about hiring an experienced, successful director suitable for their movie (along with other key team members like cinematographers).  They will look for directors who can give their film the right kind of look and feel in line with their vision for the movie and this is just the same for businesses looking to outsource elements of their content marketing because, naturally, they will always wish to retain experienced content marketing firms like Superfluity who can produce high quality, high impact content that fits seamlessly with their own brand.  

Production wise then, just like a movie, it’s rarely one person who does everything and the production will also need to have a solid start and finish date – deadlines for movies are just the same in the content marketing world! Depending on the content, the actual production team may straddle several areas – from someone working on the creative design to another person building the assets to frame the content (like landing pages and forms) to someone else creating the main content piece and then someone working on all the social media messaging. Like a movie production though, there is always someone who directs and oversees everything so that their vision is achieved. The vision must match or exceed the expectation of the films financial backers who, in Superfluity’s case, are the clients. Some film backers wish to remain at arms length and just trust the production team to create the movie with little or no involvement from them while others prefer a more collaborative approach. It’s just the same with us and our clients and we’re comfortable working either way. 

There’s no point making a Gandhi (which used something like 300,000 extras alone) if what you really need is a cost-effective yet incredibly successful film like Slumdog Millionaire so production budgets are very important too. We excel at making the most for yours and we really work hard and focus on the detail so that your movie looks like it has Avatar level budgets and production values even if it only cost the same as The Kings Speech. 

In terms of post-production, once the content is completed (i.e. the film has been shot) then the tools we use, like marketing automation, allow us to edit the content into its final format and really fine-tune the movie so that it’s ready for multi-channel, omni-directional distribution.  One of the greatest things about our overall "Mission Control" approach to content marketing, marketing automation and marketing orchestration is that - given our unparallelled experience of filming and releasing more ‘’blockbuster movies’’ than anyone else in Europe – we can produce superb quality films faster and probably better than you ever could yourself because we have all the kit, all the hard fought-for best practice, all the crew and all the bleeding edge technology already in place.

(4) Distribution

When it comes to distribution, film makers have to think about whether they want their movie to hit all the big screens or if they'd prefer it to go straight to DVD (or even just exclusively through something like Netflix). Should the movie only be released in certain countries? Is it some kind of viral, guerrilla movie that’s only going to appear on social media? Will it be showing on the screens of every multiplex or at just a handful of key locations? 

Content marketers like Superfluity think just like this about how and where your content should be released. We consider different time zones, different geographic markets and locations, different formats for different audiences and we always look to optimise the content distribution across all the right channels (including email, social media, watering holes, SEO, websites and mobile). We even think about whether we spell words the English or the American way depending on the audience. We also have to consider things such as the buying cycle because we get the fact that customers at different stages of the cycle require different types of content if we’re going to help them efficiently move through the buying process with velocity.  

Although trying to package marketing content as marketing content is a no-no, there’s still a place for calls-to-action once you’ve got the viewers attention so we always ensure that our movies are 3D i.e. that they are interactive. Think of it as all the popcorn and sweets you buy at the cinema.

(5) Tracking & Measurement

Ultimately, there’s no getting away from the fact that everything boils down to the number of leads created and converted or, in movie parlance, how many bums on seats did we achieve and what was the box office take?

After successfully releasing the film/ the content, we always start planning ahead for the sequel. Marketing automation technology allows content marketers like us to know: 

a) Who looked at the movie trailers/adverts
b) Who walked into the cinema (and what their contact details are) or whether they saw the content through another medium (device) 
c) Precisely what they thought of the movie/the content 
d) All their behaviours and attitudes before, during and after the film
e) Whether they told anyone else about the movie – and then whether they saw it
f) Where that viewer ranks in the food chain (lead scoring)

In fact, every single thing we do is 100% measurable and all of this tracking information is scrutinised, absorbed and then used to help shape the next piece of content i.e. the sequel. Best of all, demand generation, lead nurturing and drip marketing using our marketing automation and marketing orchestration allows us to drag precisely the right audience into see the movie and ensure that the movie is totally personalised towards them in terms of their needs, their sensibilities, their preferred viewing habits and their previous behaviour. We effectively make hundreds (or even thousands) of versions of the same film which are all optimised to the individual viewer. This is just one of the reasons why people queue to see our "movies", it’s why they virtually never walk out or complain, it’s why they tell their friends and peers about it, it's why they visit the movies website and it's why they can't wait for the next instalment.

At the end of the day, if your business wants to ‘make movies’ (i.e. deploy content marketing) then of course - you can do it yourself. However, audiences have a voracious appetite for content and you may either just not have time to keep up with demand or even have the right tools. If that's the case then we can help you to “top up” your content on top of what you already doing yourself (and even re-task old ‘movies’ that you’ve made to suit a contemporary audience). Alternatively, you may just want the viewers and outsource the whole process to us for a very economical price. Maybe you need help on distribution and want to leverage our pioneering watering hole marketing techniques or social media expertise. Either way, it's absolutely essential for any business to employ the right content marketing specialists with the right tools. Not doing so is often the difference between you winning an Oscar and smashing all box office records or having your movie go straight to DVD (and end up being stuck at the bottom of the £1 bargain bin at your corner shop!). 

The Top 10 Reasons Why Internal Marketing Automation Projects Fail

While the power and ROI of the various marketing automation platforms out there is, quite frankly, incontestable - many companies who try to adopt and manage marketing automation by themselves to transform their businesses at best struggle or at worst fail completely. 

That of course is one of the reasons Superfluity exist - our team has all the hard-fought best practice and front-line experience gained from more marketing automation implementations than any other provider we're aware of. We've built our agency from the ground up to mitigate all the mistakes, failures and shortcomings of other agencies whilst incorporating all the fundamentals and value adds into our offering, Even still, we know full well how difficult and challenging it can be to deliver a successful marketing automation project.

There are many good (and often full appreciable) reasons why marketing automation implementation projects fail and we're keen to give you a comprehensive heads-up on precisely what those reasons are. In our experience, the Top 10 Reasons Why Internal Marketing Automation Projects Fail are as follows:

(1) Inability To Use All The Functionality

It generally holds true that you don’t have to be an IT genius to use many of the leading marketing automation (MA) platforms. Aside from nightmarish, inflated platforms like Marketo, most of them are relatively user friendly – at least to those already experienced in using digital marketing technology. 

However; there is a huge difference between being a casual user of a platform and a power user and the former will often ignore (or not even notice) many areas of the available functionality offered by any given platform. Someone familiar with classic email marketing tasked with implementing an automation solution may not also be, for example, familiar with persona driven content marketing, social media, SEM, SEO, website forensics, RPM and inbound marketing as a discipline. 

Consequently, many companies - and even agencies - using MA find themselves using it as a glorified email broadcast tool [tweet this]. Equally, we speak with many companies who think they're using the full capabilities of a platform only to find from discussion with us that they could be doing so much more - and better. Only 25% of businesses who have adopted MA think that they are using anywhere near the full capabilities of their platform (Forrester Research) [tweet this].

(2) Inability To Craft The Right Type Of Content

Content is very much king - not just for marketing automation but also for virtually everything these days, including SEO. The ability to craft the right type and complexion of contemporary content and balance that with all the other important things like aesthetics, context, watering hole marketing, device used etc. is a lot easier said than done. 

Using a platform is one thing. Knowing how to craft and distribute compelling and engaging content that delivers results is another thing altogether.  It can also be very time consuming and prohibitively expensive for many businesses to do right.

Common sense dictates that the subset of people who are fully able to (a) use a platform to its true potential, (b) create the right content and (c) then strategically distribute that content effectively (and not just via email but also via watering holes, syndication, curation etc.) is fractional. Having the requisite commercial acumen, real world experience and sales expertise on top of that - to tie everything into actual results - is even more uncommon. We know a lot of people in this space who - while great at using the actual platform - just can't help but sugar-coat marketing content as content marketing and/or create fluffy pseudo content. Why? Because they know no better and they do not understand the big social and digital picture, especially in the context of marketing automation and marketing orchestration. 

Genuine all-rounder's are not only hard to come by but they are very expensive. The recent jobs and salaries listed below are just for entry-level, account executive style staff so imagine what you would need to pay for experts! Even on the agency side - it's no surprise that many of the more stack-it-high, sell-it-low providers of outsourced marketing automation sacrifice quality for cost in this area by watering down their offering and by using interns and apprentices to manage their client campaigns. We've seen ratios as high as 30 clients per member of staff at other agencies (with barely hours a week spent on individual campaigns). As a leading boutique provider, we cap our own client to staff ratios at no more than 3 and we just don't employ fresh faced kids - the stakes are just too high for our clients.

There’s an awful lot more under the marketing automation bonnet than just sending emails and tracking results and there is a fine art to crafting and distributing compelling content that not only delivers world class results but which harmonises all your investments across your social and digital landscape.

With automation, you have to keep ‘feeding the machine’ with original content and that takes time - even with the incredible efficiencies and tools these platforms offer. While most businesses have at least some quantity of existing content that can be used content marketing; most just don't have anywhere enough of it.  Even if you think you have a good bank of content already then it will still need to be adapted, framed and packaged up into contemporary content and then distributed innovatively – not just by email but also across social media, online watering holes etc. If the content isn’t good enough - or in the right context and format - you won't get results and you won't extract maximum ROI from your platform [tweet this]

(3) Inability To Find - And Retain - The Internal Resource
One of the key challenges for businesses is finding the internal resource to adopt, implement and manage the platform in the first place - and capitalise on the significant investment in marketing automation. 

Many companies struggle for 6 months or more to implement a platform only to find that they’re only really using it as an expensive email broadcast or website visitor tracking tool. Others struggle to retain the staff they have just paid thousands to get trained since there is an extraordinary brain drain (with many companies prepared to offer a great deal of money to acquire those very few people who genuinely have high impact MA experience in content marketing using these platforms). 

On the other hand - many agencies try and keep their clients at arm's length to maintain the mystique of their work (or just hide it) and desperately try to avoid letting their clients build skills on the platform that they're paying the agency to manage (out of a fear of the client taking things in-house). Personally, we're big believers in knowledge transfer and taking the client on the marketing automation journey [tweet this] that they're actually paying for so from day one we build a roadmap for all our clients to transition some or all of their managed service in-house and we then work with them over the course of the relationship - at no additional cost - to make this happen. Client relationships should be collaborative, not competitive.

It's very important to note that while you may think your automation platform partner will train you on everything you need to know the fact is that they won't - they'll provide basic support. Some/most will charge for training and set-up for starters and if they don't, the support you get will be retrospective and not on-demand. If you need to know anything then all of them will either first refer you to a video or a digital guide or they will, at best, book a quick 20 minute online call with you and that will usually be several days later at their convenience. You may have a sexy sounding "customer success manager" assigned to you but picture it like this. You've bought a car. They expect you to know how to drive so they of course won't teach you any of that. They're not management consultants nor will they know - or be expected to know - how to help you with marketing strategy. At their discretion, they'll merely show you round the cockpit of the car, explain how to turn the windscreen wipers on, point out where the cupholders are and show you how to use the radio. What they won't show you is how to really get under the bonnet to supercharge your car (or fix it). They won't show you how to hook your car up to the 3rd party caravan or trailer which you need to bolt on. They won't show you how to use advanced techniques like toe and heel driving because they only expect you to use the car for the basics (like lead nurturing) and not for advanced track racing (like content curation, true demand generation etc.). They certainly won't tell you about the raft of workarounds you have to find, learn and implement to mitigate the many naunces and flaws they have in their product (and trust us - they all have them!).

(4) Inability To Join The Dots

Although generally user friendly; most of the good systems are still relatively complex for the uninitiated and will ultimately require trained, talented and dedicated professionals able to operate them - if they’re going to be used to their full potential. Best case scenario is someone new to any given platform will usually require 3 to 6 months of dedicated usage to become what we would describe as a semi-competent, casual user. 

Furthermore, those operators must be able to build the right processes and frameworks to tether all their social, digital and even offline channels together so that they work in complete unison - all using best practice. It’s hard to know what best practice is though if you have never it done it before - and done so multiple times. The technology and the overall approach is so new to the UK that there just aren’t many power users out there and those who do exist command six figure packages.

This is an equally large problem for some agencies who think that just having a couple of kids fresh out of university creating content and using a platform mostly for email marketing (with maybe the odd tweet or LinkedIn post thrown in for lip service) is good enough. It isn’t. Neither is spinning content between competing clients, sharing data or having such a high staff to client ratio that clients only really get a few hours a week. It's like an oligarch hiring a full-time bodyguard who turns out to be a kid who juggles the protection of 20 other oligarch's with the limitations of only having a pea-shooter! 33% of companies that outsource their content marketing claim their agencies do not fully understand the content needs of their audience.

Writing content that is attractive, relevant to the prospects place in the buying cycle and correctly geared commercially usually requires years of practical business experience if it’s not going to end up being labelled as fluffy pseudo marketing. Bad content marketing is just as ineffective as interruption marketing [tweet this]. 

(5) Inability To Fully Benefit From Best Practice

Being able to use marketing automation as part of a complete ‘Mission Control’ marketing orchestration solution is often a huge challenge to businesses. While there is plenty of best practice material available on the internet, until you have physically been involved in a number of wide-scope implementations then you will, understandably, make mistakes. Mistakes cost you time, money and even reputation in extreme cases and they certainly delay ROI. We made countless mistakes over the years and it is this hard fought-for experience which now allows us to dramatically improve every other project we will ever implement and manage which saves our clients time and money by providing them with an agile solution that works first time, on time. 

Businesses who fail with their automation programme rarely blame the platform. Instead they just wished they had done things better/differently with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight [tweet this].

(6) Limited Access To Training & Support 

Access to ongoing training, support and knowledge transfer is a critical element of adopting marketing automation. As alluded to earlier, most of the marketing automation providers do not provide on demand support and certainly not to their non-enterprise customers (or at least not after a short honeymoon period). Those who do offer support usually charge for any additional training and/or helpdesk style assistance (with Marketo being one of the worst and most expensive culprits). 

Charging people through the nose to become certified on their product is like Mercedes charging everyone who buys one of their cars a big additional fee just to be called a Mercedes driver! Even Act-On (the most complete and competitive platform on the market who, to their enduring credit, assign Customer Success Managers to every client for free) are now charging new clients between $399 and $2,499 for basic set-up, implementation and training but as stated, with or without that the training is very limited and is more basic support.  Marketo charge £4,800 per year just to integrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 so imagine how much they charge for training and support (and then double that figure) [tweet this]! 

Superfluity, by the way, allow clients to entirely avoid all these costs. All the time.

(7) Not Starting With The End In Mind

Marketing automation is essentially a process enabler that underpins a larger strategy and is generally not a strategy in itself. It is essential to build clear objectives where the outcomes that you require are fully defined from the get-go.  Although short term gains are fully achievable with MA, it is ultimately a medium to long term, sustainable business strategy (and often a complete paradigm shift) that needs to start with the end in mind.  It’s no good, for example, automating processes and/or your buying cycle if you don’t first audit and understand what your processes and buying cycles are to begin with - and establish how they should be best flexed.

Many businesses whose automation projects failed found that, on reflection, their objectives just weren’t clear or coherent from the get go and that they weren’t ready - or even able - to expose themselves to the full suite of features. The net result was that they found their chosen platform was expensive overkill compared to their available skillset and/or resource.

(8) Not Enough Sales & Marketing Alignment

It takes time to build processes and to really get underneath both the existing and the optimum relationship between sales and marketing, especially in terms of how they each impact on the buying cycle in their own unique way. As a result, marketing teams using MA can get confused by what stage they should be taking opportunities to and, diametrically, sales teams can find themselves harvesting leads too early in their lifecycle.  

We've seen salespeople attempt to prevent the marketing team accessing their customers and prospects and resist passing leads back to marketing for them to be recycled (leaving them to fallow instead) and they frequently avoid sharing information. As a consequence, the lead nurturing, cross-sell, upsell and CRM capabilities of marketing automation can often not be used to their full potential. Equally, we've seen marketing teams become overly precious about leads that they're creating. Factor in an overpriced agency trying to fit square pegs into round holes with a formulaic, by-the-book approach to marketing automation implementation (instead of a bespoke, boutique solution that's designed to work for the client - not the agency) and clients sales and marketing teams often end up remaining in their respective bunkers. 

(9) Not Bringing All Stakeholders Into The Process & On The Journey

Numerous companies who failed with marketing automation implementations had asked their marketing team to implement the solution and had not brought other stakeholders in the business - sales and commercial for example - into the process from the start. A true understanding of important things like sales processes and the buying cycle were thus absent and had to be re-engineered into the project late in the day as a bolt-

It's important to be sensitive and transparent with the people involved in your project. Your marketing team may feel that marketing automation will ultimately replace them and see them out of a job. In reality, marketing automation should actually bring them closer to the centre of the business, make what they do more appreciated and visible and allow them to become a lot more strategic and front-foot. Equally, sales people may think that it's such a paragon of virtue that they'll never have to pick up the phone again. That may well happen but it will not happen overnight - and perhaps never happen if you're implementation fails - so expectations have to be tempered and realistic.

All the stakeholders in a business have to work together as a team when it comes to adopting marketing automation. If you're looking to outsource the process to an agency (and we strongly recommend you do - even if it's not us!) then look for one who can demonstrate an ability to think outside the box and offer you a bespoke solution. Too many agencies have built a box within a box and are refusing to come out [tweet this]!

(10) No Economies Of Scale

By default, companies purchasing marketing automation themselves will generally not have access to economies of scale when it comes to the price. The pricing model used by most marketing automation platforms means that the greater the number of overall ‘contacts under management’ within a platform then the lower the overall unit cost per contact. 

Clients doing it themselves will never receive the financial benefit of leveraging rates from all the other clients who have contacts under management through a leading agency like Superfluity. As the UK's fastest growing and most cost-effective provider of outsourced marketing automation services and multi-touch, omni-channel content marketing and inbound marketing solutions with literally millions of contacts under management - we're proud to guarantee that our clients will always enjoy a dramatically lower rate purchasing marketing automation through us then they could ever hope to receive themselves by purchasing it directly. They'll get better contract terms too (no 12 month contracts from the get-go for starters). They avoid all training and support costs and they get knowledge transfer from our experts (who even the automation platforms themselves ask advice from).

LEGO - Building on Content Marketing Brick by Brick

Here at Superfluity we've been looking at the incredible success of the The Lego Movie after significant pressure from own kids who are currently marketing us heavily across multiple channels to take them to the cinema to see it!

We thus thought we’d ask if there has ever been a greater example of not just incredibly overt product placement but innovative content marketing? We think not.

With a groundbreaking film that blends entertainment with a physical suite of products, Lego has effectively just pulled off the biggest marketing coup since Apple revealed that they don’t need to do ANY advertising to launch a new product (because they are now in the luxurious position of being able to solely rely on the media to create buzz for their products and they also enjoy the huge benefits they get from organic product placement in TV shows and movies).

From a purely demographic perspective, The Lego Movie is what Hollywood calls a “Four Quadrant Success” because it hits the four main demographic groups - young and old, male and female. From a marketing perspective, the film is unquestionably content marketing at its very best and, in fact, it’s a staggeringly effective piece of gated content marketing (because you of course have to actually pay to see the actual content). Content marketing  simply does not get any more gated than The Lego Movie. In turn, Lego has hit all the sweet spots that content marketing is specifically designed to hit and this leads to greater product advocacy, massive engagement across all demographics and, of course, more sales of their core Lego products.

It is the subject of their core products which is perhaps the most compelling thing because Lego almost stands alone as a content marketer in that respect. Why? Because different to most companies who use content marketing to help sell their core products; Lego are actually making money by physically selling their own content. In doing so, they have become a media publisher in their own right. It’s incredibly rare for a brand to straddle both sides in terms of selling content and also using content to sell something else so we take our hats off to them.

Lego Social Media - Building Relationships Through Content Driven Engagement

Not only have Lego influenced architects for a long time now but they’re now actually influencing marketers and content marketing as a dogma.  Leveraging their success with content marketing, they took things to an even greater level this weekend with a whole series of adverts where they 'took over' other brands like Confused.com, BT and the British Heart Foundation to show Lego versions of their own recent adverts. You can watch it below or click here:

Clearly, Lego and their marketing team are a very switched on bunch of people who are to us a shining example of the pinnacles of success that can be achieved using omni-channel content marketing and marketing automation. Lego were early adopters of marketing automation technology like Omniture and they definitely recognised the advantages that storytelling and content gave to their overall sales and marketing strategy a long time ago. This contemporary approach has subsequently permeated through everything they do – from gathering sign-ups with the Lego ID to their many microsites to their community platforms to their Lego network to their social media and beyond. 

They're even doing top tips style content...

All of Lego's channels and activity work in unison using the principles of what we enthuse so much at Superfluity - social, digital, automation and they certainly echo the concept we have pioneered of "Mission Control". 

It is content marketing and not traditional 'interruption' marketing that is driving Lego's sales and with The Lego Movie and the marketing programme shrinkwrapped around that then they're adding yet another dimension to the term bricks and clicks.

The Lego Movie  Marketing - Redefining Bricks and Clicks