Robert is the founder and chief strategy officer of The Content Advisory, the education and consulting group for The Content Marketing Institute. Robert has worked with more than 500 companies, including 15 of the Fortune 100. He’s provided content marketing and strategy advice for global brands such as Capital One, NASA, Dell, McCormick Spices, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, and The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Robert’s third book – Killing Marketing, with co-author Joe Pulizzi has been called the “book that rewrites the rules of marketing.” His second book – Experiences: The Seventh Era of Marketing is a top seller and has been called a “treatise, and a call to arms for marketers to lead business innovation in the 21st century.” Robert’s first book, Managing Content Marketing, spent two weeks as a top 10 marketing book on Amazon.com and is generally considered to be the “owners manual” of the content marketing process. You can follow him on Twitter @Robert_Rose.
I’m a sucker for mnemonics.
In fact, I remember how to spell it by “Me Nomics Except M nOt N In Case Spelling.”
OK, that’s a lie. But I daresay ChatGPT could never come up with that.
Anyway, one of my favorite idea-remembering devices comes from my hero Philip Kotler. He reduces his perfect definition of marketing to CCDVTP – Create and Communicate Value to a Target at a Profit.”Continue Reading
In the wonderful movie The Magic of Belle Isle, Morgan Freeman plays a novelist who has lost his passion for writing.
On a visit to the small town of Belle Isle, he begrudgingly befriends a single mother and her three daughters. Each helps him find the inspiration to write again. When Finnegan, the middle daughter, asks him to teach her to be a writer, he repeatedly asks her, “What’s out there you don’t see?”Continue Reading
How should you measure the value of brand awareness?
I’m asked that frequently by B2B marketers, but they aren’t really asking how to measure it. That answer, of course, involves analytics.
What they want to know is how to connect brand awareness efforts to business value. (And they equate value with more revenue or lower costs.)Continue Reading
When did your marketing team stop caring?
Last week, I asked that question of a CMO at a B2B technology company. I surprised myself by asking it and quickly clarified. I didn’t mean they didn’t care about their jobs. I wanted to know when they stopped caring about the topic of their employer’s business.Continue Reading
A trope in content and marketing circles says: “AI won’t replace you, but someone using AI will.”
It’s stupid. Pointless. And entirely based on fear.
Now, to be clear. Though I think the trope is stupid, it doesn’t mean AI won’t replace you. However, if it does, it’s not because of the reasoning in that trope. A truer version would be: “AI shouldn’t replace you, but some short-sighted, misguided person will think someone using AI can.”Continue Reading
Deliver the right message to the right person at the right time.
It’s marketing’s guiding principle. But, at global companies, an added challenge enters the mix – delivering it in the right language for the customer. Together, they create what may be the most pressing issue for their customer service content strategy.Continue Reading
I recently thought of this old joke.
Two hikers walk around a bend in the trail and come face to face with an angry bear. One hiker drops to his knee, fetches his running shoes from his backpack, and laces them up. The other hiker says, “There is no way you’ll outrun that bear.” The kneeling hiker stands up: “I don’t have to be faster than the bear. I only have to be faster than you.”
I’ve noticed a fascinating trend where marketing teams lace up their running shoes to out-innovate their peers within their companies. But in the long run, they don’t outrun the bear.Continue Reading
B2B marketing teams face an increasingly complex challenge. When asking for more money and resources for activities that generate demand, they often hear, “We don’t have the budget for that.”
Instead, teams get plenty of resources and budget to nurture leads, get them to salespeople, and develop content that speaks to solving X, Y, or Z challenges. But they don’t get resources to create content and programs to generate awareness and demand for what solving X, Y, or Z means.Continue Reading
We ordered Domino’s pizza last weekend.
I know, I know. But hang with me for a moment.
Do you know the scene in the movie Reality Bites where they order Domino’s pizza and Lelaina, played by Winona Ryder, asks, “Do they take checks?”
The last time I ordered Domino’s, that movie was a year old. That’s right. It’s been 28 years.Continue Reading
Did you read the open letter from The Future of Life Institute?
That call to pause AI experiments more powerful than GPT-4 emerged a couple of weeks ago, and more than 6,000 academics and business leaders have signed it.
This fascinating read offers a takeaway that has nothing to do with AI. The letter demonstrates how a well-meaning and even learned team of communicators can sabotage their message.Continue Reading
