Why content marketing is like a film script

We live in an accelerated culture, so I’m currently trying to stay ahead of the curve, in terms of the work I do creating automotive content.

I firmly believe that much the traditional media is living on borrowed time, a view that comes from my experience of being a freelance journalist in a shrinking market and seeing how young people consume content.

A clear example is the recent announcement of ABC newspaper circulation figures. The Daily Mail is the best-selling paper, with a circulation of 784,273. The Sun isn’t part of ABC anymore, but based on its March 2020 figure of 1.2 million, it’s a fair guess that it’s around the same figure as The Mail, which was recording 1.16 million at the same time.

All of which means the best-selling UK newspaper has lost 3 million sales in the last 20 years. If there are printed newspapers by 2030, I’ll be surprised.

The same goes for specialist automotive publications. With around 95% of car buyers researching their next purchase online, car mags are increasingly becoming a niche. They’ll survive, serving enthusiasts, but general car buyers aren’t heading to a newsagent to buy one. As with cars themselves, we’ve entered a new paradigm.

The online game in town

With the huge diversity of resources online, carmakers will have to do more to attract buyers. Globally, there are currently around 2 billion websites, so there’s a lot of noise to cut through. And with customer retention becoming even more important in the car market, brands need to do something to ensure that owners stick with them when the time comes for an upgrade.

I’ve recently started talking to car brands about their content requirements and been a little surprised how many people in the industry don’t seem to understand what I’m trying to pitch to them.

The biggest barrier is that they can’t seem to see beyond product-oriented content that communicates their marketing messages. Many brands talk about storytelling, but don’t seem to understand that the stories they’re telling just aren’t very interesting to consumers. They’re all the same boring stories that come down to one underlying message: our car is great – buy it.

I’ve been mulling over this and realised that there’s a useful analogy from the world of TV and film scriptwriting, where storytelling is the be-all and end-all.

Show, don’t tell

One of the most important aspects of successful scriptwriting is exposition, which is how to give important story-related information to the viewer. The golden rule when writing a script is show, don’t tell.

The best films and TV shows rely on creative ways of explaining plot points or background information, rather than having a character doing so in a speech that holds up the action. It could be in the form of narration from a character (Ray Liotta in Goodfellas), a montage (the beginning of Up!), or a character speaking directly to camera – known as breaking the fourth wall – as in The Big Short (I especially like Margot Robbie and Selena Gomez interventions).

The opposite is what’s known as an exposition dump, when a character makes a speech revealing a load of important information. This invariably turns the viewer off.

OK, so what has this got to do with content marketing for brands?

Just as exposition dumps turn off the viewer in a film or TV programme, so obvious expository branding does the same in content marketing. Your branding needs to be subtle, to the point of non-existence: hosting content on your site is all the connection you need. Your brand is there on the page, but it doesn’t need to be crowbarred into the content. The content can cover any subject that you know your customers are interested in, thanks to CRM data or profiling, and can also reflect your brand values: it could be design, sustainability, travel or something family-oriented. Whatever it is, you don’t need to relate it to one of your products: the connection has already been made in the mind of the consumer.

The sugar-coated pill

What’s important is that the content isn’t something that obviously benefits you as a brand. You’re giving your customers something that they want to know, not something that you want them to know.

As Alfred Hitchcock said: “Exposition is a pill that has to be sugar-coated. In other words, you are giving them some information, but at the time you give it, it must appear to be something else.”

In the case of brand content, you’re showing your customers what your brand is doing for them, not telling them.

One of the four principles of exposition is disguising information: that’s what brands need to do with content. The fact that you are telling these stories to your customers without seeming to want anything in return from them, is much more effective than just telling them stories that obviously benefit your brand.

Of course, I’m telling you this without trying to persuade you that you need my content consultancy services. That would be telling, not showing.