Bob F*^%#(n Seger!? Yeah, you may be thinking ‘How on earth am I reading a story about Bob Seger on a digital marketing blog in 2020?’ This is the world we live in whether baby boomers, millennials, or whoever else likes it or not. This morning I came across a Rolling Stone piece on Bob Seger, and the release of his 40 year old song “Against the Wind” on his just-recently released official Bob Seger YouTube channel.
At Bean Media we often sit down and talk about “Effective Design Discussions,” or “EDD’s” that we each find amongst our personal digital travels. Each user is different, each digital profile is different, and every person has a different set of eyes, a different mind and a different cultural soul…
So therefore… every person can interpret a message or ad in a different way… Here’s why Bob Seger’s YouTube channel, or the story of it’s creation, is significant.
Text Animation Is Effective
Personally, as a self proclaimed “writer” of sorts, I’ve always fought for the justification of text animation in video. It populates a format of reading for a user that guides them along your message, allowing for different users to consume your message effectively.
Whether the reader/viewer ingests the information consciously or not.. Their eyes have been shown the message, and their minds inhaled the message, and their cultural soul reacted to it somehow in some way. This is happening at a millisecond level timeframe, whether the user wants it to or not….
People want to be mesmerized
Remember screen savers? Whether your 32 or 62 you can remember the age where you could effectively turn your mind off, as you whisked away into alpha mode and enjoy a 60-320 second drool-driven daze into Windows Pipedreams. (Maybe younger people remember Windows Media Player Visualizers)
What Seger’s new digital work shows us is that even a 40 year old song (audio) can be repurposed into effective, visually stimulating content that can be re-absorbed and re-popularized for today’s user. (visually).
This essentially changes the way you, (or anyone) think and feel about a 40 year old song… but Bob Seger is willing to do so to keep his legacy alive and relevant among younger people who may be literally 2 generations of Seger-family tradition.
Personally Seger’s shrill ‘OHOHH…LIKE A ROCK!’ call to action queuing the dramatic wrap up of Chevy ‘Like a Rock’ Commercials of my boyhood come to mind first, and will forever. Stay tuned as lyric videos for “Like a Rock” and other classics are set to release if you subscribe to his YouTube channel.
Content Matters. A lot.
Okay..so what does a 40 year old song getting turned into a millennial cartoon have to do with digital marketing? Well… If you’ve made it this far you clearly want to know.
Content is such an understated term thrown around loosely in 2020. Everything is content. The display ad about farmersonly.com is content. The IG video about how a bon bon is made is content. The podcast about NFL uniforms is content. Content content content. What does all this content mean to us?
The line between content and advertising is dwindling.
Whether you’re paying to put content somewhere out in the wild west internet (unknown ocean), or you’re investing in tightening up your personal (organic) ‘pond’ of content, there’s A LOT that goes into not only designing or crafting so much content, but also planning how to use it to maximize return.
In 2020, proactively planning and strategizing for paid and organic placement are just as, if not more important than creating the piece itself.
Look no further than the PR release from Seger’s people to hear how they plan to effectively release material that is technically almost half a century old.. There is a method to what they’re doing, and what’ya know.. Rolling Stone is taking Seger’s content, and using it for Rolling Stone content. Mind spun yet?
“The Bob Seger Official Artist Channel will also premiere rare and classic Seger music videos restored for the first time in HD, and feature custom playlists of Seger’s catalog in HD quality audio, fan generated videos, as well as rare and unreleased content. Fans around the world can share their favorite Seger stories on the channel’s Community page. “
SOURCE Capitol/UMe
Seger’s team has a content plan in place. There is a method to the madness. Planning proactively is ESPECIALLY important if you’re a type of company that has a lot of moving parts and a lot of work on your plate. You might not even have the time to do your own digital. *Hell I had to take time of the day to work on this blog*
Youtube is vital.
We could talk about the Bob Seger case study for a long time. There’s a million reasons why Seger is doing it, give us a call if you’d like to.. We can chat about the effectiveness of the design and graphics! The bottom line is this. YouTube likes to utilize staggering statistics to demonstrate the incredible amount of video and content gets viewed/uploaded daily, but it’s become more obvious over the years how much influence YouTube can have.
By being an offshoot of Mother Google, it helps with SEO and organic results, but also gives you the ability to utilize Google Display Audiences to put your visually pleasing, dynamic message in front of EXACTLY who you want to put it in front of. Others have followed, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and even TikTok. Content machines being absorbed daily, and each industry has it’s home base.
Where Are You Dropping Your Lure’s, How do they look? and How Are you Dropping them?
When it comes to digital strategy, it’s vital to stay in tune with trends and keep a watchful eye over what the user likes and doesn’t like. It’s also important to think about how that message is received while the user is “out in the ocean” exploring on their own (paid targeted ads), versus how your content should look on your own website or social profile “pond” (organic), which the users, followers, likers visit on their own behalf as loyal brand supporters.
When we partner with a company, first we take deliberate effort to sink into what makes you different from your competition. We create an ideal audience or perfect digital customer proactively. Then we utilize our technical talents to craft messaging that makes you proud. Then it’s time to start implementing creative strategy now that we have an audience in mind, a creative to fit that audience. Once a piece of content goes live, it’s just the beginning, then we get into analytics. We’ll save that for a later date..
Our goal? provide your organization’s intentions with a clean, seamless feel that enables you confidence your user is ingesting your messaging in a comfortable way. Kinda like Bob Seger…