Blockchain Communications

Next Level Content Marketing

Compared with what communications already achieved over the last couple of years, Content Marketing has been kind of a step back. What may explain to some degree at least, why a lot of people in communications have been thrilled by it:

Content Marketing promised a move back to the waterfall model of communications; or even more, back to a seemingly controlled environment.

At its core Content Marketing was for some time a pretty good answer to the question, how traditional commercials might look like given the massive change in media landscape that happened about ten years ago.

But since this time the world still keeps changing. Technology did not stop to disrupt media and communications. Just look at e.g. the inflation of data, the rise of AI (artificial intelligence) or the tendency to connect more and more data points and devices — what we discuss with the at the same time over- and under-hyped term Internet of Things. Or at the last brouhaha, the Blockchain.

But while publishers are already looking for answers and experiment with “homeless media” (in my home market Germany just recently and in my humble opinion very clever and convincingly “Funk”, the new youth-targeting program of public broadcasters ARD and ZDF); while there is a lot of movement right now, communicators — especially those in agencies — need to focus on the chances that evolve from the concept of the Blockchain. Even if this is until now something that only excites software developers from startups, mainly in the Fin-Tech area, it definitely already sparks the next revolution in the internet.

What Is a Blockchain?

If we look at the Blockchain just from a communicator’s point of view (and not technology wise), a Blockchain means to connect “blocks” to a firm and permanent (and so nearly not manipulable) “chain”. In Fin-Tech Blockchains are so relevant, because they make transactions more transparent and because they are able to handle even the smallest transaction in an efficient way; as trust into a single “block” is built through the “chain” and not by an institution that guarantees it.

In the end it’s the very radical implementation of Open Source ideas — open, transparent, duplicable sources — into all other “applications” besides software, that need trust into correct, complete and non-corrupt information.

What Does the Blockchain Concept for Communications Mean?

It’s one of the most pressing questions in modern communications, how to set topics and tell stories if they can’t be planned upfront and can’t just be rolled out following a master plan. This is, what we call PR, by the way. Or nowadays influencer relations (or influencer marketing if our origin is not directly PR).

The Blockchain brings a new thought into this question: How could we tell stories, set topics, show conversations or even a movement, where all the single “blocks” form really a “chain”, maybe even in a non-linear way? How could trust evolve from this chain, even if we don’t know every single piece, or block, or every single person, persons we might not even like or trust if we met them in other circumstances? How could the Blockchain get its role in this, systemically?

If we don’t look at a Blockchain as technology alone, we are able to discover the most important part of it at a lot of different places and systems already: the part that trust and reliability are built by the system itself, even if we reject and don’t like single persons or instances within the system, might even think they are stupid or unreliable. But in the system — through their firm connection within the chain — the building blocks, the single pieces get a place, become reliable and trustworthy, are smart and understood. Political parties are such systems, the Rotary Club for sure — although in both cases the role of the Blockchain is not meant for external trust but internal, for the members.

Blockchain Communications — the PR Way of Content Marketing

If we look at the building principles of a Blockchain — the unbreakable chain of blocks, that exists without a central hub and is only linked through the internet; the non-linear growth that enables to connect new parts to the chain at any single block; the Open Source approach, that doesn’t follow a central construction plan or waterfall — if we look at this, it’s pretty obvious that taking these principles to communications is something we as PR-people should be able to do. If we only want to.

But how will Content Marketing look like that follows these principles? One solution could be that we develop topics and stories with different multipliers individually, but put the pieces (“blocks”) into one big narrative and form a movement of these (multiple) stories. Or, when working closely with the authors, we could link the blocks to a chain, optimize links back and forth between several parts, introduce our multipliers and authors to each other. Another solution could be not to develop content centrally and market it — but develop it de-centralized and vary it depending the actual needs.

So a Blockchain campaign will not be “orchestrated” or “played”, but weaved into the internet across different media and channels.

The real power of such a campaign can be unleashed if we let it go, give up any control we thought we had, and allow its single pieces, “blocks”, to look for new links they could use and connect to, and to develop their topics and motives from here.

What my team at Cohn & Wolfe in Germany has done as a first exercise in Blockchain communications, was the “only if I want” (“nur wenn ich es will”) campaign for the leading morning-after-pill. We worked together with several female bloggers and YouTubers, that told their own stories — and at the same time refered to each other, be it with links or in online discussions. They even moved in and supported each other with comments as they all engaged in a controversial field with contraception, contraception accidents and the morning-after-pill itself. But most importantly this was not a campaign that was planned before — but one that developed during the campaign. Most bloggers and YouTubers joined during the course of the campaign, after the first few started working with us on this topic.

This kind of campaign is of course very different from “user generated content” campaigns we know from the old days. Campaigns with lots of content developed without being part of a “chain” beyond a call to action or an overall topic. Some to the very few really smart hashtag campaigns we have seen so far might rather be examples of first explorations of a Blockchain. But where we in communications must really work on now, I would say, is to make the “chain” firm and unbreakable for our campaigns — in order to really raise the potential trust that lays in a Blockchain. Content is only one part today.
Our main task managing Blockchain communications might rather be working on the relationship and the relations between all the “blocks” of our campaign. And not only between them but as well the relation to each other and to the great narrative.