Looking for one of the best examples of content marketing? Try looking back 100 or so years.
It’s been said (we may have even let it slip ourselves) that content marketing was the big buzz word of 2013.
But the reality is content marketing has been around for as long as we know.
In fact, one of the greatest and most successful pieces of content marketing was developed and launched back in 1900, when tyre manufacturers Andre and Edouard Michelin were stuck with a big problem.
At the time, there were an inconceivable 3,000 cars in France and the only way they could sell more of their tyres was if the number of cars on the road increased. The two were inextricably linked.
Their growth strategy was stuck – no point in advertising tyres if no one had a car to put them on.
So the brothers had to think laterally – devising a way to increase the demand for cars and thus for their tyres.
And thus the greatest piece of content marketing, the Michelin guide, was born.
The idea was simple: creating a guide for French motorists, including the best hotels and restaurants to eat and sleep on the readers’ travels, would encourage more people to get around the country – thus increasing the demand for cars.
And more cars = more tyres. Genius.
From the first 35,000 copies that were printed for the first edition – the Michelin guide continued to develop.
First they expanded the guide into new countries (learning from the successes and failures over 7 years from the French version).
Then they started charging for the guide and increasing it’s ‘usefulness’ – listing restaurants and hotels in categories and chucking out all that nasty advertising.
And then, most famously, they started starring restaurants (3 stars, interestingly, is officially ‘exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey’).
100 years later the guide is published in 14 editions, covering 23 countries and ever expanding (with various innovations such as the Michelin Green Guide) and owns the most famous restaurant rating system in the world.
All from a tyre company – who’s brand is now mentioned every day, across the world because of it. Now that’s content marketing.
So what can we learn from Andre and Edouard?
Think laterally – you may find the best way to increase the demand for your products or services is about increasing demand for a ‘linked’ product, or even by putting your efforts into promoting your industry as a whole. Don’t go constraining yourself.
Make your content useful – As Michelin proved quite successfully your content doesn’t have to be specifically about what you are selling – as long as it is relevant and useful to your audience your brand will stay positively front of mind.
Start small, think big – Michelin guide started as just one book. Not a book, an animation, and ebook, an infographic and a webinar (apart from the fact they didn’t exist). Just one book. It was 7 years before they expanded into new countries. Your content should be part of a long term programme that grows and grows.
Don’t try to boil the ocean – More content isn’t always better for your marketing. One piece, like the guide, can have a life of it’s own and grow to evolve into a piece of marketing that will last longer than any ad you produce.
Stop banging on about content marketing – Andre and Edouard probably didn’t even know what content marketing was. They probably didn’t care to be honest. What they did care about, as every marketer out there should, is about the solution and not the channel. Remember that and 2014 will be your year.
