In a Red Bull video on the company’s YouTube channel, you don’t often see the drink itself. In a video entitled “Shaun White’s Private Pipe – Red Bull Project X,” American snowboarder Shaun White is transported to a half-pipe on snowy mountain via a helicopter. The helicopter has the Red Bull logo on its side, and as White does tricks on the half-pipe, a Red Bull flag waves in the background.
The video, targeting extreme sports enthusiasts, promotes the Red Bull brand without actually showing a person sip out of a can.
In marketing, that’s called content marketing. An advertiser must offer an advertisement that is essentially content attractive to a target audience. The brand gets its message across by offering something valuable – not just promoting itself.
This has become a powerful type of marketing with the spread of smartphones and the rise of social media.
According to a case study by Weidert Group, a marketing agency, Fisher Tank Company, which produces storage tanks, was able to expand its sales through what it described as an “inbound marketing” strategy: getting more people to visit its website by offering different types of content related to the company’s business.
Robert Rose, chief strategist at Content Marketing Institute (CMI), whose list of consulting clients includes big names such as Dell, Microsoft and NASA, says that such a “disruptive” form of marketing is shifting the way companies around the globe do business, providing customers with new value and experiences – while also promoting a brand.
Korean companies are not strangers to this model, Rose says.
Viva Republica, developer of a P2P mobile payment platform Toss, is an example of a local company shaking up its industries, according to Ross, by providing experiences that customers have not seen before.
Rose is visiting Korea to attend the Content Marketing Asia Forum, the first content marketing forum in the region, as the keynote speaker. The event, organized by CMI, will take place from June 27 to 29 under theme “Content Marking, the Game Changer of Business.”