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Content Marketing 2013 [infographic]

 

I’m as fond of infographics as the next person, but I do think they sometimes make it easy for bad data to get more traction than it deserves.

Here’s a nice infographic on content marketing from Bikini Marketing.  I’m not entirely sure what they do (something about content marketing, but their ABOUT page has an awful lot of words but not much actual information, and though they ask you to drop them a line with your email address, there doesn’t seem to be a ‘contact us’ button), but it’s safe to assume they have an agenda about content marketing.

That’s fine, and they’re right that content marketing is more and more important.  But I think it’s important to read these things with a somewhat jaundiced eye.  When I see stats like “93% of B2B marketers use content marketing”, my first thought is “Yeah, but writing two blog posts in 2013 doesn’t really count as actual marketing.”  And when I see stats like “82% of businesses plan to increase their content marketing budgets next year”, I think: “But increasing your budget from $250 to $350 really isn’t going to give you the buzz you keep talking about in management meetings.”

Ah, I’m so jaded and cynical.

Anyhow, here’s the infographic. Just don’t take it as gospel.

content marketing infographic

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That song from the President’s Choice ad

StayAwake marketing

 

I’m loving the new President’s Choice ads – you know, the ones that make it look really easy to make something like Pomegranate Cosmopolitan Martinis with sugar-dusted cranberries, and do it so well that you forget that actually getting the seeds out of all those pomegranates is going to take, like, 2 hours.  And that’s before you even do all the ice-crushing and sugar-dusting and also redecorating your house and maybe getting some better-looking friends who would really do those cosmos some justice, wardrobe-wise.

There are lots of ads in the series, but here’s the pomegranate one, in case you haven’t seen it:

Now, we all know that I’m a little obsessed with advertising soundtracks, so of course the first thing I noticed about this spot was the music.  (The second thing I noticed, since I’m also a continuity geek, is that the sugar used to coat the cranberries at 0:20 is not the same as the sugar on the cranberries at 0:22.  I think they used regular granulated sugar in the first shot but an extra-fine candying sugar in the second.  Am I the only one who notices this stuff?)

Anyway, I loved the song, and I bet you do, too.  So I found it for you:

Usually, the best way to find out the name of a song used in an ad is to find the ad on YouTube and then look at the comments section. Even if the advertiser hasn’t credited the song in the video details, the question “Who does this song?” has almost always been asked and answered by commenters.  But President’s Choice doesn’t allow comments on their YouTube videos.

So then I headed to the PC Facebook page, where I found that other people had been looking for the song.  Initially, whoever moderates the PC FB page said they didn’t know, but then they came back and said their marketing department told them it was a stock track (i.e. a piece of music created specifically for the spot by a post/music house, not a previously existing song that they’d just dropped into the ad).  Did they say this because their internal communication is poor and no one actually knew – or did they say this because the song is by one Maria Haukaas Storeng, former Norweigan Idol contestant and purveyor of bad music and general uncoolness?  Maybe we’ll never know.

But in the meantime, it’s a great song.