My parents were children of the Great Depression. They grew up listening to radio for their entertainment. I remember my father buying my brother and me a series of old radio recordings from the 1930s, complete with the product advertisements. Those commercially sponsored shows were cutting edge marketing for the era, and very effective in making lifelong consumers of products from Proctor and Gamble, General Foods, Sunoco and many others who found the golden era of radio golden to their bottom lines as well. (In fact, the term "Soap Opera” is founded in P&G’s soap commercials for products such as Ivory soap and Oxydol detergent on many early radio dramatic serials.) However interesting it was to my father, my brother and I were unwilling to sit and just listen to old radio shows. We had been raised watching television in living color and just could not sit still long enough without a visual to hold our attention. We were living in the seam of one generation’s preferred method of communication to the next.

We find ourselves in the middle of another communication seam now as well. The divide is bigger than going from a TV screen to a mobile phone monitor. It is about having a multitude of choices that were never available with the older media. It is about creating your own experience and your own reality.

My father always told us that TV was the death of imagination. He would say that when you listened to a radio show, you created the sets in your mind. What the characters looked like, what they were wearing, how they moved and interacted with other characters were all a part of what you wanted it to be as you listened. It was interactive. TV did all of that for you and left nothing to the imagination. I suppose he was spot on with his analysis, but it did not stop TV from overtaking radio for prime time programming. And it forever changed the format of radio. Back in the golden age of radio, sponsors of the programs typically wove advertising into the script. For instance, the Jack Benny Show would have Jack taking a phone call while the announcer read the advertising copy. It was an early form of product placement advertising. When radio switched to an all-music format, there became a split in the slick marriage of brand and programming.

Now we are seeing the advent of something much like that old radio sponsorship product placement going on with the new media. For one thing, social media has leaned us away from the hard pitch in advertising towards content marketing – giving advice or perspective from an area of expertise and interweaving the product or service you are selling into the story. That is what early radio advertising did. There are still a few talk radio hosts (Rush Limbaugh comes to mind) who weave the promotion of product into the content of the programming. When they are done well, blogs are using this content/product marketing technique. So are posts on company social networking sites. This goes beyond what TV called product placement, by having a brand show up in a sitcom. This takes a bit more skill than just sitting a bottle on a table and assuming everyone will want to buy it by watching a show. This is using the content around the promotion of the product so it just seems like it is part of regular conversation.

Including this kind of content/product marketing is not something you can relegate to your least experienced employee. Neither is it something you can just toss to your sales team and tell them to make something happen. Your sales staff may have a phenomenal knowledge of your product, but the skill it takes to incorporate product marketing into your content without it seeming like you are selling something typically goes beyond sales staff. Make sure you are investing your marketing dollars in someone who can make that connection without turning every piece into a sales offer sheet. Here are some examples of content marketing from a couple of our clients that have had great success.

Specialized concrete paving

Automated feeder system

As we live out a new marketing era, take some cues from old radio marketing. Engaging the customer without the customer knowing you are selling anything to them is the new media’s calling card.

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Photo by Bluewren