Paid Search and Comedy Central: Branding Lessons from Google
There’s an interesting piece in New Media Age this week about a new branding effort by Comedy Central. The channel (formerly Paramount Comedy) is now using paid search in order to ‘build brand association’ around its prize program assets. For example, it buys Google ads for searches for shows like South Park and The Sarah Silverman Program (see here for the results).
It’s an interesting tactic. As NMA states, Comedy Central is paying for ‘association.’ Really they want cable and satellite viewers of the shows, but this activity tells us they’re also trying hard to establish loyalty around the web-based services that relate to the shows (downloads, the Comedy Central community, and video archives, etc) …and ultimately, any search traffic that they can bag is a defensive move against viewing all of this stuff on YouTube and other Social Media services. But what’s most interesting is what Claudia Setini-Samuels, their head of branding and online, has to say:
“It’s unusual for a channel to this but it makes sense. We’re tracking what’s being searched for based around comedy and that will have a direct influence on our content – the site must be based on what people are looking for right now.”
Whilst this kind of thinking isn’t rocket science for most SEOs, for a broadcast media outlet it’s certainly a progressive approach. Analyse the behaviour of the web in relation to your brand and then make your creative and content choices.
It’s a great lesson for everyone – mix a little of what’s really unique about you (in Comedy Central’s case exclusive ownership of new South Park episodes) and let the Interweb decide the rest of it. A lot less money would be spent on air-head branding campaigns if more of the world thought about marketing ‘acquisition’ in this way. On the web, establishing the demand side of things is easy – Google gives us this data for free; all you then need to do is position your stuff using creative and content smarts that are ‘based on what people are looking for right now…’
Anyways, whatever you make of it all, if you like South Park, Eric Cartman and Buck Rogers as much as we do then check this out… And bravo Comedy Central for producing such a fantastic new site.
What’s a Social Media Agency?
Rocket science not included. Proceed at ease...
Get the Scoop on Social Media PR…
Been there, seen it, bought T-Shirt, wrote it up....
What the Hell is Social SEO?
Clue: it's not spammy and it adds value to users....
ONLINE PR & SOCIAL MEDIA AGENCY KNOW-HOW
Online PR & Social Media Blog /// MORE
Say Hello to Paul, Our Very Affable New Head of Accounts
As our original ad for the role stated, Paul’s job is to be more Mad Men than IM, Twitter, Foursquare and the rest. His job is to talk to all of our clients – preferably at a distance of three paces, and to get the Martinis in whenever they’re needed. Oh, and to always have a glowing report to hand.
Why do 95.769% of Social Media Projects Fail? PLANNING!
In C&M’s experience, failure to deliver value on Social Media projects is 95.769% down to the lack of a plan. Why? Because 95.6579% of the time Social Media is seen as free
