What The Brady Bunch Taught Me About Content Marketing

In 1971, The Brady Bunch aired one of its most iconic episodes where Jan, tired of being in older sister Marcia’s shadow, whines the classic catchphrase, “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!” Jan’s angst comes from Marcia being lauded for her accomplishments while nobody really pays attention to Jan. Of course, Jan doesn’t realize that Marcia’s earned the praise, and then sets out to one-up her older sister without really understanding what has made Marcia so successful. This leads to a disastrous tryout for the pom-pom team, which leaves Jan even more frustrated and depressed.

Forty years after that episode aired, today’s “content marketers” are going full-blown Jan, waving their arms around in a desperate bid to draw attention away from proven marketing strategies. But like Jan, they don’t really explain why people should turn away from their older, more accomplished sister, except to repeat, “Content, content, content!” ad nauseam to any business executive who will listen.

For the first 20 years of my career, I was a direct marketer. That phrase, “direct marketer,” may elicit “old timer” types of snickers from today’s marketers. But during that time, I built my success on pairing the science of understanding the wants, needs, and motivations of my prospective audience with the art of delivering a message that tapped into those desires. In other words, I matched targeted content to segments where the messages would have the greatest success. I always argued that “direct marketing” should have more properly been named “relevant marketing.”

Today’s content marketers most often repeat many of the same “megaphone” mistakes many marketers have made for decades. The science that makes direct marketing, you know, direct, is replaced with the old shotgun message approach, only now the content marketing barrels are often packed with pellets of hip irony. Take Old Spice for example. The company has a Twitter feed that’s very funny. But when it tweets those hilarious comments, it does so to all 224,000 of its followers as if that group is a one-size-fits-all entity. Yet that group likely includes followers such as twenty-somethings who liked the entertaining Isaiah Mustafa centaur spots, a 13-year-old Drew Brees fan who notices that Drew’s name was tagged in an Old Spice tweet, and my 80+ dad who has worn old spice since long before Matthew Perry’s father was the sailor in their TV spots of the 70s and 80s.

What does the target audience for those Old Spice tweets have in common? Only that they followed (past tense) Old Spice on Twitter. There’s no way to really know, however, how many of them are following Old Spice actively, are actually reading the tweets, or are even using Twitter very much at all. Most importantly, are they even consumers of Old Spice or just of their clever Twitter feed?

Then there’s the content itself. Old Spice posts, “Cool shirt. Not you, sorry. That guy behind you.” What exactly am I supposed to do with this? Why is this content marketing any different than a Dane Cook Twitter feed? Why is it any more effective than monkeys creating havoc in way too many Super Bowl commercials? Where’s the ROI?

Old Spice is just one example, there are many brands and companies taking this same megaphone approach. They are listening to the content marketing “Jans” who claim that more proven marketing strategies don’t deserve the budget they get, and that content marketing deserves the lion’s share because everything else is old and passé.

Content marketing speaks to followers as if they are a single entity who all follow for the same reason. But some followers are there for the entertainment while others are there because they are evangelical about the brand/product(s). Why tell jokes to early-adopter customers and show product demonstrations to followers who only want jokes? After all, there’s a really good chance that one of your followers also follows both The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and Swiffer. How can you target effective content to that person?

So beware of content marketers who try to take down their successful older siblings without proving there’s an ROI. Content marketers may momentarily grab our attention, but like Jan, until they prove to be as good, they are no Marcia Brady.