Employing a ‘bullshit detector’ is the only way to make great branded content
Finding someone who can stand up to the boss and be honest about a brand story that’s going off the rails is the only way to produce effective content marketing, argues Simon Kearney.
A colleague went to an event about authentic storytelling the other day. It got me wondering; what makes an authentic story?
For a journalist, it’s pretty straightforward. Good journalism is truthful and honest and the truth is, by definition, ‘authentic’. But what does authentic mean for brand content?
If truth is the holy grail of journalism, authenticity is what content creators strive for. One of the worst put-downs about any brand content is that it is inauthentic.
So how do you create authentic content? In a video case study, for instance, it means not scripting your subject’s answers. Let them express themselves in their own voice.
“Find someone who can stand up to the boss and be honest about a story that is going off the rails.” Someone’s who’s the right fit. A team player.
I’d love the job of being the detector…..but if I’d be fired within a week if I actually performed the duties of the role.
Brands don’t want authenticity. Not really. If they wanted an authentically good story to tell, they would be doing something authentically good. Or to say the same thing another way…it wouldn’t be hard to tell a good story if you had a good story to tell.
Turns out most of them just want to make a profit. No communist anger here…but why not just admit it?
How about the actual customers or clients create and test brand content i.e. customer generated media?
They do anyway by WOM word of mouth face to face, social media etc. as research shows people trust their peers and friends’ authentic messages and reviews versus less authentic commercially created messages.
Content.
A reductive term that seeks to collapse the broad spectrum of quality and value of finished product into a single, dismissible unit.
Used by hangers-on, bluffers, and anyone else who mistakes opinions for ideas; especially in such places where the schedule is deemed to be more important than the work that populates it.
Especially prevalent at top-heavy organisations that seek to divert ever increasing funds from core business budget lines to the administrative periphery.