Evander Jolly IV, King of Patria, has written a poem.
It’s called “Prince Farnsworth, Whose Love of Roasted Marshmallows Led Him to a Horrible Fate,” a title which pretty much distills the subject matter of the poem without entirely spoiling the ending.
Listen to King Evander’s poem by clicking here.
King Evander is a character from my humorous Kingdom of Patria series for middle grade readers. If only the goodly folks of Patria would stop electing him to the royal throne (the king of Patria is elected democratically), then King Evander could spend his time doing what he truly loves to do, write poetry. But it’s his very aversion to political power that makes him such an attractive candidate to the Patrian people. For Patrians distrust anyone who wants to hold political office too keenly. There’s much wisdom in that…
The other day I sent a link to a blog post featuring King Evander’s poem to my Trojan Tub Entertainment email list (Trojan Tub is the company I founded in order to pursue all my Patria-related activities). My hope was that the kids and families who have enjoyed my Patria books would press “Play” and enjoy re-entering the world I’ve been creating for them. Would you call what I did “marketing”? Yes, I suppose so. I won’t deny for a moment that a big part of my aim was to keep the name of Patria sweet upon the lips of my readers and ultimately sell more books. But I was aiming for more than that. In sending King Evander’s poem to my list I also wanted to share with them a work of humorous poetry, with accompanying cartoon, simply for the sake of sharing it. Neither in my email nor in the blog post I linked to did I make a pitch for the books. The poem was a gift, one of many I have shared and will continue to share with my readers.
So what can you learn from this for the marketing of your project or organization?
First, marketing today, especially in the digital space, is not chiefly about advertising or publicity as those have been customarily practiced. Marketing today is media creation. Recently my family and I enjoyed Ben Stiller’s movie adaptation of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. One of the final scenes is a comic encounter Walter has in an airport Cinnabon with Todd, a representative of eHarmony, the online dating service. Their being in a Cinnabon is obvious product placement, but we weren’t put off by this because the scene is so funny. Indeed, the fact that they’re eating Cinnabon is part of what makes the scene so funny (“This is frosted heroin,” Todd tells Walter about their danishes). Copyblogger’s Brian Clark, in his new online course, New Rainmaker, talks about a study that concludes that audiences actually prefer product placement in the midst of media they enjoy rather than having products pitched to them by more traditional means.
(By the way, if you’re not following or are not aware of Brian’s FREE New Rainmaker course, then do not pass Go and do not collect $200. Get over there!)
So the point is the following: when we’re engaged with entertaining or informative media, we are more open to the value of a product or service.
Question: How can you turn your marketing into media? What means of media creation do you have at your disposal?
The second takeaway from my sharing of King Evander’s poem is that the media we create needs to tell a story. The digital economy is a connection economy. That means that in the digital space people are not primarily looking to be pitched something (“Hey Tweeps, my book is on sale today at Amazon for just 99 cents!”). It’s not that a direct pitch is such a bad or always untimely thing, but Facebook and Twitter and Google+ and Instagram and Snapchat and your website are primarily platforms of conversation, shared passion, friendship. And what is one of the best ways to connect with people, especially those at a distance and with whom we don’t already have a relationship? Storytelling. The human heart is made to respond to stories. The story of your project or organization needn’t be a work of fiction–though think how funny the Geiko gekko or Flo of the Progressive car insurance ads can be. But your story does have to engage us with the same power that a great work of fiction does.
Related Reading: Why Your Organization Needs to Embrace the Art of Story.
Finally, while the media we create needn’t be given away free, as I did with King Evander’s poem, free doesn’t hurt either. Most people will respond well to generosity. It helps build trust. My attitude in sending along the poem was: “Here’s a poem for you and your family to enjoy. It’s a small thing but I made it for you with care and in anticipation that it would bring smiles to your faces. You owe me nothing for it; it’s simply yours to enjoy. If it inspires you to share it with friends, to go to the Kingdom of Patria website, to buy my books, then that’s great. But nothing is required. I just wanted to reach out in friendship.” Frankly, isn’t that attitude a whole lot easier to adopt than the one that drives you to constantly be hawking your wares?
I recorded and edited King Evander’s poem in my home office using a Snowball microphone and GarageBand. I packaged it into a blog post and linked to that post in my email newsletter that I send out using Mailchimp (the free service). Pretty simple stuff as far as media creation goes.
So what kind of media are you going to make today?
P.S. If you’re interested in signing up for the Trojan Tub Entertainment newsletter, you can sign up on the homepage of the Kingdom of Patria, or send your email address directly to me at [email protected].
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