Three reasons why BAD content can be GREAT content

The Replacements were one of the best American bands of the 1980s, if not of the late 20th century. Without them we wouldn't have grunge or alternative or indie. They were friends and contemporaries of R.E.M., opened for the likes of Tom Petty and Keith Richards, and defined the Minneapolis music scene as much as Prince did.

I'm in love, what's that song?

And yet despite their success in hindsight, at their height they were a punk band more comfortable playing basements and barrooms for free beer than they were making a living playing stadiums and festivals. Now-classic albums like Pleased to Meet Me (containing hits "Alex Chilton" and "Can't Hardly Wait") were originally panned as sell-outs to their more hardcore fans.

Why were they seen as disingenuous sell-outs? Because the music was seemingly too slick, too polished, and too "perfect." We can now appreciate the ragged storylines behind the songs and recordings of the later albums, but ending a Replacements album with a horn section, much less a string section? This was the band who had been banned from Saturday Night Live. It may have been perfect, but it wasn't punk.

Punk meets content

This cautionary tale from music (repeated continuously from Elvis to, I dunno, Kanye?) teaches a valuable lesson on content marketing and content strategy.

Medium to large organizations often feature many cooks in many kitchens crafting pitches and content. The result is collaborative, but also messy as different stakeholders (e.g. design, writers, editors, sales, etc.) polish the same stone until it gleams blindingly in the sun. This outcome may be flawless, but it may also be so perfect as to become forgettable.

Remember this guy's name? He's perfectly forgettable.

Modern audiences (and clients) have come to expect glossy perfection. And while there remains many reasons to respect and aspire to high standards, a self-conscious, DIY approach may be a better strategy at times in order to rise above the din.

In other words, bad content can actually be great content if done well (or done poorly, as the case may be.)

Here are three reasons why bad content can be a good approach to your overall strategy:

1. It slows readers down

I once worked at a fairly conservative company whose branding was impeccable. Everything had the company logo (correct font, perfect kerning), company color (exact hex color code), and even company angle (slanted at a particular degree, never right angles.) These were all wrapped up in visuals announcing a new campaign or offering. That was design's job. Mine was to place it onto our social channels and webpages in keeping with current sizing demands that sites like LinkedIn notoriously alter from time to time.

During one campaign I placed an image online and instantly got feedback from design worrying that some of the visual was cut off. It wasn't perfect. I didn't disagree with them; the image hinted at the full picture, but didn't reveal it.

Instead of quickly fixing it, though, I reasoned with the design team that we should keep it. It wasn't doing obvious harm to the brand, and the incongruity provided a refreshing contrast to our normally slick--and arguable forgettable--approaches. Somehow I won the debate, the error stuck, and the results were one of our most successful campaigns.

The underlying reasoning behind my decision was that online readers are naturally trying to process information quickly before moving on. Something--video, gifs, misaligned visuals--that causes them to slow down for even a fraction of a second could be the difference between a conversion and a bypassed piece of content.

2. It shows authenticity

One of content marketers' cardinal rules is that a given brand's voice must be authentic. What does that mean exactly? For one, the approach must seem real, relatable, and sometimes even funny. Emotion, then, is a huge part of being authentic. So is being "real," and if there's anything that defines what it means to be real, it's that nothing (and nobody) is perfect.

Nobody, except perhaps, Simone Giertz. If you haven't heard of her, Ms. Giertz is an international YouTube star who makes videos of her making robots and tinkering with technology to often hilarious ends. To her own admission, she's the "Queen of Shitty Robots."

Here's a compilation of her more humorous fails:

The thing is, even to make a "shitty" robot you have to be a half-decent engineer, and Ms. Giertz most certainly is. But more importantly, she's also a brilliant self-marketer. Her videos don't just show warts and all, they show just the warts.

The result is a demonstration of a true authentic self. We're invited to laugh along with the engineer as her inventions fail again and again. Through a sort of emotional alchemy, this less-than-perfect portrayal helps us to develop a trust in her.

3. It's memorable

Self-aware bad content has the ability to stick in people's minds specifically because it's so bad. Case in point the infamous 1990s Mentos commercials, which were so mindlessly naive and campy (and all but completely divorced from the actual product they were selling) that they couldn't stop but create earworms in millions of viewers' minds. In fact, the writer of the jingle intentionally wrote vapid lyrics because he wanted the song to have international appeal regardless of cultural and language barriers.

Nothing gets to you, staying fresh, staying cool

Bad content exists beyond earworms, too, of course. Sometimes audiences are willing to stick around for a pay-off after suffering through bad content because they assume there must be some "point" to something so self-consciously bad. In a lot of ways this echoes the idea of suspense I previously discussed in essential elements of brand storytelling.

A great example of this comes from French grocery chain Monoprix, who in spring 2018 released a commercial of a woman seemingly willing to listen to the worst song in the world (appropriately titled "Worst Song in the World.") As she listens to the song, the audience too must listen to it. More importantly, the audience is pushed to wonder why they're both listening to the song. Check it out for yourself:

The song and the distressed woman are memorable enough. They're self-consciously authentic in how absurd and humorous they are. This shows Monoprix's brand voice, and hints at their target demographic.

But what makes this ad truly memorable is the pay-off. The reveal comes at the top steps of a French street, Parisian landscape in the background, as the camera focuses in on the woman's arms weighed down by bags of groceries. Finally we get why she didn't change the music. Finally we get why we had to sit through the worst song in the world.

The ad works because it doesn't fall into the simple pothole of being described as "that one funny ad about the bad song," but instead "that one one ad about a woman who couldn't turn off a bad song because her hands were tied." It easily brings to memory the point of the ad (grocery deliveries) and hopefully the unique voice of the company behind the ad.

All three of these take-aways--slowing customers down, being authentic, and being memorable--are not unique to "bad" content, but they are essential to it, and can be replicated through even small tweaks in an otherwise professional, perfect approach to content strategy.

Chris Gerben is a digital strategist and content producer. If you'd like to know more, or work together, please reach out or browse the articles below.