8 Content Marketing Lessons from 80′s TV Shows

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Advertising8 Content Marketing Lessons from 80′s TV Shows

What phrase do you prefer? The ‘content is king’ or the ‘marketing its all about the content now’? Content is king sounds nice and grandiose, a brash and bold statement that justifies all this ‘content’ creation. I don’t disagree with either of those statements (I’m sure I have used both countless times) and will continue to do so (maybe less of the ‘king’) but the truth is that marketing has always been about the content. Marketing and content have always been linked way before social media, even before the internet and tv, radio, you could even go back 100 years or much much more.

Think about it. No one has ever sat down to watch television for the adverts, no one buys a daily paper for the adverts, no one switches on the radio a few minutes before each hour to catch the adverts. Nope. People sit down and tune in for the content. Due to technology and costs the easiest way for marketing to work was to slot in between other peoples content and catch people as they waited for the ‘content’ to return.

If anything there has always been a?dependence?on marketing by content in order to pay the costs of the content. While marketing depended on content in order to communicate the message.

What technology has done is it’s facilitated a shift in who the content provider is, basically cutting out the middle man and allowing the brand to become the writer, broadcaster and publisher rolled into one. The audiences are still there at home consuming media – all provided by someone. So what lessons can we learn from traditional media, and, for the purpose of this post, 80′s TV shows, for our new age digital content marketing strategies?

1. Bad TV Shows Never Worked
Bad TV shows had poor audience figures. For good reason, they were dire, lame ideas, or re-hashed content that was packaged in some format the TV station hoped the audience would consume. ‘Manimal’ anyone?Similarly bad marketing content in this age of content is king, will not gain traction. It will pull in the equivalent of a ‘bad audience’ and the communication will be ignored by most of the desired audience. It almost begs the question why bother?

2. But Bad TV Shows Were Cheaper To Advertise During
Yes, because they attracted lower audiences. Bad content, in terms of digital marketing, often has less resources invested in them in terms of time, planning ?and creativity. Facebook might be free but there’s tonnes of poorly used pages out there that could be doing a lot more – if the necessary resources were applied.

3. Good TV Shows Always Surprise and Delight the Viewer
Good TV shows always managed to surprise audiences. Something amazing on the TV the night before and people would talk about it the next day. Water cooler moments they were called. Those who hadn’t seen the episode would hope that maybe someone recorded it onto VHS so they could watch it. Think about it – who shot JR? OMG Bobby just got out of the shower? To get people talking about the good content they needed it to be a surprise, pleasant or shocking, but different. In todays terms if it has that surprise and delight factor it might get linked to on Facebook.

4. Good TV Shows Didn’t Always Get Big Audiences
When you first met Lieutenant Frank Drebin was he in the flop show Police Squad, or the hit Naked Gun films that came long after the TV show? This still happens today, does anyone remember Arrested Development or The Wire? All great shows that never had huge audiences until many years later when eventually a friend of a friend made you watch it. It took years for these shows to achieve ‘cult’ status because of the friend of a friend. Lesson here for content marketers is to make sure you’re distributing your content in as many ways as possible, who knows where the ‘friend of a friend’ hangs out online.

5. Viral Marketing ‘Seeding’ has Always Been Around
By seeding, I mean getting the content into as many available points from which the audience can either hear about it or see it for themselves, and hopefully spread the ‘word’. This hasn’t arrived with the advent of Web 2.0. It’s always been here. Do you remember that Gold Blend ad from the late 80’s with Anthony Head. There’s a compilation of the ad’s just below. As an aside, I’m looking at the stats for the 20+ year old set of ads. Believe it or not they have clocked up almost 78,000 views in the last 2 years. I’m sure there’s plenty of new ‘virals’ that wish they were just that ‘viral’.

I remember reading about that the final part of their ongoing ‘will they, won’t they’ saga in a newspaper, how it was going to be broadcast that night and how ‘the nation’ would gather round the tv set for it. Yep, I thought that day the world had literally run out of news and was now reporting on adverts. But no it was some clever PR dude looking to get greater exposure for the advert and in turn get as many eyeballs in front of the set at 9.10pm or whenever. It worked.

Last weekend on the X-Factor the two girls who had been friends until their audition fight, and haven’t spoken since finally made their appearance. I say finally because Sky News were talking about this two weeks ago and gave the impression that it was going to be on weeks back. Nope that was to build anticipation and interest in the actual broadcast of the fight. Which it did, even a friend of mine who doesn’t watch X factor knew it was on last Saturday night. Its such a popular clip that typing ‘X Faxtor’ into Youtube right now will bring this 5 day old clip up as the first search result. Subo’s they aint.

Its got 4.3 million views so far. Now I’m not comparing the two but by seeding content in offline and online ways (I’m sure that Sky News weren’t the only media outlet talking about this before it happened), is going to increase the probability of more people seeing it. The more people that see it, perhaps the more people that will spread the content and it may just go ‘viral’. You may not have access to Sky News but I’m sure you have plenty of other possible options to get word out about your marketing efforts.

6. Great TV Shows Have a Longer Life Span
Great content always had a longer life span. Not only are the stats impressive enough for the Gold Blend adverts from the 80’s, above, but how much of current television output is made up from decent enough older TV shows? I still watch plenty of old shows like Cheer’s, Seinfeld, and every five years I dig out Larry Sanders and watch them back to back. Great content lives on in the minds of the audience because it will always be great. Examples like these and even these will be remembered for a long time to come.

7. Copying Another TV Show, No Matter How Great, Doesn’t Work
A TV station has had a big hit. It’s now time for all the other TV stations to try and have a similar hit. So they take a formula and tweak it enough to be slightly different, but its never as good. Can anyone remember Airwolf or Blue Thunder? Knight Rider or Street Hawk? Did every TV show in the 80’s revolve around solving crime? Even so, how many digital marketing campaigns are just ‘tweaks’ of others hoping to grasp some of their glory, but failing to understand the originality of it all?

8 . Great Ratings + Big Audiences = Best ROI?
When I was a kid the Late Late Show was the highest rating show in Ireland. It may still be, albeit with a smaller audience. In the late 80’s it would pull in well over 1 million people every Friday night out of a population of 3.5 million. It cost big money to advertise on, but how else could you get to such a high percentage of the population in one 30 second slot? Today, Facebook is logged into by 1.73 million people in Ireland an incredibly high number of people for such a small island. Brands, companies and organisations are heading to the social network in their droves because the statistics say it has the highest audience. And what do ya know, it’s free to get a profile on Facebook. What a bargain! Except to be successful on FB requires resources, time, ideas and a certain amount of financial investment also. But is that the best use of your resources to reach your audience? I mean my family never watched the Late Late, and maybe your audience don’t use Facebook? Maybe they watch other shows and can be reached using far less resources but?achieving?better results. Just because it’s the most watched in the land doesn’t mean ‘everybody’ is actually watching it.

But it would seem there’s many parallels that can be taken from traditional advertising into digital marketing strategies. Many of the lessons remain the same, its just the source, context and technology have changed.

Do you think there’s any other lessons that can be learned?

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