Neal, welcome. You produced a paper called Every Company Wants
to Be a Media Company. Talk to me about that. Yeah. So it's a
crazy idea. In fact, many people here, I'm gonna guess 85% of the
people at this event would be really annoyed by this paper.
So call it revolutionary in some sense. The basic premise of this
paper is that
a few things have happened evolutionarily and one thing has
happened revolutionarily over the last few years that changes
media and changes marketing. You're obviously familiar with
the fact that there's a massive increase in media outlets,
places to watch things, places to read things, media
consumption that's all time high. We also know that data
privacy has become a big issue and therefore it's much harder
than ever to reach a consumer. This has been the basic
evolutionary pieces. The revolution of social media is
that
an individual content creator now commands more attention than
sometimes even a singular news organization or a theatrical
entity. And so what's changed is that the nature of trust and
authenticity now lies in an individual content creator
greater than any professional studio ever before.
So marketers, trying to reach a consumer,
have been buying advertising for decades upon decades
and it's become less effective. And what we're saying is that
actually what you need to do as a marketer is no longer just
simply keep buying ads or even do the old branded content or
advertorial path. It's actually the goal of a company is now to
create an audience using content.
And by creating an audience using content, they get trust,
authenticity in the same way as a Mrs. Dow Jones or Mr. Beast
conveys trust. And only then is it time to launch products and
services to those audiences. How do they do that? Walk me through
the steps. Well, we have a four point plan. I think it's very
early in the development, but effectively it starts with, not
surprisingly, being very clear on who your audience is.
If you're a financial services company and you wanna sell
mutual funds or you wanna sell advice, you've gotta be very
clear who you're talking to. So being crisp about who your
audience is the first thing. The second thing is you need a
thesis for why you're going to be different. What's your voice
that's going to be distinctive? What's your content you're going
to be providing? So for example, if you're about retirement
planning, how are you gonna, what voice are you going to
speak in about retirement planning? And the third is
you've got to build the content studio. That could be as simple
as hiring a series of influencers.
That could be actually having scripted, filmed entertainment.
And then finally, and this is the org piece, we think there
should be a Chief Audience Officer. This CAO, Chief
Audience Officer, you've got to always spell out your acronyms.
Our Chief Audience Officer brings together a lot of the
capabilities that historically have been spread across
different roles in the company. This chief audience officer is,
is responsible for connecting the 'who' with the 'what', and
in this case the 'how' to content.
Then I'm curious, how do you see the relationship between brands
and content creators go in the future? So I actually think the
content creators are tied to the brands. That in a future
scenario, I don't want to talk about specific examples, but in
the future world,
if you're making cereal, for example, before you're even
worrying about what's the next flake you're going to make or
what's the next, you know, savory flavor you're gonna put
in there. You're actually talking to the consumers about
breakfast and you're talking about how they get through the
day and what kind of energy they need. And you have,
They're not necessarily celebrities when they start, but
they become known quantities overtime. And so the brand
actually is known for the audience it's built. And the the
audience is tied to the brand. And it's no longer that the
product is the first thing and the content maybe comes later.
The content comes first with the audience and then the product
later. Yeah. Fascinating. Thank you so much. You are so welcome.