Marketing Centerline

Installment 1: The Sustainable Competitive Advantage of Content

Before getting to the main point of this first installment in a series about Marketing Centerline, a note about the “why” and “what” fueling the series…

Centerline is evolving. That’s really nothing new. We’ve done it many times over. As has been mentioned in different presentations recently, evolution is part of the ethos of Centerline: Continuously evolving to solve the most complex business and marketing challenges.

Until channels stop exponentially expanding… until tech stops advancing the way people engage with each other and companies… until businesses stop needing to communicate with their audience, evolving the solutions we provide will be required.

Therefore, our messaging is evolving to reflect new approaches and offerings that will solve those ever-more complex business challenges. We have to create a common language around our approach and offerings — for both our internal understanding and external expression. You’re already a part of that process, through conversations and ad hoc “elevator pitch” exercises… and by being a Centerliner.

As I’ve been working on synthesizing our language, I’ve done a lot of research and reading that’s informing my understanding of the future of marketing and our place within it. This series is intended to make public the knowledge, insights and conclusions of that research. My hope is that it will both start conversations about our position and language, and will also help you internalize the messaging and allow you to have better conversations with our clients and potential clients.

On to the first installment.

— —

Is content a sustainable competitive advantage?

This post by Robert Rose is a must read for Centerliners. It speaks to the core of who Centerline is and why we must continually evolve (and as to why we have evolved many times before) to be able to solve the challenges our clients are facing.

To focus in a bit, here’s the crux of the piece:

Content itself will never be a sustainable competitive advantage, because all competitive advantage is transient. Instead, marketers need to embrace that WE are the competitive advantage. (That’s “we” as in the agile, dynamic, constantly-adjusting content strategists and creators of Centerline. But it’s also “we” as in the same types of people — and process — that we’ll help establish in others’ organizations.)

The future successful business will be those capable of constantly re-configuring their efforts around content-driven experiences regardless of channel, format or technology. The future successful marketers (and marketing agencies) will be those capable of creating rapidly adaptable marketing programs, and creating and governing content that is fluid in it’s support of better, holistic customer experiences.

“What we’re really talking about here is marketing’s ability to adapt to change.”

Centerline is evolving to better help companies quickly exploit, and move in and out of advantages. And in so doing, we too are exploiting and moving in and out of advantages ourselves.

Since Centerline’s beginning, we’ve been expert at content. That may have started as “video content.” But it was still rooted in content that told a better story. We saw an advantage in trade shows and other live events, and how better content in those settings could more effectively achieve business goals. So we went there. We went to interactive content, and content via serious games. We’ve pushed to social content, and we’ve made that an extension of live events.

Perhaps the biggest competitive advantage we’ve achieved is the move toward strategic use of content. We became a high-value content marketing agency. And we’ll push farther and faster. Because content — and more importantly, how smart content comes to be (both strategy and creation) — is the one thing that MUST change all the time.

— —

More to come! Until then, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the information above. I’m looking forward to the conversation…

…which you can start right here, paragraph by paragraph. Just click on the “+” button to the right of the sentence you want to comment on. Unfortunately, you can’t comment in that way when on a phone or tablet. But on your laptop, the functionality is pretty darn cool. And if you haven’t used Medium before, I’m happy to show you how easy it is.