Media Brands: Creating more than just products
Media Brands: Creating more than just products
Some of the best brands have put a LOT of money into content creation. When you launch your brand, you learn a lot along the way and optimize. When it comes to content strategy, you can copy exactly what another brand does and get different results. Not to mention, most brands (especially with today’s social algorithms) take a while to grow their followings. But what does every brand want? Overnight success of course! The one thing that some of today’s best brands have are that they take content as a media approach. This not only is a social media ploy, but it really begins when building the brand - it has to be an intertwined part and not siloed - what you represent in your packaging, website, and social need to tell a story and even better if you build a dynamic one, that creates your own brand world.
A few brands have been doing this really well, but who are they?
It all started with their tagline “Red Bull gives you wings” - this tagline really launched them into the world of where life can take you when you have wings (and full of caffeine). Most other energy drinks have focused on only sports or performance, and while Red Bull does that, they do so much more. They are storytellers featuring the most intense thrill seekers around the world. It seems as if these people literally have wings. And, think about this - what other energy drinks do you know the tagline for? Most likely none.
First of all I love this game. I am not sure how much money is in the card game business, but their mission of connection comes through seamlessly through their actual product and content. It feels more like the founders wanted to help people connect and tell stories, then a product naturally emerged. That is the key to any brand, the product should feel like a natural extension vs having a product and trying to build a brand or story around it, much harder to do.
Any brand that is like Squarespace may have it easy - your customers are using your tool to create, so feature them and tell their stories (I mean, they are the only reason your brand exists). Compared to similar brands, Squarespace does a great job at not only relating to their customers through content, but focusing on inspirational content through storytelling of their customers.
Every marketers favorite brand (and one I talk about too often): Liquid Death. They really gave the brand a personality and have ran with that. You feel like the can is a Harley Davidson rider and every supplemental product is just something they would own, and with each of these products, or more simple themed social media posts, just fits.
Another one that feels a bit obvious, but one thing they get right is their content marketing. Airbnb has the perfect brand to not only talk about travel, but unique stays, the stories of the hosts (they have a new feature on the site that gives you more details to the hosts), and more. I wonder why Uber hasn’t tried to recreate Airbnb’s content approach?
This brand does things a bit different. With the incorporation of TYB.xyz they have done a great job at building a community through contnet. A bit different than the other brands, but something to take a look at as I think a lot of brands can emulate what they have done.
Although a chocolate company, Mid Day Squares has focused all their marketing efforts to storytelling - and not about the product, about building a team and company that wants to take over “big chocolate”. They took an interesting approach by not only sprinkling in how great their chocolate is, but sharing the real and raw parts of building a company (with family) and their big ambitions and failures. Watching their TikTok is like watching a reality show.
This brand outdoes most - they kill it when it comes to their clothing drops and their editorial style of visual content and the stories they can tell (without much copy) is amazing. You truly feel like a part of their world from just browsing their social and their retail stores. It’s a vibe.
