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con•tent mar•ke•ting
noun
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and
distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a
clearly defined audience and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

Content is king, right?

Well… not entirely, as it turns out.

ver the last five or so years, most ski area T RE N D I N G T I RE S O M E
marketers have resoundingly embraced content
marketing—so much so that an estimated 86 Much of what went awry with content marketing is what
O percent of North American B2C brands are using goes wrong with all trends that eventually tip—everyone
this approach today as a tactic in their marketing efforts. starts doing it. As with Lava Lamps, Gangnam Style and
It’s no surprise so many of us grabbed onto this approach. Pokemon Go, when everyone starts doing it, the novelty
After all, we heard digital marketing gurus herald the arrival simply wears off, we get bored, and we move on to the next
of a new golden age of brand marketing. We watched in awe shiny thing.
as audiences flocked to their devices to view information and In the case of content marketing, not only did everyone
entertainment online. We saw early adopter brands amass jump on the trend, but many did so without understand-
huge social followings on the back of viral hits. ing the fundamental tenets of relevancy and quality. “Any
Our thinking was this: If we doubled down on creating content is good content” became the prevailing sentiment of
content over mass advertising, if we told great stories that the day, and the ski resort content marketing landfill began
resonated with our audiences, and if we connected with to overflow with Candide Thovex rip-off point of view edits
consumers in real time through social media, it would allow that gained fewer than a hundred views.
our marketing to skirt around the interruptive efforts of tra- Beyond the issues of content quality and quantity,
ditional media and forge relationships directly with custom- however, many marketers also failed to anticipate the limited
ers in social channels. Our “owned” channels, we believed, capacity of the world’s online communities and the limited
would become a hub for a community of consumers who appetite of our consumers. We flooded our social channels
cared about us and what we had to say. with branded content, but as soon as our audiences demon-
Well, it turns out we were wrong. Perhaps not initially strated that they had little interest in consuming most of
wrong, because some of us were quick out of the gate and it, the social channels got wise and began protecting their
had some early wins in the pioneering days before the social communities from our drivel. They began charging us to
media wilds were over-trodden. But we were eventually get “sponsored” content into the feeds of people who were
wrong, as were tens of thousands of other brands that failed supposed to be our fans. Before we knew it, we were back
to generate meaningful consumer interest online. to using paid media to distribute our content to people who
Being wrong stings a bit. At my company—a creative didn’t really want to see it. #Fail.
agency that prides itself in making meaningful connections Finally, and most importantly, it became clear to us that
between outdoor consumers and brands—it’s caused us it was not just the quantity, the quality, and the distribution of
to re-examine things. Today, we are asking ourselves two content that was the real problem. Our greatest failing as mar-
questions: What went wrong? And, what are we going to keters was thinking that content, in and of itself, was “king”
do about it? in the first place. In all the YouTubing, Instagramming,

SUMMER 2017 | NSAA JOURNAL | 45