Or maybe you’d prefer a little wisdom from the man who scared the pants off David Ogilvy
I’ll come to the mystery website in a moment.
First, though, a stroll down memory lane.
When I was young people might sometimes ask you a question like “What is the content of your message?”
Believe it or not, everyone knew what this meant. They wanted to know what you were communicating.
Today, though, people have so far lost touch with plain English that we have this new thing called “content marketing.”
I apologise for boring you with this, but I really don’t want you to waste your time on things that don’t matter when you have important challenges facing you – like how to make a decent living when everything conspires against you.
So I return to the latest time-wasting fad.
Apparently it is now so hard to do what I have done almost every day since the morning I became Assistant Editor of “Cotton” magazine in 1956 that you need help from someone else.
To be specific, you need a Content Strategist, says Dana Larson from San Francisco.
She says a lot of people don’t really know what content strategy is. So someone called Erin Kissane has written a book about it.
Just in case you don’t have enough to read:
“In an industry in which the efforts of visual designers, information architects, front-end developers, and content creators can be seen center-stage when a new website launches, content strategy is a fundamentally backstage discipline.”
This being translated means someone has invented a new job to get paid for – i.e. bossing creative people around. If you think you want to apply, go ahead. You will have lots of meetings, and be really helpful if your people haven’t got a clue.
But if you’d prefer to garner some real pearls of wisdom, I recommend the sayings of Leo Burnett.
I worked for Burnett’s agency in London – creating content – in 1961/2.
Burnett was the only person I recall who put the wind up David Ogilvy … and if you want to know more about him, just go here now.
Alternatively you can go and look at a website that I suspect was put together by some slightly deranged people at http://cavs.mit.edu/index.html
What a terrible website – I’ve just wasted 20 seconds waiting for the rest of it to load and re-align, only to realise it is complete.
Ha ha, Stefan. There’s no end of it. I’ve just been sent the worst up its own arse video which I’ll comment on today. Whaere do all these people come from?
If only we know, we could then do the world a favour and stop it!
I kind of understand where “content marketers” are coming from but am sure that it’s a new way of telling young folks to write interesting stuff. More importantly how to find the great content. I suppose once upon a time we would get sent a free book on meditation, investments, great sex or memory skills.
One of my first great reads was Ogilvy on Advertising. How very little has changed. I have a signed copy of a book from a sales conference my late dad went to, 1000 ways to increase your sales (Alfred Tack 1954). It still has a little envelope in the front containing two different coloured cardboard shapes. One says “Price”, the other “Benefits”.
A real advantage of rehashing ancient knowledge is that it keeps the new media numpties locked up in meetings and out of harms way. I’m only 46 and already a cynic 😉
Surely that website must be a joke. I think I would have a better chance of navigating it if I were on acid…
No; I am sure they are serious. I don’t think any jokes have been told at MIT (intentionally) since 1947
Siloization eh? Where on earth did you find this?! It is worthy nomination for Vincent Flanders’ Web Pages That Suck – Daily Sucker….
I think Siloization is something they used to do to captives in ancient Babylon.
I’d hate to see what the Mundane or Merely average Centers for Visual studies might come up with – ye gods!
Gentlemen, may I refer you to this little video clip from Australia; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNjziSHnA_I
I ssw that a while ago. Funny – and accurate.