This month, professional photographers take to Instagram on behalf of a Canadian supply company, Stephen Colbert just can’t stay away from TV, and GE gives people a drone’s eye view of all the cool stuff they make.
The Herschel Supply Company is all about three things. One, they make travel goods. Duffle bags, wallets, backpacks, pouches, sleeves—if it helps you get up and go, they make it. Two: their style is rugged. And three: they’re so Canadian that they bleed maple syrup (though their products are all made in China). So how do you combine travel, ruggedness, and Canadiana and get content marketing? Well, you send six professional photographers to Newfoundland & Labrador and set up this awesome instagram feed. (Two words: choreographed whales.)
One quibble: If you look at the posts on NL Tourism’s social properties, you’d be hard pressed to figure out Herschel Supply’s role in this effort other than providing a blog on which to repost the pics.
AT&T doesn’t want you texting, posting, emailing, or whatever while you’re driving, and they’re happy to use content to get that message across. They started two years ago with a must-see Werner Herzog documentary, and they haven’t stopped. This piece is perhaps the strongest yet, and demonstrates how one careless text can forever change not only the life of the texter, but of many others as well.
In an ironic twist, TD borrows interest from an Internet meme, #TBT. The bank ambushes long-time customers with retrospectives of their lives and kind words from loved ones. It’s touching and it doesn’t come across as phony, which no doubt explains why it’s racked up almost 5 million views. But we’re think the business connection is a bit tenuous.
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert debuts this fall, so what’s Colbert up to this summer? Why, posting video after video on YouTube. He’s been freaking out about the DOW, eating lunch, and hosting a cable access show in Monroe, Michigan (drop what you’re doing and watch all 41 excellent minutes of it). Hey, who says you can’t market content with more content?
Check its much lauded blog and you’ll see that General Electric can’t wait to tell you about its subsea machines, jet engines, or wind turbines. But they in an ongoing effort to push the limits of content marketing, they don’t stop there. Which is why this is on our honour role.
Everyone is trying to figure out what to do with Periscope, the live feed app from Twitter. GE, with its considerable online audience, thought it had a way to use this application (in search of a marketing purpose). So during #DRONEWEEK, which happened in July, nerds could use the live streaming app to look at GE facilities from the perspective of their fleet of drones, complete with pilot commentary and expert interviews. It all sounds so cool. And the videos are interesting, if you’re into locomotives or really big windmills.
But the view counts? Not that interesting.
“A” for effort, GE. While the reach of your campaign may have disappointed, it certainly makes a point about your commitment to innovation…and to the latest social media apps.
Lead image by Dylan Furst on Instagram.