Why would Starbucks spend millions of dollars on something that doesn't help sell more coffee?

On Feb. 6, Starbucks launched a special Valentine's Day animation called "Beagle Love of Beagle Dogs." the story takes place in a Starbucks coffee shop, and writer Alexa wants a perfect ending to express his heroic and romantic love for his novel, but he can't find the inspiration for writing. Just then, the strange beagle Chet suddenly held a piece of wood, sang a love song and confessed to the beautiful and kind-hearted brown bear store manager Julie:

"although I am very ordinary

But you see, I can cut all the wood into the shape of loving you.

Today I'm going to give you my care. please give me a chance! "

This animation is the end of Starbucks' original mini animation "1st & Main" series. A series of animated short films became the first show of Starbucks' homemade animated short videos. However, recently, the all-media school found that not only Starbucks, but also major brand owners, including Coca-Cola and Nike, have frequently launched homemade original content.

These original content (rather than advertising), produced by brand owners, are no longer addicted to promoting sales and sales, but to establish their own content production and distribution centers "decently". And try to use content as a link to establish new ties with millennium consumers.

What kind of good content do the "financiers" tinker with to compete with professional media? Has the era of "enterprise is the media" come yet?

The "big factories" are starting to make their own content.

First of all, let's take a look at a group of original content cases of big brand owners. Their practice is sending such a signal: content production is no longer a special function of the media, but also a basic work that brand enterprises must engage in. "all industries are communication industries, and all enterprises are media."

Starbucks: cartoons + documentaries convey values and culture

Going back to Starbucks, the mini animation "1st & Main", Starbucks' first original animation production, has been released once a week since its debut in December, with each episode lasting about 1-2 minutes. The protagonist of the story is a group of strange animals in the coffee shop: Julie, the store manager, Diego, the barista, Diego, the octopus, the shop assistant, and Chet, the regular beaver who has been in Starbucks.

The cartoon revolves around the Starbucks store scene, which implicitly expresses Starbucks store culture, customer emotion and brand tonality through daily trivial things. For example, when the porcupine couple, who are about to welcome the baby porcupine, like the octopus Iggy when they hear the shop assistant report the customer's name to remind them to pick up the meal, they want to give it to the baby; the novice shop assistant shows a little panic and keeps making mistakes at work, and the store manager and barista will give advice and comfort to comfort his veteran when he makes mistakes. On Christmas Eve, the customer hippopotamus Gorden sat alone in the empty store, and three clerks together made a big meal for him as a Christmas surprise.

John Frink, Joel H. Cohen and Rob LaZebnik, the creators behind the animation, have written the Simpsons. 'every Starbucks customer is someone with a story, and we want to find something simple, interesting and warm to resonate with the audience,' said Frink.

During the US election in September last year, Starbucks also launched a series of documentaries "Upstanders," which was co-produced by the then-CEO Howard Schultz and Rajiv Chandrasekaran, a former senior editor of the Washington Post. The documentary, with the theme of ordinary people's citizenship and public welfare, keeps track of 10 community workers, tells the details of their ordinary jobs, and shows how they strive to change their community living environment little by little.

"Upstanders" documentary poster

"Upstanders is a unique series of stories about unknown people who are brave, selfless, cooperative and create positive change, and we want to share their stories and let more people know through the Starbucks platform." Chandrasekaran said.

Among them is Steve Stone, a pastor who protects Christian churches in areas where Islam flourishes:

Susan Burton to help people get out of prison to start a new life:

There are Lloyd Pendleton accommodation for the homeless on the streets of Utah:

If there is a hint of brand promotion in Starbucks' mini-animation, there is little sign of "brand implantation" in the series of documentaries. some media comments pointed out that "Starbucks is spending millions of dollars on something that doesn't help sell more coffee."

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz (Howard Schultz) told Business Insider: the entire political season has been filled with so much division and justice that we need to light up the amazing behavior of ordinary people. In addition to spreading the content through Starbucks' website and App, social media and coffee cups, the series has also established cooperation with the media Mic.com and Upworthy for content distribution. Howard made it clear: "I think it's our responsibility. We've always been an organization based on values."

Coca-Cola: set up "North American Social Center" in charge of social media marketing

In October 2016, Coca-Cola officially announced the establishment of the North American Social Center (North American Social Centre), a real-time newsroom to manage the social media marketing of all Coca-Cola brand brands (including Diet Coca-Cola, Fanta, Sprite), including the development of content strategies and media purchases. The newsroom includes 55 staff, marketers selected by Coca-Cola from North America, as well as executives from Possible, Havas and Moxie.

A spokesman for Coca-Cola said, "We are constantly looking for new innovations to enable consumers to build emotional connections with our brands, integrate global social media marketing systems, and help us better plan and implement social media marketing strategies."

In fact, Coca-Cola has attached great importance to content for a long time. As early as 2012, Coca-Cola promoted content marketing to a strategic level. Wendy Clark, then senior vice president of Coca-Cola Integrated Marketing Communications, said: "the content of the brand story flows freely to every corner like a liquid. But no matter how far they flow, they are linked to brand strategies and goals. "

The newsroom launched a series of social marketing activities and content during the Christmas season and Thanksgiving season in 2016. Before Thanksgiving, Maid Source set up a special store in Chicago called nothing to sell. When you enter the store, you will find that it does not sell products, but plays a video story of "write a letter to your beloved." several children wrote a letter to their parents in the store, which recorded that the children did not say anything to their loved ones to express their gratitude to their parents.

Nike: homemade online drama "Big House Girl VS Fitness freak"

Nike's deployment is more forward-looking, setting up an integrated social media marketing team as early as 2013 to take over all online community business previously outsourced to agents.

In February last year, Nike Guan.com launched the eight-episode original online drama "VS Fitness freak (Margot vs Lily)," specially tailored for female audiences, led by famous filmmaker AlfonsoGomez-Rejon, famous director TriciaBrock and best-selling author Jesse Andrews.

"this is my sister Lily. Fitness and Youtube are her whole meaning in life.

"this is my sister, Margot, who has lazy cancer."

The story revolves around Lily, a sister who runs a personal fitness video channel on YouTube, and Margot, a lazy sister who works as an operator in a finance company. the two sisters make a bet, the unsociable Lily is going to make new friends, and Margot is going to YouTube to open a fitness channel.

In addition to being online on Nike.com/nikewomen 's own platform, the first episode of the original series of "vs Fitness freak" has been broadcast 8.5 million times on YouTube.

The strategy of "branded content" has started.

You may want to ask, why do people who sell coffee, soda and shoes all make their own content?

Perhaps branded content (Branded Content) can better summarize their practices. Advertising or strong marketing mode is no longer flattering for millennials, and "moving consumers with content" has become a new thinking of corporate communication. Products, services, emotions, culture, social interaction, and scenes are no longer isolated, and high-quality content is becoming the link between these elements.

Appeal to brand values

The most important feature of branded content is to imperceptibly convey brand culture based on emotion, values and lifestyle, so as to turn customers into fans and brands into beliefs.

What is different from the past is that these contents get rid of the original brainwashing strong advertising model and try to connect more consumers with brand values.

Today, when the production and communication of content is becoming more and more fragmented and social, the traditional face-brushing advertising with tame meaning can no longer brainwash consumers, and consumers want to find the meeting point between brand temperament and themselves. complete the self-satisfaction of consumer behavior in a strong sense of value identity.

Take the unified "hour smooth noodle shop" series of micro films that won the Golden Lion Award in Cannes as an example, the story focuses on warmth and nostalgia, and eight kinds of creative cuisine are integrated into the slow-paced story, conveying a "slow down" lifestyle to consumers.

Online to offline: Scenarios for digital content

Content is not dead after reading, and the connection with offline scenes can make high-quality content burst into stronger vitality, allowing users to deepen their awareness of brand value again in the physical participatory scene experience.

Nike cooperated with the self-made online drama "Big House Girl vs Fitness Crazy" and launched activities such as "Follow the protagonist to learn to wear and wear, watch the drama and move together". Nike email subscribers will receive a description of the movements of the characters in each episode and merchandise information about the same clothes after each episode.

At the same time, Nike's official website Women's Channel, as an online drama-watching platform, also began to accept applications from NikeWomen Victory Tour users for the new year, that is, women's running and fitness events in designated cities around the world.

NikeWomen VictoryTour Horse and Fitness activities

These online and offline multi-platform interactive activities, all-round continuation of Nike "Better For It (only for better)" campaign theme. It can be seen that with high-quality content as the link, the brand has gradually established a highly loyal fan community, turning isolated individual customers into fan groups with empathy.

Diversified distribution of high-quality content

Becoming the producer of content means that enterprises have greater autonomy in media delivery at the same time. In addition to traditional media, companies prefer mainstream social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and giants of online video sites such as YouTube and Vimeo.

Starbucks' mini animation "1st & Main" is distributed to Starbucks' official website, App, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other major platforms, with an average of 300000 hits per YouTube episode.

Starbucks' strong store base has also accumulated a large number of offline broadcasting channels for it. "1st & Main" is broadcast on a circular basis in major stores, and the animation length of 1-2 minutes provides boring entertainment programs for customers waiting in line to pick up meals, and conveys the brand culture through short and interesting stories.

When the content is done, it makes sense to make money.

High-quality content products can not only win the favor of consumers, but also be realized directly through the sale of copyright, content dividends, box office revenue and so on. As active content producers, enterprises should also begin to participate in the commercial operation of content products.

Take Red Bull Media Studio as an example, it can not only provide Red Bull with print, video and other promotional content, but also provide media content such as sports events and extreme sports to major media around the world, earning a lot of copyright, wide range and on-demand revenue. They seize the "high premium" of outdoor sports, extreme sports and so on, and make their firepower bigger and stronger as much as they can.

Such as Red Bull and NBC's quarterly show "sign for Red Bull" series of sporting events, Red Bull provides content for a series of competitive challenges, including surfing, skiing and skydiving, while NBC provides a media platform for Red Bull and NBC to share advertising and sponsorship revenue.

Paid content is also a way to cash in. Red Bull Media Studio's $2 million snowboarding documentary "the Art of Flying" is a collection of thrilling and gorgeous snowboarding moves and heart-wrenching adventures. Red Bull then placed it at the top of iTunes's sports, documentary channel and all paid movie sites for a week, offered a paid download on iTunes for $10 at a time, and the film topped the list of similar downloads on iTunes in 2011.

It can be seen that the realization of original content is no longer the exclusive right of the media, and the good content made by enterprises can also be directly transformed into considerable revenue.

The boundary between content and advertising is broken

As large enterprises have begun to set up media departments to focus on content production, the trend of "enterprise is the media" has gradually become clear, so what impact will this phenomenon bring to the existing content production pattern?

First of all, in terms of content ecology, the boundary between content and advertising will gradually blur, and all content will become value information in a broad sense.

Native advertising is one of the forms of branded content. Original advertising combines the dual characteristics of content and advertising, trying to start from the psychology of the audience, and provide advertising that can not only show the brand but also integrate with the context, and arouse people's resonance at the same time.

At the same time, enterprises will have more initiative in content distribution. After targeting consumers, advertisers can make their own content for the target users, and choose media delivery channels accurately according to the form and tone of the content, so as to enhance the matching of the content and the platform and obtain better communication results.

Secondly, media talents will be favored by media-oriented enterprises. When large enterprises absorb more and more talents into their creative legions, it is bound to further aggravate the brain drain crisis of traditional media.

In addition, the upstream and downstream players of other content industries, such as advertising creative companies, also urgently need to transform. In recent years, the living space of advertising companies has been constantly squeezed. The era of strong advertising is gone, and the professional system that 4A giants have been proud of is becoming more and more inadequate.

Jiang Hong of the China Advertising Association believes that this is both a crisis and a turnaround, and the business of advertising talents and advertising companies must be integrated with upstream and downstream enterprises and media. On the one hand, it can provide strategic consultation, business planning and integrated marketing communication for enterprises, and become strategic partners of enterprises; on the other hand, advertising companies can also cooperate with the media to provide services such as media agency, media purchase, product placement and brand customized programs.

In a twinkling of an eye, former advertisers have begun to produce content, and enterprises will more and more independently assume the function of content production and dissemination with the help of social media channels, injecting a fresh driving force into the creative content industry. And it's time for you to wait and smell a whole new opportunity.