Want to experience remarkable content marketing? Check out a company with a strong point-of-view, willing to express it using digital media: Patagonia. The end result makes for an engaging and memorable customer experience!
As Digiday's Inside Patagonia's Content Machine explains, "Patagonia has long gone its own way in marketing its products. Before “brands as publishers” was a catchphrase, Patagonia dedicated 50 percent of the pages in its print catalogs to product-free, long-form essays."
The article explores many of the digital tools Patagonia uses - not to sell. Rather to express perspectives.
Visit Patagonia's various Tumblr pages. For example, Patagonia Surfing on Tumblr. Real people. Real stories. No hard sell. Perspectives, yes.
Many brands feel like they are faced with a dilemma: They can either make great content or try to sell products. Boland doesn’t see it that way. He sees great content and conversations around products as something that naturally occurs, without the need for marketers to be so heavy-handed.
Patagonia is unique, too, in its willingness to take a stand. Jonah Peretti, CEO of BuzzFeed, has said that many brands struggle in content because they lack a point of view. That’s clearly not the case with Patagonia. In fact, it’s willing to take political stances, something the overwhelming majority of brands would run from as fast as their feet could take them."
No surprise when you learn more about the company itself (see Patagonia's Founder Is America's Most Unlikely Business Guru). Patagonia's point-of-view starts at the very top of the organization and flows through everyone at the company. No wonder it embraces content marketing which relates directly to the Patagonia customer and fan base, with a distinct perspective on how to express information truly relevant to each.
“Going forward, we’ll be focusing on becoming more efficient in communicating with people in real time,” Boland said. “It gives you a better sense of what customers want and the types of conversation they are willing to have.”
What is your company's point-of-view? How does it relate to your customers? How do you express it in your content marketing?