I recently reactivated my Netflix account for a one-month free trial – just long enough to catch up on the AMC series “Mad Men.”
I stay current on the TV series “Bates Motel” thanks to DVR. Long ago I stopped mailing birthday cards; I email them via JibJab, which I log on to using Facebook.
No one ever has accused me of being an early adopter of technology: Maybe it was the technophobe in me, or a perceived threat to the printed newspaper that I knew and loved from childhood that made me reluctant to embrace the early Internet.
But the more things change, and the more perspective I get, the more I realize that we tend to confuse the medium with the message. When I was a newspaper reporter, what I really worked for was a news organization. So who cares today whether I consume a news story via newsprint, laptop or smart phone?
It’s content that matters
In other words, the story is the thing. It’s the content that matters, not how it’s accessed. Social networks are only as good as the information shared on them, notwithstanding inane but popular celebrity tweets.
There’s great insight to be found in this clip of a speech by actor/producer Kevin Spacey, which the Content Marketing Institute shared in a recent email.
Spacey offers some of the lessons learned from his show “House of Cards,” which is produced by Netflix. The success of the Netflix model – releasing all 13 episodes of Season 1 on Feb. 1 – proves one thing.
“The audience wants the control,” Spacey said. “They want the freedom. If they want to binge as they’ve been doing on ‘House of Cards’ and lots of other shows, then we should let them binge.
“I mean I can’t tell you how many people have stopped me on the street and said, ‘Thanks, you sucked three days out of my life.’ ”
Binge is a great word, too. That’s how I was with “Mad Men,” seizing any opportunity to watch a little more. I wasn’t racing to beat the 30-day trial’s expiration date so much as I was compelled by the content.
Spacey’s contention is that the platform by which content is delivered is becoming increasingly irrelevant.
“Watching ‘Avatar’ on an iPad or watching YouTube on a TV or watching ‘Game of Thrones’ on [a] computer, it’s all content. It’s just story.”
Whether we’re communicators or their clients or just typical consumers, we’re all constantly adjusting to the digital revolution and the dizzying array of social media platforms.
Engaging with brands
But what I keep coming back to is the one thing that all of those platforms has in common and is its lifeblood: content.
Whether that content should be a news release or blog post, e-book or video has to be determined on a case-by-case basis, as should the means by which it is shared.
But just as “House of Cards” can be viewed on a high-definition TV, a laptop or an iPad, the real issue is that people have gotten hooked on the content of that series. They are eager to watch each episode because the story is that good.
Companies – and the communicators who work for them – face a similar challenge, which is really the opportunity to tell their stories in compelling ways so that customers will want to engage with their brands.
And if those customers want to binge, we should keep feeding them great content to sink their teeth into.
