A content marketing Segway

Turns out, Jason Bateman and Will Arnett run a content-marketing firm called DumbDumb. Per the NYT, they’ve just signed on to create branded content for TBS.

“The videos will be in the vein of what is known as branded content or branded entertainment…Such sponsored stories are becoming increasingly popular as marketers wrestle with the growing ability of consumers to avoid ads.”

The Times interviews Laura Caraccioli-Davis, EVP at Electus:

“DumbDumb specializes in ‘content marketing’…part of the trend of ‘brand as publisher, brands trying to produce strong, relevant content’ for consumers…’content that’s bespoke to a brand, and highly shareable.'”

Electus is a content-marketing agency itself…and DumbDumb is one of its partners. It’s all very insular, but the point is that content marketing is wave of the future for brands — the way that they will reach consumers where they are — and Michael and Gob Bluth are content marketers!

Interesting…

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The content is the product

Thought-provoking piece from Andy Rutledge:

Online publishing is largely broken because media outlets are built to seek profit not from their product, but rather from the distractions and obstacles they conspire to place between the customer and the product. It’s a strategy that destroys quality, destroys confidence, and destroys the product consumption experience. It’s irrationality on parade: publications set up to destroy the very things they are supposed to deliver. It should come as no surprise that such a product tends to sell poorly.

Digital publishers don’t need a cleverer and more elaborate ad strategy. Digital publishers need a value and UX strategy for their product.

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