Marketing experts like to talk about the different types of media and exposure you can get. Paid, earned and owned. You need to be driving earned awareness to gain exposure for your brand.
Driving Earned Awareness
You can buy paid media and awareness, but it is often fleeting. You can run ads all day long and buy exposure to millions of people. But if they don’t care about your product or service, you will never find me buying your product. All the money in the world is not going to convince me to buy something I no longer want to consume. (Soft drinks, high-sugar drinks, highly processed foods, artificially flavored products, foods with MSG, etc.) Paid media can make me aware of a new idea like a thermostat that can save me money, but if I don’t warm up to the idea, the message will go cold.
Owned media is an illusion. You don’t own an audience’s attention. Perhaps you earn their attention for a short period, but you have to keep investing in that relationship, or that subscriber or customer will go away. Like a restaurant whose great food declines, you can’t keep an owned audience without maintaining a level of quality and value. An owned audience can be your subscriber list to your newsletter, but you have to keep earning their attention with every post or story you write.
Earned exposure is the most value way to build awareness. You earn it by connecting with someone who cares about what you do. It means that you have invested your time and energy is listening to someone else’s issues and show empathy for the problems they face. You earn a place in their community. Earned media happens when someone who loves what you do and why you do it, wants to tell your story for you.
The origin of the word earned has its roots in a German word for harvest. That implies investing in seeding the ground.
Driving Home an Earned Message
We have all seen public service announcements trying to prevent drunk driving. A Canadian ad agency was challenged to reach college students on campus with advertising that would remind them of the dangers associated with drinking and driving. But instead of buying paid ads, they took an alternative approach to reach their audience and earn their attention.
Partnering with a cereal company, Arrowhead Mills, the agency created a sampling program to give away boxes of cereal to thousands of students. On the outside of the box was a drawing of a free toy car giveaway, but inside was the real message. The toy car was burned and wrecked putting the message in the hand of the target audience. The bag that held the damaged car carried more information about the risks of drunk driving. And the smashed cars around as a reminder that last well beyond the fleeting moments of an ad.
The agency, Rethink from Canada, helped creatively earn attention as well as coverage in the media. By having others tell the story, they cut through the cutter. Read more about this campaign here.
Earning Attention
No matter what the project, I’m always looking for ways to reach a defined audience that is different. I want someone else to help share my message, and I need to build a compelling story. Sometimes, you can do it in a clever way like the public service announcement or through investing in being helpful to a journalist before asking for them to write about you and your product.
Think about earning the trust of a new friend or colleague. You have to spend time giving, helping and being useful. The same is true if you are trying to gain exposure with journalists. You must invest and seed the relationship before you harvest any fruit.
Need a creative solution to help you earn confidence with a journalist or strategic partner? I can help you tonight. Connect through Clarity and set up time for us to chat. Click here.
