You may not have achieved your dream of making it big in Hollywood but there is a bright future for you in the content marketing entertainment business!
In our last article, I said that the educator is perhaps the most important role we play as content marketers. In reality, it depends. Many people on the internet just want to be entertained.
The ideal scenario is to entertain your audience while teaching them something useful. Of course, another approach is to entertain them while showing the world how great you are!
Content Marketing Entertainment Masterclass – Will It Blend?
One of the best examples of entertainment in viral content marketing is Blendtec’s “Will it blend?” YouTube series.
Blendtec is a company that makes powerful blenders. They didn’t attempt the typical sales approach of releasing boring adverts saying something along the lines of:
“Our blenders are the strongest on the market. They are precision engineered from the highest quality material…” blah blah blah.
Instead, they demonstrated the power of their blenders by creating entertaining videos where they would blend anything from iPhones to golf balls. This had their audience hooked. They were inundated with requests to blend all sorts of random objects.
the genius of ‘will it blend?’
- It was highly entertaining perhaps even fascinating. Few people ever wondered what would happen if you put an iPhone in a blender. Until you suggested the idea to them. After that, they just had to know!
- It subtly demonstrated the quality of Blendtec’s products. People mostly watched to see if the object would blend. However, they were also subtly shown just how durable and powerful Blendtec blenders were.
Awakened the Red Bull
An article examining the role of an entertainer in content marketing wouldn’t be complete without talking about Red Bull.
They may sell energy drinks but they have built their entire marketing campaign around entertaining people. The majority of the content they produce has nothing to do with energy drinks nor does it have anything to do with the reasons why people normally drink them (long drives, studying, working late etc).
When you click on their website you’re immediately greeted by images of excitement, adrenaline, and adventure. They use entertaining content to build a strong association between these feelings and their brand. Their marketing roughly falls into four categories:
- Publicity stunts
- Hosting events
- Sponsorships
- Their own media
Here’s a list of just some of Red Bull’s entertaining marketing:
- Hosted a free-fall from 128,100 feet above the earth’s surface
- Breakdancing championship
- Sponsoring professional sports teams (Motor racing, football etc)
- Hosting extreme sports competitions (too many to list here)
- Produce their own magazine ‘The Red Bulletin’
- Produce their own TV content hosted on their hub ‘Red Bull TV’
Red Bull funds and produces genuinely exciting content. It’s so engaging that their audience has to stop whatever they’re doing and view it. Their audience associates the feelings of excitement and adventure with the brand. Similar to a man drinking a martini in a casino and feeling like he’s James Bond. Someone might drink a Red Bull and see themselves as daredevil skydiving from space or an adrenaline junkie flying through the sky in a wingsuit.
What Does This Mean for Me?
This is a good question. After all, I doubt many businesses have the budget to sponsor a racing team or arrange a skydive from space.
Try answering these two questions.
- The Blendtec Approach: Is it possible to make my business, product or service directly involved in a form of entertaining content?
- The Red Bull Approach: Even if it’s not directly related to what I’m selling, what interesting content can I produce that my target audience would find entertaining?
1. The Blendtec Approach
The most direct route. Imagine you sold sports equipment. I’m sure you can think of a way to create entertaining content involving whatever you sell. Let’s say you sold tennis balls, you could produce a video where you see how far you can hit them after they’re soaked in water or set on fire. Please note: that is just an example, I am not suggesting anyone sets anything on fire. For the avoidance of doubt, do not play with fire!
Alternatively, you could invite some strong friends over and try to break a record for the furthest distance someone has hit a tennis ball with a cricket bat. It doesn’t have to make sense, as long as the content is engaging, fun and exciting.
Another example. Imagine you sell cooking equipment. You could start a YouTube cooking show where you teach your audience how to cook the most unusual recipes from all over the world. While doing this you use the products you sell. In this example, you have the added bonus of fulfilling the role of educator. In fact, you’re ticking all the boxes because you’re educating your audience, entertaining them and demonstrating how great your products are.
2. The Red Bull Approach
This approach is more suitable for the majority of businesses as it is not possible to shoehorn everything into viral content. There are a few steps to this approach:
- Work out your ideal customer persona or audience avatar
- Decide what type of content they’ll find entertaining
- Create it
- Give it to them!
This doesn’t have to be as extreme as Red Bull. You can create written content such as funny articles, fascinating blog posts or even a list of jokes. You don’t need the budget necessary to pull off crazy stunts. Depending on your target audience, you could even create online quizzes, competitions, and games.
Video content is an excellent medium for this. You could start a YouTube channel or host a regular podcast. Whatever form of media you choose, it must be something that your target audience finds entertaining.
One way to achieve this as old as time itself. Storytelling. Think of an entertaining story and tell it through the content you produce. It could be about you, someone you know, a real story you found online or a made-up fictional story. Take this a step further by building suspense into the story to engage your audience and keep them hungry for more.
Remember, ‘entertaining’ is subjective. An audience of recovering alcoholics is probably not going to find anecdotes about drunken misadventures as entertaining as young university students.
The skill lies in working out your audience persona and identifying what is entertaining to them. Once you’ve done that. The ideas will start to flow.
The Mixed Approach
You don’t have to silo the content you create. There is no need to declare “this piece of content is strictly for entertainment, while this piece is strictly for education”.
Try to entertain your audience with all the content you create. Achieving this can be as simple as showing off your personality, adding jokes and telling funny anecdotes.
I mentioned in the previous article that I was a fan of ‘Bob and Brad’, the YouTube physical therapy duo. I watch their videos when I need advice on recovering from sports injuries. However, I always look for their videos ahead of the thousands of other physical therapists on YouTube because they are so entertaining.
They make their videos entertaining through the way they interact with each other. They have their catchphrase “We are the two most famous physical therapists on the internet … in our opinion of course”. They also perform a type of double act making silly dad jokes as they dispense valuable information. This is more than enough to make what could be a boring video entertaining.
Conclusion – give the people what they want
As always, I hope you have enjoyed this article. Entertaining your audience isn’t as complicated as many people think.
You can entertain by showing off your personality like Bob & Brad, creating interesting or unusual content like ‘Will It Blend?’ or by creating exciting content targeted to your audience like Red Bull.
Decide what approach is best for your business, what your audience wants and give it to them!