Amazon’s Content Marketing, Old ...

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The grab-bag post returns in 2013, offering a platform for three vignettes.

Crafted for easy consumption, here goes –

Amazon Continues to Embrace Content Marketing Religion

There’s much to be learned from the heavyweight media companies.

Like a poker player with most of the chips, they’ve got the war chest to push the boundaries of communications.

Amazon caught my attention over the holiday break.

As a way to stockpile even more content, they pull the posts from an author’s blog directly into the page highlighting the author’s book(s).

You can see how this plays out in the scrape below with Gini Dietrich and her blog Spin Sucks.

Gini Dietrich and her blog Spin Sucks

It’s a form of user-generated content (UGC), i.e., free.

Correlation Between Kiddom and Innovation

The Atlantic published a special feature called “Brave Thinkers” that included Taylor Wilson who happened to build a nuclear reaction when he was 14 (no doubt after completing his history homework).

Check out this take from Master Wilson:

When people have dedicated their lives to something – and spent eight years in college – they just expect that a kid wouldn’t be up to doing it. But kids have a certain predisposition to do things differently and see the world differently – and that’s helpful. I don’t mean to offend anybody, but I think that we get a lot of scientists now who are bent into a system, and we lose some of their boldness by that. Obviously, you have to learn the ropes, but I think it’s important to do that without hammering out the radicalness that makes innovation happen.

That’s a helluva line, “… we get a lot of scientists now who are bent into a system, and we lose some of their boldness by that.”

The wisdom in that line could be applied to most professions, including communications.

When Native Advertising Stretches Too Far

Native advertising, or what I affectionately call “pearned media” (can’t distinguish between paid or earned), works when the storytelling naturally ties to the company’s brand.

Easier said than done as we see on Buzzfeed and a post on long movies sponsored by the Motorola DROID RAZR.

Buzzfeed

Really?

The RAZR and these movies are connected since both “go on and on.” If that’s the case, RAZR should sponsor a post on the guy making lattes across the street.

Content inventory must have been running low that day.


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