If Content is King, What is Context?

From the beginning of the mass distribution of content, context has always been critical. In fact, there might be a case to be made for context always being a major part of storytelling…think One Thousand and One Nights.

If you look at the history of news, special interests were critical to the aggregation of serious readership, meaning that for a time, context determined content. Broadsides, which were overtly political, moved to newspapers before eventually becoming broadcast, moving to radio and then television. Prior to the Civil War in the United States, for example, there were newspapers tailored to the abolitionist cause, the Confederacy, or the Union. Later on, there were suffragist newspapers, religious newspapers, temperance newspapers and the list goes on and on.

What’s particularly interesting is that although some special interest newspapers still exist today, discerning readers of the 20th century began to demand a level of integrity, honesty and objectivity in widely-circulated periodicals. In fact, one of the better-known newspapers of our time, The Philadelphia Inquirer, had originally been established as a pro-Union newspaper in the years leading up to the Civil War. Its survival as a publication is credited to a move toward more objective, general reporting after the War’s conclusion.

As news moved to radio and television, people like Walter Cronkite rose to prominence because of their ability to represent the news of the day without any obvious social or political agenda. In a similar vein, the notion of context in advertising has followed that same path.

Context and placement have always been critical to advertising. Advertisers and brands obsessed over the specific television shows and radio programs their ads would be linked to, and they were willing to pay huge premiums for a particular placement in a newspaper or magazine page. With the rise of algorithmic-based programmatic placement in the digital age, though, context began taking a backseat to the aim of mere eyeball aggregation. It was only when a company’s beautiful product or important service began appearing next to horrific pictures of beheadings or tragic news stories, for example, that brand safety became an idiom and context came back in vogue.

Context can also be more than just ad placement—it can be social. And this is perhaps the most important kind of context because it has the potential to directly shape a great story. Many of the best stories in the world, going back to the dawn of time, were created in the social context of political resistance, fear of the unknown, societal pressures and war.

Consider some of the more controversial advertising being created today. Nike and Gillette both created pieces of marketing that took their cue from the political and social context unfolding around us, and in doing so, set the world of social media aflame—much like they would have been passed around, person to person, in the days of campfires. Why? Precisely because context is a huge aspect of effective storytelling.

It is why brands should take great care in placing their advertisements in the right publishing environment, next to the appropriate articles of content. When brands fail to take full context into account, the results aren’t always good, hence today’s obsession with brand safety. Remember Pepsi’s controversial Kendall Jenner commercial? Pepsi latched onto the general idea of social activism and unrest, while completely missing the seriousness of the social movements at play. Consequently, their messaging came across as not only tone deaf, but to some, insulting.

Last week, I wrote about content—what it is and why we consider it to be so important. “As humans,” I noted, “we crave a good story—a story that we connect to. And in the marketing realm, we remain loyal to brands and products that have managed to consistently deliver those stories to us in meaningful ways.” Part of that meaningful delivery has to do with how mindful we are of the context in which our content appears. It can make or break a story. When done well, context makes a good story or piece of content that much more powerful.

When we consider the sort of long-form content that we love—The Bible, The Odyssey, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones (to name but a few)—it is because those stories gain new meaning in each and every new context they appear. In our current political climate, for example, where it seems like politicians care more about pursuing power for its own sake, rather than for the public good, Game of Thrones feels more relevant and compelling than it might in another period. The story will undoubtedly take on new meaning and depth as it is read by readers of a new generation. This understanding leads me to the conclusion that while content is king, context is the realm.

A king without a realm is no king at all. The same goes for great content. Without context to enhance, illuminate, clarify, educate, and embed in, even the most compelling content loses its allure. As the noted abstract expressionist painter, Kenneth Noland, once said, “For me context is the key – from that comes the understanding of everything.”

As much as technology and the digital age have heralded huge strides in the evolution of, well, pretty much everything, they have allowed content to be divorced from context. Doing so weakens the power of the content. The context of the art adds a completely different dimension to what we see. Listen:

“Before recording technology existed, you could not separate music from its social context” – David Byrne

The fear is “recording technology”—what we call “digital” today—creates a barrier that weakens what we watch, see, read and experience. It’s therefore incumbent upon us all to remain cognizant of the context in which anything is created. The good news is that from where I sit, marketers are beginning to return to context—but frankly, we all need to. What do you think?