In 2010, GEICO spent $745 million on advertising. You know — the ads featuring the talking gecko urging us to save 15 percent by switching insurance companies. What if GEICO spent more on supporting content creation than on buying ads?

You may already know this (I didn’t), but GEICO sells 19 different types of insurance. Even if you divided its ad spend across all 19 lines, each product would still get $39 million to produce content instead of advertising.Continue Reading

Geoff Cottrill sells shoes. As the CMO at Converse, that’s his job. So, why would a shoe manufacturer create content for musicians like this:Continue Reading

A charming film

If you haven’t seen Nirvan Mullick’s short (10-minute) film called “Caine’s Arcade,” watch it now. You’ll be glad you did — and the rest of this inaugural ContentVenn post is going to make a lot more sense. (If you have seen it, read on!)Continue Reading

On a recent trip to Pittsburgh, PA., one of our clients introduced us to two intriguing retail experiments on using content creation to drive business at retail locations: The Waffle Shop and the Conflict Kitchen.
What’s interesting about both of these experiments is that they leverage a content-centric approach as the centerpiece of their businesses — it’s not a marketing project or a blog; in fact, the content is one of their products.

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In my first post at Content Marketing Institute, I spent a couple minutes introducing you to two tools that are designed to help you better understand your web-browsing audience. Today, I’ll help you identify where they are hanging out online.Continue Reading

Finding the right tone and voice for your audience isn’t always easy. Sometimes, finding an analogy, a case study or even a local reference that will engage your audience can mean the difference between an effective piece of content and just another article.

That’s where a deep understanding of your audience can really help.Continue Reading