It’s interesting that my two sons are playing with some of the same toys that I did when I was their age. This is especially true for the Transformers. I will admit that today’s Transformers are a bit more advanced, but the premise is the same. I brought my old Transformers down from the attic, which proved to be mildly thrilling to my sons.
The hot toy my son Joshua just received is called Ultimate Bumblebee. Ultimate Bumblebee is a Transformer that turns into a 2008 Camaro. Bumblebee talks on command, and will play certain songs depending on what you do with it.
One of the songs it plays is Devo’s “Whip it,” a very popular song in the early 80s (that I know by heart). Bumblebee plays two different, five-second versions of the song (you can hear both in the above video clip).
Here’s the content marketing/branded content lesson in all of this…
By giving away those two relevant (through Bumblebee’s radio), short audio clips as part of Ultimate Bumblebee, my kids starting singing the song, as well as asking me more about it. From that discussion, Joshua started to search the Internet for Devo’s “Whip It” (the song copyright is on the outside of the box), and we watched the video on YouTube (possibly a bad parenting example there).
They liked it so much, we decided to buy the song from iTunes. Who knows what’s next…Devo fan club perhaps?
After the experience, I realized that this was the perfect example of how content marketing and branded content works.
- Provide valuable, compelling content that is relevant to the customer. (Devo’s song coming from Bumblebee’s radio made perfect sense. It was also in line with Bumblebee’s personality [I won't go too deep into that]).
- Take away all barriers to the customer sampling or engaging with the content. Make it free and accessible.
- Make sure you are not selling (this was more like a free demo, or sampling).
- If the customer’s interest is peaked, make sure they can easily find more information on your “for sale” products. (Devo’s information was on the back of the Ultimate Bumblebee box.)
- Product should be easy to buy (took 3 seconds to buy the song through iTune).
Above is the perfect scenario from initiation to engagement to purchase. Now, I have no idea if that’s why Devo gave the rights to Hasbro for the piece, but I can only imagine the number of Dads around the world who are singing “Whip It” to their kids. God help us all.
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3 Comments
Joe, this is another great example of the Guitar Hero phenomenon that’s driving a lot of old music sales right now. Bands like Lynyrd Skynyrd are seeing huge sales jumps when their songs are included in video games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Here’s a PC World article that describes more and gives some data:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,141713/article.html
A 31-48% jump in Metallica sales? That’s what I’d call effective content marketing.
Worth pointing out the whole Transformers/Chevy tie-in which in and of itself a major branded entertainment/branded content play. I won’t brag about which Detroit-based ad agency brokered the deal!
Worth pointing out the whole Transformers/Chevy tie-in which in and of itself a major branded entertainment/branded content play. I won’t brag about which Detroit-based ad agency brokered the deal!