The future of content is screenless

Okay,  I know that’s a pretty big statement.  You might be thinking — “So,  you think we’re all going to be wearing digitally enhanced contacts in two year?”  And the answer is no, not in two years but not too far away either.

However,  that’s not the kind of screenlessness I’m talking about here (though it’s a part of it).  What I’m talking about is how the best content that is being created today is content that lives beyond the screen.  It lives in people’s minds way past when they consume it.  It’s content that is transformed and moulded by people.  Remixed in the mind and sometimes physically too.  Content that is thought about and talked about in social networks, texted on mobiles, tweeted, instagrammed, and personalised in every which way possible using the technologies made available to us.  Content that is like a good piece of music that lingers in your mind way after you hear it and shapes your day and your dreams.

As marketing professionals, we are sometimes way too wrapped up in what screen content is for and what media buy to put it into.  It often shapes way too much of the industry’s creativity and leads to excess spending into screens rather than into the audiences one is trying to reach.  I’ve been guilty of it too.

I’ve written a lot about branded content in the past.  I’ve seen a lot of change since I first started back in 2009 devising strategies around distribution and activation models — changes in technologies and the kind of content being developed,  but more importantly changes in people’s digital habits.  I hope this blog will help me pick-up where I left off.