Joining us today on Brand Story Inc. is Dr. Marcus Collins – the fifth and final keynote speaker in our Content Marketing World series previewing the best of the best at our industry’s all-star convention. Marcus is an award-winning marketer and cultural translator with one foot in the world of practice — serving as the Head of Planning at Wieden+Kennedy New York—and one foot in the world of academia — as a marketing professor at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan.
His deep understanding of brand strategy and consumer behavior has helped him bridge the academic-practitioner gap for blue-chip brands and startups alike. Over the course of his career, Marcus has developed a practice for creating culturally contagious ideas that inspire people to take action.
His strategies and creative contributions have led to the launch and success of several campaigns you likely know – Budweiser’s “Made In America” music festival, the launch of Bud Light Platinum, the Brooklyn Nets “Hello Brooklyn!” campaign, and State Farm’s “Cliff Paul” campaign – among others.
Today, we apply his academic and real world approach to the specific practice of content marketing and we had an incredibly rich conversation about purpose-driven content, injecting humanity into content communities and some surprising and uplifting conversations about inclusion.
Here are a few of the highlights of this episode:
- How Marcus bridges the gap between being a W+K practitioner and an academic at the Ross School of Business.
- The next generation of content marketers through a graduate school lens.
- How Marcus and his colleagues flipped the speaking presentation model on its head to create the book “Contemporary Issues in Digital Marketing” and what we can all learn from the process.
- Culturally contagious ideas – what they are, how to build them and case studies to prove it.
- Marcus’ compelling TedX Talk – “Too Foreign For Here: The Life of a Black Sheep” – and how brands can think about celebrating uniting humanity over romanticizing diversity.
- A preview of his Content Marketing World keynote speech (Sept. 28-Oct. 1 in Cleveland, Ohio) and what content marketers can expect.
- Brand content studio in-sourcing, W+K’s approach, and the current state or agency and brand collaboration.
- As always, we inject the personal side with weekly segments “Morning Musts” and “Bedside Bookstand” to get to know Dr. Collins that much deeper.
I invite you to follow Dr. Collins on Twitter @marctothec where you can get daily insights on content like we discussed today.
We want to hear from you. Share this podcast, give us your feedback and hit me up with topic suggestions and guest ideas. Brand Story, Inc. is for you, so let’s make it great together. You can ping me on LinkedIn or follow me on Twitter @_JaySharman. Thanks for listening. Enjoy!