The Story of Content: New documentary charts the rise and rise of content marketing

Content marketing continues to grow like crazy, with one research report boldly predicting that by 2019 it will become a 300+ billion industry.

A growing number of brands – ranging from small businesses through to large organisations – are successfully evolving into publishers; instead of body-slamming the public with paid-for advertising messages, they are instead becoming the media by creating content that’s useful and relevant to their constituents.

Of course, such frenzied interest brings a lot of people out from the woodwork hoping to cash in on the trend and in doing so threaten to reduce the best thing to come out of marketing in decades to mere hype.

Which is why it is timely that Joe Pulizzi and the team from Content Marketing Institute (CMI) have released a new 43-minute documentary called The Story of Content: Rise of the New Marketing (see video below) – it serves as an excellent reminder of the origins of content marketing and why it has become such a powerful force in today’s noisy social age.

The doco features commentary by high-profile social media and content marketing commentators such as Jay Baer, Scott Stratten, David Meerman Scott, Mark Schaefer, Ann Handley plus of course CMI stalwarts Pulizzi and Robert Rose.

Content marketing case studies

It also includes case studies ranging from the no-frills (but very effective) inbound marketing work of Marcus Sheridan and the team from River Pools and Spas, through to the more sophisticated big budget branded entertainment offerings from Marriott Hotels and Red Bull, plus Denmark’s innovative Jyske Bank, which transformed its business by creating its own web TV station (I really love this example, read more about it here).

And of course it would be hard to discuss the evolution of content marketing without referring to everybody’s favourite YouTube sensation, Blendtec (and its Will It Blend video series) – it’s been done to death as a case study but still stands as a great example of how marketing has changed irrevocably.

So … if you’re not convinced of the power of content marketing and where everything is headed marketing-wise, you could do worse than invest 43 minutes watching The Story of Content: Rise of the New Marketing.