Experts point to brands like Red Bull, Dove, GoPro, War­by Park­er, ESPN, Chipo­tle and Oreo as exam­ples of those that are get­ting con­tent mar­ket­ing right. So how can your brand or busi­ness cre­ate com­pa­ra­ble con­tent, deter­mine which plat­forms are right, and cut through noise to engage your tar­get audi­ences?

Great brand­ed con­tent will inevitably find its audi­ence because con­sumers are nat­u­ral­ly attract­ed to it. That’s the good news, at least accord­ing to Jonathan Perel­man, vice pres­i­dent of Buz­zFeed Motion Pic­tures, who was one of the speak­ers at Social Media Week in New York. But great con­tent is the pre­req­ui­site.

“If the sto­ry is great, the plat­form is almost sec­ondary,” agrees anoth­er speak­er, Pauline Mal­colm, vice pres­i­dent of agency strat­e­gy and devel­op­ment at short form video firm Mak­er Stu­dios. So brands must start out by essen­tial­ly going back to the art of sto­ry­telling.

And, no mat­ter what plat­form they choose to tell their sto­ries, the basic prin­ci­ples of mar­ket­ing remain the same, said Jonathan Hall, pres­i­dent of con­sult­ing at brand devel­op­ment and mar­ket­ing ser­vices firm Added Val­ue: Under­stand human truths and con­nect with con­sumers.

Here are the new rules of con­tent cre­ation these mar­ket­ing experts and oth­ers shared through­out the con­fer­ence.

1. Figure Out Who Your Brand Really Is

Har­ry Bern­stein, cre­ative direc­tor and founder dig­i­tal agency The 88, said that Insta­gram in par­tic­u­lar has revealed which brands don’t under­stand them­selves. In oth­er words, cam­era brand GoPro’s Insta­gram feed has lots of action scenes and eye­glass brand War­by Park­er has “a bunch of nerds with glass­es,” he said. “It’s authen­tic and com­ing out. But if you don’t have a good under­stand­ing of your­self, you’re not going to con­nect with con­sumers,” which, he said, is a prob­lem for some big brands.

“It’s like you can’t love some­one until you love your­self. That’s it for brands, too,” Bern­stein said.

2. Produce Content That Reflects Who Your Brand Really Is

Per­sua­sion mod­els of old “sur­vived way past their sell-by dates because they suit­ed brand own­ers,” Hall said. “But in this day and age, it’s who you real­ly are that counts. Talk is less mean­ing­ful. What you do has more impact. And the mag­ic lies in the com­bi­na­tion.”

He uses the exam­ple of per­son­al care brand Dove, as well as fem­i­nine hygiene brand Always, which he said more or less copied the for­mer in its #Likea­Girl effort.

“Dove defied cat­e­go­ry norms and established…that the world would be a bet­ter place if they made more women feel more beau­ti­ful every day. And, from this, came the Cam­paign for Real Beau­ty,” Hall said.

Relat­ed to this is the Dove Self-Esteem Fund, which was cre­at­ed in 2006 to “act as an agent of change to inspire and edu­cate girls and women about a wider def­i­n­i­tion of beau­ty,” the brand says.

And, tied to the Self-Esteem Fund is the Dove Body­Think pro­gram, an edu­ca­tion­al tool for teach­ers and youth work­ers that is a “com­mit­ment to pro­mot­ing pos­i­tive body image mes­sages to young peo­ple and the broad­er com­mu­ni­ty.”

3. Give Consumers More

Accord­ing to Hall, there’s a lot of talk about the shift in pow­er from brands to con­sumers, but not as much about the shift in the val­ue equa­tion. In oth­er words, in order to get more from con­sumers, brands and mar­keters need to give con­sumers more of gen­uine val­ue. This, he said, becomes increas­ing­ly impor­tant as the touch points between brands and con­sumers frag­ment and com­pe­ti­tion for con­sumer atten­tion becomes increas­ing­ly intense.

“To achieve this, stop think­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion and start think­ing con­tent with gen­uine val­ue in people’s lives,” Hall said.

He uses the exam­ple of ener­gy drink brand Red Bull, which has aligned itself with extreme sports and cre­ates a vol­ume of con­tent so sub­stan­tial that it owns its own media house, oper­ates a TV sta­tion, prints a mag­a­zine and pro­duces doc­u­men­taries. The brand runs more than 900 domains under redbull.com and is one of the top five sports pro­duc­ers on YouTube glob­al­ly, he said.

“Red Bull is a media empire that hap­pens to sell a bev­er­age,” Hall added.

4. Identify And Fulfill Unmet Consumer Needs

Matt Brit­ton, CEO of cre­ative and tech­nol­o­gy agency MRY, said mar­keters need to look at who their cus­tomers are and what they care about and ask them­selves how they can fill any unmet needs via con­tent.

“If a brand can deliv­er upon that unmet need, it won’t be noise,” he added.

5. Take Risks

“Flat­ness is fail­ure,” said Matt Bruhn, senior vice pres­i­dent of glob­al mar­ket­ing at vod­ka brand Smirnoff. “If you’re deliv­er­ing vanil­la con­tent, you’re wast­ing every dol­lar.”

In oth­er words, brands that aren’t will­ing to take risks now and again cre­ate con­tent that gets lost and they might as well pro­duce noth­ing, he said.

“Bad con­tent is use­less every­where,” Bruhn added.

6. Allow Consumers Some Control

Brands’ ever-reduc­tive focus on effi­cien­cy means the stream­lin­ing of con­sumer expe­ri­ences and the dan­ger of this is that brand­ed ini­tia­tives become less spe­cial­ized and there­fore less rel­e­vant to the con­sumer (i.e., more flat and per­son­al­i­ty-free rather than per­son­al­ized as con­sumers want), Hall said. How­ev­er, big data can help bring val­ue to con­sumers the way ESPN does with its app, which pro­vides sports feeds based on a user’s favorite team or sport and helps con­sumers nar­row down to the type of con­tent they want like scores and analy­sis.

7. Brands Are People (And Vice Versa)

Brit­ton points to Mark Cuban, who has more fol­low­ers than the Dal­las Mav­er­icks, and Bill Gates, who has more fol­low­ers than Microsoft and said, “It has always been more about indi­vid­u­als than brands that have reach.”

In oth­er words, the dis­tinc­tion between peo­ple and brands is gone and, like peo­ple, brands must have to have some­thing unique that adds val­ue.

8. Think Like Entertainment Brands

The atten­tion span of con­sumers has become T‑shaped – they scan con­tent and dive deep only when they find some­thing of inter­est, Hall said. That means brands can no longer dic­tate how con­sumers inter­act with con­tent and need to rethink their approach, cre­at­ing con­tent with no begin­ning or end and that can be joined at any point.

He said enter­tain­ment brands like “Game of Thrones” are par­tic­u­lar­ly suc­cess­ful here, but, so, too is quick ser­vice chain Chipo­tle, which “has done an inter­est­ing job of think­ing like an enter­tain­ment brand and apply­ing sim­i­lar prin­ci­ples.”

That includes the brand’s Scare­crow film, app and game, which, Hall said, “rein­forced the brand’s com­mit­ment to cul­ti­vate a bet­ter world by bring­ing food with integri­ty.”
https://youtube.com/watch?v=lUtnas5ScSE

9. Spark Conversation

Con­sumers share con­tent and ampli­fy it as a form of a com­mu­ni­ca­tion in order to form com­mu­ni­ty and to build per­son­al brands, BuzzFeed’s Perel­man said.

Fur­ther, brands that cre­ate engag­ing con­tent the right way are able to ignite con­ver­sa­tion so that it lives beyond the point of sim­ply watch­ing a video, he added. And they can do that, in part, by ask­ing what’s in it for con­sumers and start­ing from the point of view of the con­sumer and why they would want to consume/share a piece of con­tent.

10. Content Is King, But Distribution Is Queen

And com­ing from the assump­tion that a brand has great con­tent because “you can’t have ter­ri­ble con­tent and amaz­ing dis­tri­b­u­tion,” Perel­man said brands need to think about two dif­fer­ent kinds of con­tent sources he calls the Gar­den and the Stream.

The Gar­den is where con­sumers specif­i­cal­ly go to get a piece of con­tent, like Net­flix. The Stream, on the oth­er hand, comes to con­sumers like news feeds on social net­works.

“When you’re cre­at­ing con­tent for those two extremes, it’s very, very dif­fer­ent and you have to under­stand what it means when con­sumers are com­ing to you…as opposed to some­one who is just falling upon some­thing,” Perel­man said. “When a friend shares some­thing with you, there is an implied endorse­ment and when the friend adds you in a com­ment, you will engage and watch.”

11. Simplicity And Surprise

Perelman’s Two Ss of Sto­ries are Sim­plic­i­ty – “I think we over­com­pli­cate every­thing in life,” he said – and Sur­prise.

“It’s rare that we’re sur­prised nowa­days, but when we are sur­prised, that’s when you lean in and engage longer,” Perel­man said. “If you think about sim­plic­i­ty and sur­prise, it cre­ates stick­i­ness and you want to engage with it.”

He said BuzzFeed’s Things Every­body Does But Does­n’t Talk About video with Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, which encour­ages con­sumers to vis­it www.healthcare.gov and has more than 50 mil­lion views, is a good exam­ple of con­tent that mar­ries these ele­ments.

12. Make Your Content A Welcome Distraction

Con­sumers are active­ly look­ing to inter­act with con­tent when they are killing time, such as when they’re wait­ing in line at a cof­fee shop. Video con­tent that can be con­sumed in a few min­utes and proves a wel­come dis­trac­tion is a good fit for both brand and con­sumer, Perel­man not­ed.

13. Generate Content With Specificity

If brands focus on the idea of cre­at­ing some­thing with speci­fici­ty, such as a video about being left-hand­ed, right­ies don’t care, but it means a lot to the intend­ed audi­ence, Perel­man said. It also serves as form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion the intend­ed audi­ence will share among each oth­er because they can relate to it.

“The pow­er of the social web today means speci­fici­ty can spread,” Perel­man said. “What we’ve found is when you cre­ate some­thing that high­lights a group of peo­ple who are oth­er­wise under­rep­re­sent­ed, that [makes the intend­ed audi­ence] say, ‘Oh, that’s me.’”

14. Prepare For Big Moments That Might Yield Content

Bonin Bough, vice pres­i­dent of glob­al media and con­sumer engage­ment at food and bev­er­age con­glom­er­ate Mon­delēz Inter­na­tion­al, said every­one wants an Oreo Super Bowl moment now, but “what peo­ple don’t see is the back­ground and will­ing­ness to pre­pare.”

To wit: Oreo’s 2013 Super Bowl prepa­ra­tion includ­ed its Dai­ly Twist ini­tia­tive, in which it cre­at­ed 100 pieces of con­tent for 100 days and helped build what Bough calls “mus­cle mem­o­ry” in terms of what legal and cre­ative teams need­ed to be in the room to push out con­tent on the fly.

“So in the war room for the Super Bowl, we were pre­pared. We knew we had a shot,” he said. “You can’t win the Super Bowl if you haven’t trained and played all the games.”

At the same time, that real-time con­tent still has to be rel­e­vant and engag­ing.

Brit­ton calls the Oscars after 2013 Super Bowl the “dark­est days in the his­to­ry of adver­tis­ing” because every brand was try­ing to emu­late Oreo by push­ing out what he referred to as “clip art” and, he said, “none of it added val­ue and it was all noise.”

15. Don’t Be A Nuisance

Smirnoff is for­tu­nate because it is a social brand by its nature, but it nev­er­the­less still tries not to insert itself where con­sumers don’t want it, Bruhn said.

“You want pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences and rein­force­ments and if you arbi­trar­i­ly force your­self in where you’re not want­ed, you’re like­ly to cre­ate a neg­a­tive expe­ri­ence,” Bruhn said. “We try to find rea­sons we should be here and ask, ‘What’s the util­i­ty we pro­vide?’”

What’s more, brands that make good con­tent on the right plat­forms won’t be dis­rup­tive.

Every brand won’t have a right to be on, say, Insta­gram, but fash­ion, beau­ty, cos­met­ics and auto brands can play there just like they play in print, Brit­ton said. And if they do a good job, they won’t be intru­sive.

On a relat­ed note, brands don’t have to be on every sin­gle plat­form, Hall said. Mar­keters should look at media plan­ning data to under­stand where con­sumers are active and con­sum­ing con­tent and deter­mine which plat­forms are right.

16. Steer Clear Of Dark Social

Net­works like Whis­per, Snapchat and Yik Yak are anony­mous net­works and brands don’t have a role there, Brit­ton said.

“Con­sumers don’t want brands to have a role there. It’s not about the aggre­ga­tion of data like Face­book,” he added.

17. Consider New Ways To Use Platforms, Distribute Content

Many mar­keters can’t get over the self-destruc­tive nature of Snapchat, but Hall said to look at it as an oppor­tu­ni­ty for teasers, leaked con­tent or behind-the-scenes con­tent, which could be an ide­al fit for some brands.

As the mar­ket moves toward a sin­gle screen per con­sumer, Lisa Wein­stein, pres­i­dent of glob­al dig­i­tal, data and ana­lyt­ics at media com­mu­ni­ca­tions agency Star­com Medi­aVest Group, said there is room for a lot of win­ners in video. Smart con­tent cre­ators, she said, are the ones that are look­ing at new ways to reach con­sumers with video and are lean­ing in to new ways to dis­trib­ute con­tent.

“I think YouTube and Face­book are mak­ing TV net­works ner­vous. They do what the Super Bowl does once a year every day,” Brit­ton said. “Ulti­mate­ly where eye­balls are is on YouTube and Face­book. If I’m cre­at­ing con­tent, there’s no way I’m shop­ping to a net­work these days. I’m going to a dig­i­tal plat­form and build­ing my own audi­ence.”

18. Crowdsource Video Production

For a brand with lim­it­ed resources in terms of pho­tog­ra­phy and video bud­gets, Brit­ton rec­om­mends crowd­sourc­ing to get con­tent made.

“Mil­len­ni­als are mov­ing to a free agent soci­ety,” he said. “Crowd­sourc­ing is so under­used.”