Actionable Marketing Lessons of the Week

► 1776. The Movie

Last week to celebrate the Fourth of July, I wanted to see either Hamilton or 1776. When I asked our Amazon Fire television to find these films, I had to either subscribe to Disney+ or to pay to rent 1776. Since we already pay for Amazon Prime and Netflix, we chose something else.

Yet while going through the movie options on Spectrum, our Internet and cable provider, we discovered 1776 for free on TCM with commentary by Ben Mankiewicz without commercials.

Beyond enjoying the movie, I learned some interesting content marketing and writing lessons. The stage play’s original book, the text of the play, was so awkward it had to be rewritten. To improve the dialog and make it come alive, the second author researched original notes documenting the proceedings of the Continental Congress.

When Lin-Manual Miranda watched 1776 while he was in college, he also was inspired to use original sources for his dialog in the play Hamilton.

Actionable Marketing Tips:

• Read biographies and history to inspire your content marketing and writing. Why tax your imagination when stories are all around you?

  Recommended Reading:

  • 100+ Free Summer Content Titles To Make You Look Good No Inspiration Required
• Use actual stories and history to make your content marketing come alive. Go to original sources where you can to make your writing sound human.

► Streaming Video

According to Activate Research 2021, the average US adult 18+ watches about 5 hours per day of television including streaming video. Viewers watched 2.5 hours of each type per day.

Further, on average, households subscribe to 4.1 streaming video services, About half of these streamers borrowed one or more streaming services (Translation: Used someone else’s subscription) and two-thirds watched ad supported television.

In the US, the top 3 streaming offerings, Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+ dominate the market despite streaming entries by long-term television stations such as Peacock (NBC), HBOMAX and CBS All Access.

What’s interesting is that each of the 3 major players followed Theodore Levitt’s "Marketing Myopia" approach. So they defined their market more broadly to remain relevant over time without losing their market position.

• Netflix is in the "subscription membership movie business." After competing with Blockbuster's retail rental outlets, they transitioned from sending CDs via the USPS to streaming content. Further, they invested heavily to positioned themselves in the movie and television business with the movie Roma, which they spent big to get an Academy Award. This was a contributing factor to the Seismic Content Marketing Shift.

  RECOMMENDED READING:

  • Seismic Content Marketing Shift
• Amazon Prime extends the ecommerce giant’s position in selling videos and owning IMDB, a content site dedicated to movie information. Also, Amazon offers paid subscriptions to Hollywood movie and television insiders to help them track talent availability via IMDB.
• Disney+ offered video subscriptions in 2020 to help balance their revenue shortfalls in their theme parks and travel business. Again, this aligned with Disney’s long term position in the movie and television business. Notably, they released Hamilton, the movie, after their free period ended to get subscribers to pay. (Note: ESPN, a sports focused streaming service, is part of Disney.)
      

Actionable Marketing Tips:

• Assess the long-term financial impact of your short-term marketing decisions. For example, the choice to open movies live and via streaming services at the same time hurt movie ticket sales and possibly killed or at least greatly reduced the in-person movie theater business.
  
  What does this mean for your business? Reassess your costs and pricing over the next few months to determine whether you need to change them. If you decide to increase prices, give your customers notice and use it in the pre-increase period to drive sales.

  RECOMMENDED READING:

  • Easy Guide To Solopreneur Pricing: How To Set Rates That Will Make You Happy

Voice Notes

What does multimodal mean in terms of voice-first devices?

In terms of voice-enabled devices, multimodal refers to having more than one input and/or output. Non-voice modalities include text, visual, gestures and spatial or physical placement.

For more technology-based detail, read Jan König of Jovo’s article, An Introduction to Voice and Multimodal Interactions (Published September 18, 2020). In it, Jan introduces his RIDR model for multimodal voice interactions.

RIDR stands for:

• Request starts interaction and captures necessary data.
• Interpretation tries to make sense of the data gathered from the Request.
• Dialog and Logic determines how and what should be responded to the user.
• Response assembles data from the previous step into the appropriate output for the specific platform or device.

Marketing Reading

► Recommended Book

Last week I read Geoffrey Moore's, Crossing The Chasm.
It's a must-read for anyone who works for a tech firm or buys tech.

Biggest Actionable Marketing Insight: Understand where your prospects and buyers are on the Technology Adoption Life Cycle Curve. This helps you to better tailor your content and other marketing.

► Featured Article: 5 Types of Content Consumption

Do you understand where your content fits in your audience's diet?

If not, then how can you tailor your content and information to be contextually relevant and findable to your audience when, where and how they want it?

► Cohen's Curation

My friend and colleague Ardath Albee hit a home run with her article, It’s Not the Format of Your B2B Content, It’s the Relevance.

It’s a must-read because it tells it to you straight: Your content marketing MUST be relevant. Otherwise, whatever you do doesn’t matter because your audience won’t consume it.

NYC Marketing Minute

► Library of Distilled Spirits

Use your physical location to set your brand apart. In the East Village just south of Union Square, I stumbled upon the “Library of Distilled Spirits”.

At first glance you may think that this library registers every alcoholic spirit in the US but you’d be wrong.

It’s a working bar that keeps its liquor on display as if it were a library.

It reminds me of a men's only club in London. (Although I’ve never been in one!)

The surprise:
It’s located in a Hilton Hotel!

Actionable Marketing Tip:

• Assess how to make your location stand out and memorable.

Plan Ahead: Mark Your Calendar

Please join me at these marketing events.

► July 19, 2021, Noon ET – JP Poulter of Vixen Labs present their latest Voice Consumer Index 2021 Research, done in conjunction with the Open Voice Network.
 

► July 28, 2021, 8pm ET – Voice Den: Session 15. Save Your Seat!
This is the virtual place to be. Hang out for the session and afterparty with the top people in Voice.


 

► July 29-30, 2021 – VoiceCon Live (on Clubhouse)
The First International Voice Conference taking place on Social Audio.


► August 19, 2021 – The Voice of Healthcare Summit
9am – 4pm ET, In Boston, Massachusetts.




► September 13-15, 2021 – Digital Book World
In Nashville, Tennessee


► September 29, 2021 – Marketing AI Conference (Virtual Event)
Use code COHEN20 for 20% off any pass. (Not an affiliate.)