content marketing

The Airbnb Berlin Wall Anniversary Film: A Q&A with Its Creator

Airbnb yesterday launched a short animated film aligned with two things: the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and a traveler-inspired story of “belonging anywhere.” “Wall and Chain” tells the story of a woman named Cathrine who in 2012 brought her father back to Berlin for the first time since he’d left decades prior, before the fall of the Wall. Cathrine’s father, Jörg, had been a guard in West Germany. In Berlin, through Airbnb, Cathrine and her father booked a place with a friend of Kai, once a guard on the opposite side of the wall, in East Germany. See the result in this short but powerful film: Wow, right? So how did Airbnb hear Cathrine’s story? Why did it select this story? How much did this cost, anyway? And what are the broader lessons content marketers take from belonganywhere? I asked Dennis Goedegebuure, who led the […]

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Lessons from Skype: Your Story Is about People (Not Your Technology)

Whether you sell technology or toasters, your marketing should always be about people. In other words, your customers should be at the heart of your content, not your products. Your product might be as revolutionary as an escalator to the moon, but your story isn’t about that: It’s not about what you do or what you sell, it’s what you do for others. How does your product help people? How does it shoulder their burdens? How does it ease their pain? How does your product live in the world? That’s a subtle shift. But focusing on how your business connects with people makes a huge difference in your content. It makes the customer—not your product—the hero of your story. In the business-to-business space, especially, it also gives puts flesh and blood on the dry bones of a “solution.” That’s why I really like this new video from Skype, which tells

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Why Innovative Content Marketing Is About to Explode in Denmark (and Why You Should Care)

I’ve just returned from an 8-day trip to Europe, the last few days of which I spent in Denmark, where I spoke at the country’s first-ever content marketing conference. I felt warmly welcomed there—in part because I spent time with some truly warm and wonderful people. (That’s always the key to a great trip, isn’t it?) But I also felt welcomed for business reasons: The business culture seems so ideally suited to embracing content as a cornerstone of marketing, and I came away from both the event and the country feeling like there was a kind of perfect content marketing storm brewing there. Why should you care, if you aren’t Danish or don’t do business there? Because there’s a lot that modern marketers can learn from the Danish mindset. Sometime very soon, I think, this small Northern European country of 5.5 million will be creating and leading some truly innovative

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This Is Why B2B Companies Need to Hire Brand Journalists

The key to being a thought leader is to… well, lead. The news broke at about 8 AM Eastern today that the world’s third-largest software company, Oracle, had acquired Compendium, a content management company. At the time, I was part of a panel for a UK audience with Brightcove—in other words, I was pretty much sealed off from social media and news headlines. So I first heard the news when Jesse Noyes of Kapost emailed me at 9 AM for commentary on the acquisition, for a piece Kapost was putting together. Jesse also took the opportunity to let me know that his boss, Kapost CEO Toby Murdock, had already formulated and published his early thoughts on the move. Jesse‘s email read as follows: “Don’t know if you already saw the news, but Oracle announced today it’s buying Compendium. Toby has already shared his view on what this means for the

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The Best Political Ad Ever

I know that’s a strong statement, but I’d only amend “best political ad ever” with a “so far.” Because that’s how good this video is. It blurs the line between traditional political advertising and content marketing, because it tells an incredible story in a little over a minute. And in doing so, it breaks the mold in political campaigning: I’m certain that every politician in America directed his or her campaign manager over the past few days to figure out how they can replicate some of this magic, too. Take a look: Carl Sciortino is running for a Massachusetts Congressional seat in the 5th District, which includes several communities outside of Boston (but not mine). He is one of seven Democrats running for the seat in a special election this December that is part of a sequence of events set off when John Kerry became secretary of state. The 5th

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