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Rethinking Website Content: Content That Entertains
By Jerry Bader (c) 2007

In case you've missed it, the Web has changed; it seems like
just yesterday it was good enough to take all your brochures and
advertising collaterals and convert them to digital format, add
a little search engine optimization, throw-in a little PHP
programming and bingo, you've got a website. And if you wanted
to show how cutting edge your company was, maybe you'd add a
little dash of Flash animation, or some royalty free music. Well
here's a bulletin from the frontlines, that isn't going to
cut-it in the new multimedia Web-business environment.

Almost daily I receive emails from people asking me to review
their websites and tell them why they can't convert visitors to
customers even when they are attracting significant numbers of
visitors on a regular basis to their sites.

The answer is both simple and complex: simple, because these
websites fail to communicate the company's message in a
meaningful manner to their visitors, which means no dialog is
opened, and without a dialog, no business can be done; and
complex, because the implementation of the solution requires a
new way of thinking about communicating with your audience using
sophisticated presentation techniques that put a higher premium
on creativity than they do on facts, figures and old-school
direct marketing tactics.

If you are looking for a mantra to begin any new website
initiative or to correct an existing website disaster: Think
Audience Not Customers.

New Words For A New Web-Business Environment

In the past while I've run across three newly coined words or
phrases (Communitainment, Branded Entertainment, and
Snack-o-tainment) that attempt to capture the fundamental
change that has taken place among Web-user expectations.

All of the new terms have two things in common: one, they
require the marketer to think of website visitors as an audience
and not as customers; and two, they all require the marketer to
use entertainment techniques as the basis for delivering content.

Communication + Entertainment + Community

The Piper Jaffray Internet Media and Marketing research team
recently released a report entitled 'The User Revolution' in
which Safa Rashtchy coined the concept of 'Communitainment,' a
blending of the words communication and entertainment. Rashtchy
uses the term to denote the "melding of communication, community,
and entertainment," as a new formula for implementing the
delivery of marketing content.

The report points out that "Video ads will be the driver of the
next major growth in brand advertising" with the Web being "the
leading medium at work and the second leading medium at home
behind television."

For any business that thought they could conduct business as
usual, this should be a wake-up call. The Web has changed: the
market is no longer content to be informed, they must be
seduced, and you are not going to seduce them with key-word
density and biz-speak.

Contrary to popular belief you can deliver a marketing message
faster, more powerfully, and with better recall using creative
video presentations than you can with a page of text. Now no one
is saying you shouldn't have text on your site, but your copy
better be damn interesting and well written if you expect anyone
to actually read it.

Meaning + Sharing + Experience

The idea of 'Communitainment' provides a conceptual framework
for creating Web-video presentations that work: your business
communication must convey meaning through a focused presentation
that uses all the various techniques available to the savvy
Web-producer; your audience must see enough value in the
presentation that they are willing to contact others in their
colleague-community and share it; and lastly, the delivery of
the message must create a memorable entertaining experience
associated with the product or service provided.

Branded Entertainment

Leta Baker writes in her 'Adobe Magazine' article 'Creative
Persuasion: The Rise of Branded Entertainment' about her concept
of using entertaining online video presentations as a means of
effectively creating brand awareness.

What Baker is talking about is video that doesn't hit you over
the head with a hard-sell sales pitch or bore you to death with
meaningless platitudes, but rather presents entertaining short
programs that companies can attach their brand to so viewers
gain a memorable positive impression of your company. This is a
long-term strategy that takes into account the reality that not
every genuine prospect that comes to your website is ready to buy
your product at that moment but might, when and if they remember
who you are, when they are ready to buy.

There are many ways to implement this 'branded entertainment'
concept and they all don't have to be completely devoid of
salesmanship. The Apple iPod commercials are an example of what
I would call 'branded entertainment,' even if Leta Baker would
object. Unlike most commercials that people race to avoid, the
iPod commercials are actually anticipated: people want to know
what Apple is going to come up with next, and the result: iPod
has the lion's share of the MP3 player market.

The Apple Macintosh commercials are another form of 'branded
entertainment' that involves a sales pitch. Here we have an
ongoing campaign with well-developed characters that the
audience has gotten to know over the length of the campaign. The
audience looks forward to what these characters are going to do
next. This does not mean that every PC owner is going to run out
and buy a Mac, but over time Apple is getting people to recognize
their product as an alternative.

Because the commercials are entertaining, people are listening
and waiting for the next installment of the campaign. Audiences
are getting the message and that is all any good marketing
campaign can achieve.

And here is the big hurdle for many small businesses: good
marketing requires patience and should be aimed at opening a
dialog, not just making a quick sale.

Most website sales pitches are like bad 'pick-up' lines: crude
and ineffective; an audience needs to be wooed with tender loving
care before you can expect to see any results. If you're not
willing to invest the time and creativity in opening a dialog
with your audience, you can forget about using the Internet as a
marketing tool.

Snack-o-tainment: Fast Food Entertainment

The term 'Snack-o-tainment' was used by Nancy Miller in her
'Wired' magazine article 'Manifesto for a New Age" in which she
equates consumption of new media to societies addiction to fast
food. If the audience is addicted to entertaining media, we as
marketers must feed that addiction.

It wasn't that long ago that the biggest objection to online
video was it took too long to load; now we see it compared to
fast food. The fact is video can deliver a meaningful message
in the quickest possible way because it conveys content using
the full arsenal of communication tools.

We can look to television for a blueprint of how to deliver
these bite-sized morsels of corporately nutritious, entertaining,
marketing manna.

The thirty-second commercial is an example of just how much
memorable content can be crammed into a short period of time if
a little entertaining creativity is added to the mix. And unlike
television, there is no costly premium associated with time on
the Internet, so content can be as long or short as the message
requires.

A campaign based on this formula can come complete with
plot-lines, character development, and signature music all
designed to deliver your marketing message in an entertaining
way that will not only get stuck in your audience's memory, but
will be anticipated by that same audience. The famous 'Taster's
Choice' soap opera style campaign of years ago was one of the
best examples of combining entertainment with a commercial
message.

Even the lowly jingle can be resurrected to provide some 'sit-up
and take notice' to an otherwise mundane presentation. You would
be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't know the recipe for
MacDonald's Big Mac, based on their fabulously successful
commercials, even though they haven't been aired in years. In
fact MacDonald's current roster of commercials are so forgettable
that you wonder why they haven't brought the old standby back to
life.

Another bit of delicious marketing entertainment was the series
of Chili's Restaurant commercials featuring various singers
interpreting their 'Baby Back Ribs' jingle, which provided far
more entertainment in thirty seconds than a full CD of Britney
Spears. More importantly that infectious 'baby back ribs' song
has become deeply rooted in the public's subconscious, and when
the inevitable question comes up, 'where are we going to eat?'
that jingle starts playing in our heads. If you want to be
successful, learn from what works.

Can You Afford To Wait

If your business is expanding as fast as it can with an
ever-growing list of customers and continuously increasing
profits, then perhaps you can afford to ignore the changes
taking place, and the expectations of your audience. But if
things could be better, and if you yearn to improve your
Web-marketing, then you have to adjust to new ways of delivering
content.

You can't let out-dated thinking get in your way. There is a
difference between twenty year's experience, and one year's
experience repeated twenty times. There is no point in
continuing to repeat old methods that no longer work.

You know things have changed so get ready to deliver your
content in a way that will allow your company to become the
next great Web success story.
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Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design
firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit
http://www.mrpwebmedia.com, http://www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads,
http://www.136words.com, and http://www.sonicpersonality.com.
Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.
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