content marketing: the importance of narrative
TRANSCRIPT
You Say You Want a
Revolution!
My Story
The Facts
• Jesse Odell
• Partner, co-
founder, LaunchSquad
• Advisor, Original9
Media
husband
dad
Partner
We tell stories about change
the world companies that are
breaking rules, setting new
standards and creating new
experiences for consumers and
businesses everywhere
We LOVE our work.
Because everyday
we tell stories
about the coolest
companies in the
world.
But it ain’t
always
easy.
Great companies, not
so obvious stories
And sometimes
we get lucky…
• Two Stanford professors
• Backed by John Doerr
• Changing the world through online education
• Educating hundreds of thousands worldwide with just one course
• Launching in the midst of a tectonic shift in higher education
I really LOVE what I
do. Seriously.
I’m more excited than ever,
twelve years after starting
our company
Why?
Because we’re
bottling up our
storytelling, and
launching a new firm
• Launched in February
• Several early customers
• Led by Jeff
Davis, former Business
2.0 Senior Editor
• Focus on high quality
narrative content that
audiences LOVE
• Content
creation, promotion, str
ategy and curation.
Influencer
engagement, writer
management
4 Big Things:
1.Big Data and The Narrative
2.Quality, Quality, Quality
3.The Long View
4.The Future
Big Data & the Narrative
“By 2009, nearly all sectors in the US economy had at least an average of 200 terabytes of stored data (twice the size of US retailer Wal-Mart's data warehouse in 1999) per company with more than 1,000 employees.”
McKinsey Report: Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity, May. 2011
Big Data & the Narrative
Big Data & the Narrative
Data Narratives.
Quality, Quality, Quality
• Technology and consumers are driving a new era in quality:• Apparel• Designed goods• Food• Furniture• Financial services
• Consumers expect great quality, value and service. They’re growing weary of anything less than DELIGHTFUL service and quality
Quality, Quality, Quality
Our job is to create the
narrative that brings
meaning to our
increasing
pixelated, networked
world. STORY is the
thread.
Quality, Quality, Quality
• Content marketing didn’t emerge because content was invented. It emerged because distribution was invented.
• And all this distribution doesn’t equal quality. In fact, it leads to fast food content and bubbles like….
Quality, Quality, Quality
• Quality content tells a story to engage, inform, entertain and provides meaningful value.
• Quality content needs to be filtered socially: shared, pinned, followed, etc.
• More pipes and platforms doesn’t mean more engagement
• Quality content is taking new forms for new form factors, not just digital forms of static stuff
The Long View
“Over the lifetime of this clock, the United States won’t exist,” Bezos tells me. “Whole civilizations will rise and fall. New systems of government will be invented. You can’t imagine the world — no one can —that we’re trying to get this clock to pass through.”
Who Saw This One?
18 Plus MILLION UNIQUES
480,000 UNIQUES
The Long View
• 60 hours of video are uploaded every minute, or one hour of video is uploaded to YouTube every second.
• We can’t go to a movie without checking our email or Facebook
• We constantly feel behind • Great companies like
Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple all think LONG TERM
• In content, it’s no different. Think long term engagement and don’t get distracted!
The Future
• New media forms we can’t describe today. Like any revolution, industrial or otherwise, the form factors are taking shape
• Visual storytelling (Pinterest) and new types of video where viewers will are participants and choose their own adventures
• Content marketing isn’t search engine marketing or social marketing. It is an entirely new arena and YOU are leading it! We are inventing PR or Advertising and it’s going to take awhile.
The Main Thing:
Build a Narrative,
Focus on Quality
and Be Bullish!
Thank you!