What Happened to Content Marketing?

I recall a time when we all pretty much knew what films were in the cinema and what records were being released, and what the #1 single and album was. This was a 4 channel TV world where Top of the Pops and the Radio 1 chart show on a Sunday informed us all.

I started content marketing in 1998 at a time when 'sell-through' video was in decline, soon to be given a Compound V style adrenaline boost in the arm by the DVD format. At that time the desire to own VHS copies of films was waning, but DVD made everyone want own films again and have a dedicated shelf to the format - The Godfather, Goodfellas, Goonies and Grease. The same thing had happened a decade earlier with CD's over vinyl records.

Film, TV and music was a shared cultural experience. Water cooler moments were had discussing all the latest plot twists of the must-see series like Lost and 24. Everything was about content and that content was heavily marketed. Huge billboards and TV and radio ads, press and magazines.

Nowadays the main source of information I get about new series, films and music come from occasional word of mouth. I work at home, alone, so no water cooler moments for me so I have to rely on sporadic pub trips, dinner parties and shared dog-walks, all the rarer since the pandemic. I hardly ever start a new series based on seeing any marketing.

I watch a lot of long-form TV drama these days. Go to the cinema far less and hardly ever buy music - although I have a premium Spotify account. I also currently have subs for Apple TV, Netflix, Now, Prime, Disney, Paramount Plus and YouTube. I feel that films have been creatively surpassed, in the main by long-form drama, - like reading a meaty novel over an abridged airport read.

It doesn't help that I'm a natural ad-avoider - I hardly venture out these days, watch almost no linear, scheduled TV, but I am on social media a fair bit - but even here nobody is marketing content to me.

I recently discovered the incredible Paramount Plus series, The Offer, via a recommendation. I wouldn't have heard about it otherwise. Same with Borgen season 4, Tehran on Apple, The Man Who Fell to Earth, also on Paramount Plus - the list goes on. No platform is trying to lure me away - perhaps because they already have my subscription money, and are sophisticated and data-savvy enough to know that and are therefore not wasting their funds serving me ads?

I am clearly becoming an old timer, as I miss the days when I knew about all of the films and series on the horizon, and this is coming from someone within the industry. It's also because I love entertainment marketing and I miss seeing it in my life. It is, after all, what I do, and have done now, for 24 years.