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THE IGLOO…The #1 Content Marketing Show for Peeps Who Like Winning with your Host…
Wes Ward
Wes: Welcome to Inside the Igloo, the number one content marketing show for peeps who like
winning. I'm your host Wes Ward and today as always our co-host is Nate Riggs all the
way from Columbus, Ohio. How are you Nate?
Nate: Good, how are you Wes? Thanks for having me.
Wes: Yeah, very excited as always. I really look forward to our chats. We're really starting
to dig deep and get into some really meaty concepts and some really meaty outcomes.
I thought last week’s episode, where we’re looking at trends and also what's happening
over in America, in Ohio is from my point of view is an absolute fascinating insight
into what's going on in your part of the world.
Nate: Yeah, it's been an incredibly interesting last couple of weeks. We finally have the
end of the political advertisements on TV so that's I think welcome for a lot of people
particularly in Ohio. Ironically you know, I was expecting to go to the polls being in
the swing state you know, and look at very, very long lines, and in the morning that was
the case.
You went you know, around 5, 6 o'clock in the morning and you couldn't even get in the
parking lot. And then later in the afternoon it seemed like everybody had made the rush
to get there in early, so it's pretty easy to get in and out, a little bit of anticlimactic
if you will.
Wes: Really, it's quite an interesting model over here in Australia where it's compulsory
to vote. So it's sort of undemocratic in a way, democracy, whereas in America, it's voluntary
to vote. Do you think that voter turnout was bigger than usual in your experience?
Nate: Well you know it's really interesting because voter turnout I think is largely related
to the fact that there are so many ads, and that particularly the news media, and the
way that they placed the presidential debates, really kind of sets the agenda to get people
to go out and vote.
If they were not televised, presidential debates, which is interesting because if you look at
these debates, it's very much shot in the way that you would watch a football game or
a baseball game. It's almost like a political sporting event.
And because of that millions and millions of people tune in to this and mind you, none
of the people myself included tuning in, really know all that much about political issues.
So you're kind of only getting the top line as to what the candidates choose to talk about
in their campaign platforms.
But yet everybody tunes in and I think during the month of October or November, all of that
media really is intended to get people to turn out and create this, you know, for instance
if you look at television polls. It would always say you know, it's 49% to 51% or something
swing but then under that, there's a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5%.
So really nobody comes out and says, here's a definitive poll that says one candidate
is winning or the other. But it's meant to kind of create this controversy and create
this buzz that I think really you know, gets the voters to turn out and exercise their
right as Americans.
Wes: Do you think in terms of reach, TV is the primary medium during something like this?
You know, we talk about content marketing a lot and how the web is changing everything,
but when it really comes down to it when you know, big money is getting applied, do you
think the dominant channel or medium is still TV?
Nate: You know I think it depends on the parties too. For republican voters and not that each,
I guess partisan party is out there not using a web, but you do see a lot more of traditional
advertising around the republicans, whereas even going back to the original when Obama
ran for office the first time.
It was largely done on things like Facebook and social media.
And we saw the Obama campaign really, really hit the media heart in terms of Facebook advertising,
and promoted posts, and so on and so forth. That was a little bit later on the republican
side.
Just to make an interesting plug too, if you're familiar with the presentation software Prezi,
prezi.com, on their blog there's a very, very interesting prezi presentation. It's almost
an interactive infographic that has all the details of the 2012 presidential elections.
So I would encourage any reader to go take a look at that because it really does capture
all the numbers and it's a very innovative way in terms of content marketing to kind
of display that infographic in a very interactive way. So check that out. Prezi....
Wes: We just might put that in the show notes because I haven't seen that and I did love
Prezi. I think making sure he don't get sort of nauseous, or airsick by getting overzealous
with the transitions, I’ve seen that over here a little bit but that's an awesome product.
Do you use it?
Nate: I, you know for presentations, I've never actually used Prezi yet because I'm
still kind of getting used to not having everything in a linear format. I like you would with
Keynote or PowerPoint but I am, after seeing this post by Prezi, I'm really, really interested
to look at this as more of a content marketing tactic.
Because number one we're, with infographics we're just polluted on the web. There's infographics
everywhere you turn and they're all really long, skyscraper format and I think people
are starting to get sick of scrolling down. But the way that Prezi did this, kind of you
know, adds a new spin to it, makes it a little bit more interesting and in my opinion, a
little bit more useful.
Wes: Yeah well I certainly say it from video creation, you know being out to screen capture
and then edit. And having those sexy transition is really good. I'm a bit of a fan of Piktochart,
you know, one of those infographic creators.
But they are templated and I think a lot of that style is coming out, like you say is
polluting the internet right now with these long, long skyscrapers.
And I think also it really relies to a lot of content in general if it's not really high
value or not really compelling. All of a sudden it's just clutter or noise, you know, it doesn't
matter what the medium or the type of content is. If the value or the relevance is not there,
all of a sudden it's just stuff.
Nate: Absolutely.
Wes: Well today we.., last week we were talking about the trends, what's going on. We only
got halfway through it but also, I think today we should be talking about some of the implications
of these trends and some of the winners, and some of the losers in the big shift by content
marketing as it gains speed. We're talking off air just a little while ago about the
advertising agency model.
Now if we look at traditional audience of print, radio, TV, those sort of mediums in
the old model, agencies were front and center of that. They were helping businesses access
those traditional audiences. Now that content marketing has evolved, the internet is available,
brands and businesses can actually create or access their own audience.
I think today's discussion about how that fits for traditional agencies and the new
tops of agencies including your agency Nate, the Karcher Group, whether they're born digital,
whether they transitioned. I think it's a really good topic for discussion for today.
Nate: No, I absolutely agree. And there is a huge transition that's going on right now
because agencies are having to kind of remake themselves. We've seen marketing, I think
the bigger trend too is that we've seen the art of marketing, the art and science of marketing
changed so drastically over the last 5 years that the playing field, the agencies are scattered
all over the board.
So a lot of that you know, you have inbound marketing agencies, digital agencies, traditional
agencies, agencies that were full service that are now you know, acquiring smaller agencies
to try to beef up different you know, parts of their offering. And that's exactly what
happened in the case with Karcher Group.
You know, we've made a couple strategic acquisitions over the last couple of years to add on the
capabilities that, unfortunately we're required to be considered a full service digital agency.
So...
Wes: What was the background of the Karcher Group? Were they a traditional agency to begin
with?
Nate: So Karcher Group was always a pure play digital agency. And that meant basically building
websites, doing search engine optimization for clients both on the organic side as well
as the paid media side.
And then growing things and taking on things like email marketing and so on and so forth.
So the one thing that TKG's never really done is anything traditional or print but pretty
much if it touched the web from hosting on out was something that we, you know, we're
definitely interested in terms of business.
And over the last couple of years, we've had to add on capabilities in terms of content
marketing and social media, and even you know, a variety of different consulting services.
Because what's been interesting is, as marketing is changed, there's a call for more strategy
as well.
You know, whenever you offer a new medium or a new way to reach customers, obviously
there's a new way of thinking about that and how does that fit in to an organizational
strategy.
So I think across the board, you've seen a rise in, not only on the consultant side of
people who offer strategic services and help organizations think about these new channels
and how they're gonna use them to reach customers but also on the agency side as well.
Wes: So how does the Karcher Group, and obviously you're front and center of digital and social
media or in content. You know, there's a lot of digital agencies out there There's a lot
of smart kids out there that you know, can build websites.
They've got in there and they're well ahead of the game when it comes in terms of positioning
themselves in front of business owners who know very little or may be keen but they may
not necessarily be aware of this shift already going on. How does those types of agencies
adjust and how did Karcher go about adjusting themselves?
Nate: Well with traditional, it really comes down to I think the culture of the organization
as well as the budget. I mean there's a lot of different ways to grow and I think it's..,
Jay Baer has a really.., Jay Baer at convinceandconvert.com has a really interesting presentation on the
whole agency dynamic but a lot of agencies that are smaller or boutique shops, take what
Jay calls as the guru strategy.
So go out and find the independent consultant who's already got a book of business in terms
of whether it's social media or content marketing, or both and then find a way to acquire that
individual or bring them on typically buying out the book of business and then making them
a part of the agency staff.
And that does work in terms of you know, a longer cycle because then what you're gonna
face is, is cultural adaptation. You know, is this person that will bring you into the
fold, how are they going to learn how to function as a part of the agency or the business at
hand?
And there's some challenges that come along with that. So any agency is thinking about
that should probably you know, consider not only, does this person have the skill set
that we need, or the book of business that we need, but are they also going to click
with our internal teams.
And a lot of times if you're talking about boutique agency, typically those may be family-run
or the same group of people who've been working together for many, many years, usually since
founding. So there is a tough dynamic for anybody new to break in to that type of a
situation.
Another approach that you see with a lot of larger agencies, is really to kind of hire
a personnel and then engage in some type of very robust training sequence.
So again, bringing in somebody or sending individual teams to a lot of the conferences
and really trying to educate the internal personnel to pick up the new craft of content
marketing or social media marketing.
Wes: What you're really saying there is, if the business isn't strategically organized,
doesn't have its own processes, one of the shortcuts or down and dirty methods used to
go and bring in a rock star who's already got an audience?
Nate. Yeah, absolutely, an audience and a set of skills. And then you know, that can
work very, very well for organizations if they think through I think what would be considered
adoption. Maybe adoption is not the right word but you know, how is that person gonna
merge into the culture and become part of the team.
Largely because if you are bringing in that independent consultant, they've probably been
used to working on their own, getting their own clients, operating on their own processes
and timeline.
So oftentimes melding that into an agency environment particularly if that individual
hasn't really had agency experience, that can present some challenges.
Wes: And what sort of experiences like you know, the independent consultants or you know,
this rock star guru is probably by virtue of where they're at, they've got their own
audience.
They've got this sort of an A-type personality trying to mold them into an agency which may
or may not have certain strengths and certain views on the way they conduct themselves or
even just agency's role in the whole industry could be problematic I would have thought.
Nate: Well I think too, it comes down to you know, even things like billable hours. You
know, typically a lot of consultants who are working on their own, doing strategy projects,
they're not really thinking in terms of billable hours because their overhead is not anything
near what an agency's overhead would be.
They're typically not paying for a building, maybe working out of coffee shops or their
home office. Usually it you know, when I was an independent consultant, I looked that okay,
how much retainer revenue do I have coming in per month?
And then what's my burn rate, what do I need to survive? And then how much that's left
over can I either put back into the business or pay independent contractors to try to offload
you know, some of the heavy workload? Whereas in the agency environment you know, it comes
down to being very stringent on tracking billable hours against non-billable hours.
You know, the process of client contact, that's always an interesting one too because with
the consultant, you have the account executive or the account manager as well as the strategist,
as well as a lot of times the execution staff rolled into one person, whereas in agency
those are all gonna be different functions.
And so, having the contractor learn to, or the consultant who's becoming a part of an
agency learn to kind of give up some of those responsibilities and share those with a large
team, that can take you know, a couple of months to get used to.
Wes: And just, finally on this point of the agencies giving up their intellectual property.
You know, if you got a rock star who's probably developed some pretty hardcore IP and that's
the reason why they got an audience coming in who owns the IP. Would that be an issue
or it's not really a problem?
Nate: Well and I think too you know, everybody's got IP but at the end of the day, a lot of
it looks very much the same in term.., when you're talking about agency services. Everybody
usually has a 2, 3, 4 step process and they're all named various different things.
Wes: Different charts, you know.
Nate: Yeah well, and not to say that an intellectual property is not important but for service-based
businesses especially in the era where now we share content freely, and we were transparent
and we share all these ideas freely, yeah there is certain IP that we keep blocked back.
But IP you know, is more along the lines of you know, technology. Like if you have a certain
platform that you've developed and its proprietary code, that would be considered IP.
Not to say that there's not intellectual property on the consulting sides of things but it's
kind of a disconnect because again you're going out in the idea of content marketing
is sharing all of these stuff out there in the open. So it kind of you know, makes you
want.., is that really IP or is that just content?
Wes: Yeah, yup. Now some of the people that you know, in some areas, I'm just sort of
thinking about the PR consultants especially the traditional ones where they would have
to go in and pitch the old media to access their audience.
And come up with also to creative and ingenious ways to get their clients in front of the
traditional audience. Now that you know, brands and businesses can develop their own audience
with content marketing, etcetera, etcetera, where do you see the role for PR agencies?
You know, I've got a few ideas on it but I'd be really keen to see what you think where
the old school PR agency sits in this new paradigm.
Nate: Well it's a really interesting question and I'm not sure it's completely shaken out
yet.
What I'm seeing at least in Ohio and surrounding states in the U.S. is that PR agencies and
PR practitioners tend to have a little bit of a leg up when it comes to things like social
media management.
Not so much on the content side but they're you know, a lot of these PR agencies were
out there doing things like pitching bloggers or setting up listening stations to be aware
of, when somebody was mentioning a brand name on the web and that was part of a public relations
function, you know, to kind of be aware so that you could respond.
What's interesting is that the paces has increased drastically so you know, you may as a PR practitioner
have a listening station set up for the brand name of your client, or a product, or a service,
and suddenly have to react within you know, minutes or hours to get a pitch in front of
whoever the blogger or article writer is.
I think we've also seen the press kind of change. You know, the people who are writing,
even things for journals and magazines are also on Twitter and they're getting a lot
of their news from things like Twitter.
And even putting out you know, different calls for submissions via Twitter when they suddenly
find that they have a gap to fill in, they've got a deadline. So the name of the game for
PR practitioners is really speed, who gets there first and is able to kind of harness
all of the content ideas that they have in pitch articles.
And we're seeing a lot of, particularly boutique PR firms be very, very successful with not
only pitching traditional public relations and building a brand reputation for their
clients but also doing some of the nitty-gritty stuff, managing things like Facebook pages
or Twitter accounts or things like that.
Wes: Yeah, a very good friend of mine is a very successful PR firm in her own right,
very specialist in technology over here and she straddles the traditional media and the
new media really well.
And she's always listening, always looking, and looking for angles that popup online,
and always scanning, and can manage social media on behalf of the client if needed be,
where I find big opportunity still prevailing for PR agencies.
If I'm a business owner and all of a sudden there is a crisis. There might be a product
recall, they could be any sort of catastrophe once the journalist have a defined need being,
hey there's a story in this we're getting after.
I think the traditional PR model is still quite robust and that's where you know, they
can manage online and offline. But as soon as the journalists got a need, they gonna
go, alright let's go and grab this story. I think that's where the PR agencies, that's
their core skill set, that's what they've always done. But I think that's gonna change
in this new content marketing world.
Nate: No, I would agree with you to an extent. But I think what's interesting to consider
is that at its core, PR is public relations, correct? And that has been, that has always
been turned into, we're going to you know, get media placement, our organic article placement,
things like that.
We're gonna pitch journalist. But if you really boil it down to you know, public relations
relating to the public and kind of having that dialogue with the public, suddenly now
all the public has a voice.
And so I really think that, that's gonna be interesting to watch how PR agencies adapt
because it's not just about media placement anymore or getting articles placed, it's about
those one on one conversations with any consumer who may happen to have a blog or may happen
to have you know, 50,000 followers on Twitter or may happen to be the next door neighbour
of somebody who you know, has a very popular widely read blog. And you'll never know exactly
how that's gonna pan out.
Wes: You just never know whether how it's gonna pan out and that's the skill of the
PR. It's just managing it in favor of the business owner. I'm starting to think what's
happening to the advertisers if they you know, the advertising agency is been dealing with
traditional audiences that are starting to crumble in terms of the audience shift is
on and it's going over to the brands.
Let's you know, for an example let's look at Red Bull you know, they're incredible content
marketers. They're developing their own audience so that they less reliant on the newspapers,
etcetera.
Traditional advertising agency that would have helped a Red Bull place their media,
manage their media, and get the.., extract the most value out of the advertiser's audience.
Where do they sit?
Because their relevance, I don't think is gonna be eliminated at all. But I think they
will may just not be as needed as much as in the past because their clients are building
their own audience. Do you think?
Nate: I think you've hit the head of the nail too. And it really comes down to you know,
you have this traditional agencies that were masters of the traditional channels.
So you had media buyers that were very skilled at how to negotiate rates for you know, the
lowest total rating points in terms of value that you could get, where to place the media.
And that was a very skilled job but not to say that traditional media, TV, radio, things
like that is dying because it's not. If you look at the way that the budgets are shifted,
the large majority of the budget still goes to traditional media buying. And rightly so,
it is still somewhat effective in terms of creating that brand recall.
The question is, is that once you've created that top of mind awareness and the consumer
can recall a brand, then where do they go? Then what do they do?
I think it's Mitch Joel talked about this at Content Marketing World and I always thought
it was a really interesting comparison. He basically looks at the difference between
passive media, traditional media where we sit and watch television commercial or so
on and so forth, and active media which is anything on the internet where were out actively
seeking the information, and ultimately those two things need to work together.
But now you have this in, like you cited in the Red Bull case, you have this dynamic where
the brands can actually go out, invest money and time, and content into building their
own media channel. A Facebook is kind of like your own television channel if you will.
You know, you control the programming. You can also advertise to that fan base. A lot
of people don't take advantage of things like Facebook ad, marketplace ads, that you can
serve to your own fan base but essentially it's all the make up of a media channel. And
now you could take that and you can do the same thing on Google Plus or on Twitter.
So that's gonna be interesting to see how well traditional media agencies learn how
to support the construction of a brands owned media channel. And what I mean by that is
a Facebook page or something that they build and they secure the audience and they keep
the audience engaged.
How will traditional advertising agencies, or when will they learn that they can use
traditional media to support those client goals for their clients?
Wes: Couldn't agree more. The last participant I find in this service provider model that
can be affected by this major transition, the journalists. We look at the newspaper
publications; they're under pressure, their revenues collapse. So I think if we look over
here at the Fairfax Group and The Age newspaper, they always proclaim they're rivers of gold
in their classifieds.
And I remember reading a stat, I think last year or 18 months ago, where the revenue per
thousand views in their paper was something like $50 whereas online, the CPM or you know,
the cost per thousand views was about two. So the actual margin structure is completely
collapsed for them. And as a result, they're under pressure you know, with their overheads,
etcetera.
And then as a result, there's gonna be retrenchments and there's a lot of adjustment going on over
here as there are around the world, in your end of town, as well as over in Europe. I
see the journalist is critical as, in this shift but there's a big opportunity there
for them and you know, where they've been serving publications.
If business owners who are embracing the new medium and looking to be publishers themselves,
they not necessarily have the skill sets and I think this is a no-brainer for the journalists
and the journalistic industry to be filling that void. Do you think?
Nate: You know I absolutely agree with that. I think what we're gonna see in 2010, 2011,
and even 2012, were kind of the years of brands adding strategic personnel, ie: a chief content
officer, or vice president of content marketing, or so on and so forth, and now we're hitting
the point where these people are in place. And they've kind of built the business case
and found budgets but they don't have enough hands to be able to do the work.
And so a lot of that work is getting offshore to different agencies that are more traditional
agencies that already have relationships with the brand. And that's either a hit or miss,
it's either really, really good or it doesn't quite hit the mark. So there is a huge opportunity
for journalists to kind of step into this brand journalism roles as the execution team,
as the people who are actually writing the content, or shooting the video and producing
the content, or producing the slideshow decks, whatever the delivery vehicle is.
Not to mention repurposing, you get one content theme that can go in 6 or 7 different places,
that takes a lot of hours to produce that. So I think you know, for journalists who maybe
find themselves out of work, or even students of journalism who are nearing graduation at
their university and wondering, do I really wanna go and work for a newspaper or do I
wanna do something different.
There's a huge opportunity to come in and be that kind of rank and file or in the trenches
employee for a brand that's creating the stories. And I think ultimately with years of experience
doing that for a brand, there's opportunity to then work in more, work more of that strategic
role.
Wes: Loving it, what's your dog's name?
Nate: Well sorry about that. His name is Lenny and he lets me know when anybody gets within
about 30 feet of my house. So there's...
Wes: It's fantastic, alright. Well that's a good guard dog. I think just on that point,
it's a really good spot to wrap up. I think this is the new agency model or one of you
know, brands or businesses could employ one of these guys or girls but if they don't have
budget or just don't have enough work you know, it'd be spread across 10 clients, a
journalist has an agency and they're employed full time.
And I think this is the great opportunity as part of this shift for that industry and
those people who serve it, to adjust for the better rather than throwing their hands off
and go you know, newspapers are dead.
Nate: Yeah it's you know, it comes down to, if you enjoy creating content, if you're passionate
about writing whether it's in a newspaper format or a magazine or you know, in a blog,
content is content.
It's all about storytelling and it's all about finding a compelling way to move the audience
from one point to another. And if you were able and passionate to do that, then there's
ultimately a place for you to you know, make a career out of that.
Wes: Absolutely, well I think that's a great point to wrap up for today. We'll be adding
all in the show notes, the references that we made today for our audience. For everyone
listening, I hope you got a lot out of it, we really welcome and look forward to comments.
Check out Nate's profile and the Karcher Group online as well. And make sure that you sign
up to our VIP list where you get all the cutting edge information as it's released plus a few
bonuses from time to time because we just wanna make sure that our group is well looked
after. W
e've got a solid tribe Inside the Igloo and is part of the Content Igloo brand. Nate,
once again it's been a fascinating discussion. I've really enjoyed it and look forward to
chatting next week and hearing more on what's happening on your side of the pond.
Nate: Always a pleasure to talk to you Wes and thanks again for having me.
Wes: Absolutely, thanks. That was Nate Riggs from the Karcher Group. My name is Wes Ward.
You've been listening to Inside The Igloo. The number one content marketing show for
people who like winning. Bye for now.
You’ve just been ‘Inside the Igloo’, the #1 Content Marketing Show for Peeps that
like Winning, with your host, Wes Ward.
For more information about leading your market online, visit Content Igloo at w-w-w dot content-igloo
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