Sponsored Content: Am I the Greatest?
Muhammad Ali was a loudmouth. His “I am the greatest” is legendary. We loved him for his arrogance, because he delivered what he promised. And those were different times. Roger Federer, another great one, is called G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All Time), but he would probably never call himself that. Especially in Switzerland, what Erich Joachimsthaler of the New York agency Vivaldi Parters summed up so well in a talk for brands applies: “Stop trying to be awesome – start being awesomely useful!” This seems to have arrived in brand management, but less so in sponsored content. Here, self-praise is elevated to a principle. What is written in purchased editorial space is often “overleaf reading”. Want a concrete example? Vaudoise Insurance – a cooperative – buys editorial space in the “NZZ am Sonntag”. Headline: “Cooperatives make their customers happier”. Lead: “Because Vaudoise is a cooperative, private and business customers benefit from premium reductions year after year – 220 million Swiss francs have been refunded in this way since 2010”. Aha – G.O.A.T… do you want to read on? Not really. The article was written by “NZZ Content Solutions”. The same company penned a full-page report for Tirol Tourismus with the seductive title: “Wine enjoyment in the best location”. Now, we don’t know whether the customers are pushing for these superlatives and making the deal dependent on them. What is certain, however, is that such headlines diminish the impact.
But there is another way. A successful example of this is the newspaper supplement produced by Mobiliar. Headline: “He just wants to play”. Editorial: “How smart robots really are. And why the danger of artificial intelligence is not where we think it is.” The lead question: “Are robots the better people?” Of course, the issue also includes articles on Mobiliar’s cyber insurance and its digital legal guide. And the roadside assistance app “CleverDrive”. But these services are surrounded by stories like this one: “Alexa, tell me about life” – an attempt at a philosophical conversation with the virtual assistant. The editorial concept comes from the Zurich agency Panda & Pinguin GmbH. Well done!
Heads can use a small example to prove that people buy when editorial value is given as a gift: For our client ZeitZoneZurich, we wrote not about the watches ZeitZoneZurich reviews, but about Paul Newman’s Rolex, for example, which was auctioned off for an astronomical amount, putting the value of a watch into perspective. This one story received record-breaking clicks on social media. After it was published, this story and others like it sent the order volume of the small, fine watchmaker through the roof. What works for brand management also works for sponsored content: Know your target audience, find relevant content, create curiosity. And for heaven’s sake, don’t make yourself bigger than you are, but more useful than you are.