Entertainment Marketing - The Ecosystem around Event Marketing and Digital Marketing

In this blogpost I will take a deeper dive into the ecosystem of Entertainment Marketing.

 

The basics of the concept is that spammy advertising does not work anymore - we can all agree that classic advertising is dead. 

 

Time is very valuable to people, as we are all busy busy busy. So, brands interrupting people in their valuable moment of free time is kind of a crime. It makes brands repulsive and unattractive.

 

So, my concept is that brands should entertain people in stead of interrupting them. 

 

When organizing events, brands understand that they need to have a fluent check in, good looking crew, amazing food, instagrammable drinks, some music entertainment and that they can not sell on their customers right away. Thanks to you event managers, brands entertain via event marketing. It creates strong relationships. Which result into sales afterwards.

 

But in a surprising way, when brands are active on digital media, they advertise. They sell. They spam. The conclusion of brands is then that digital media are still immature. And so they keep pouring money into classic advertisings.

 

When you watch and read posts about digital marketing, you will notice that almost all posts are about the technical hacks of digital media : how to SEO, how to growth hack, how to automize, how to trick the algorithms. 

 

Never do digital marketers talk about how to entertain an audience on digital media. Or how to create an emotion. Or how to build an actual real human relationship with a potential audience. 

 

That is why I came up with the idea of SOCIAL TV. It is the creation of entertaining content for digital media. As if you would watch TV, listen to the radio or read your favorite magazine. 

 

To me entertainment is a word that covers more than the “fun” part of entertainment. Today, when I talk about entertainment, it is about everything that could possible interest a potential audience of a brand. In short, serious economic news can also be entertainment.

 

To know what kind of content a brand should create, we should have a deep dive into the DNA of the brand. What are the values of the brand, what does it stand for, what are the target groups. You know, classic marketing strategy. 

 

Then it is about empathy. The target group you want to reach : what are they interested in? What do they love to see or watch?

 

Let’s take a couple of examples to make this clear.

 

Let’s take Dom Pérignon, the famous champagne brand. 

 

What is the Brand DNA? Luxury, high class taste, exclusive, high end, premium, a top culinary product. It is a champagne for “the ones who know”, according to Dom Pérignon.

The target group are men and women between 40 and 55 years old, well settled if not rich, enjoying exclusive food and drinks, loving exceptional travels.

 

So. Dom Pérignon could create a very high end exclusive travel program. 5 destinations like Tel Aviv, Porto, Sao Poalo, New York and Marrakech. 

 

Every episode is about the best hotels, the most exclusive restaurants, art fairs and top butler services. Pure entertainment, pure fun to watch. Not once, and that is very important, not once Dom Pérignon is mentioned or shown. Because then it is spammy and people now have a sixth sense for spammy stuff.

 

The episodes can be divided into 100 pieces of content : the full video on Linkedin - smaller videos on instagram TV - inspiring pictures with a great caption on Instagram - blogposts on Medium and smaller blogposts and “behind the scenes” via emailmarketing - even some episodes can be transcribed into a podcast.

 

It is a relatively small investment for a lot of content.

 

In the same way, Deutsche Bank could be creating a video series in which they interview 52 top CEO’s a year. 1 for each week of the year. Again - every video can be transcribed in a podcast, a blogpost and smaller pieces of content for a daily instagram picture.

 

This way, Deutsche Bank and Dom Pérignon will be able to really attract and keep the attention of an audience. And that is where all the magic happens. Once you have the attention, you can start to build the relationship and go for sales. 

After 5 pieces of entertaining content, you can clearly ask for a call to action : a sale, an appointment or a subscription.

 

People understand you need to do business; so do not be afraid to insert a call to action from time to time. As long as you continue to entertain on the other side.

 

Even small brands with no budget can do this : you can all film with your iPhone, create a podcast or a blog. 

 

The differentiator is creativity!

 

And that’s the link to event marketers. We are the most creative in business.

 

We know how to entertain during events. Now, let’s learn how to entertain on digital media. And we will be the kings of marketing. 

 

We will be the experts of Entertainment Marketing. An ecosystem around entertainment, generating data and creating relationships. 

Entertainment on a daily basis through digital media. And entertainment on more special occasions through event marketing.

 

I hope it will inspire you to be a better event manager.

 

Thanks for reading and let’s connect on Linkedin or Instagram! 

Written by Laurent Lootens, owner and Founder of Lapin Quotidien and So-Phi.