Sundae Blogging

In my personal opinion blogging is all about knowing your audience. If you know your readers, their likes and interests, and how they think, then everything else is just the icing on the cake.

Writing a compelling blog is easy… if you keep in mind who you’re talking to. Your tone, focus, topics, length, goals, schedule, headlines, design… it all hinges on what your audience likes and finds interesting. The connection you form with your readers is what will make or break your blog.

Tone – I am a firm believer in the phrase write the way you speak. There’s a certain communications teacher out there somewhere who I know would cringe at that thought, but its what I think works. Especially for writing blogs. Again, its about relating to your audience. Blogging should be like having a conversation with your readers. You’re talking to them, not at them.

Extras – I love links! When I write a blog, all I want to do is add links to everything. Videos, articles, my friends’ blogs, Facebook, Twitter, my past posts, anything I can find some inkling of relevance in. Not only do links increase interest and credibility in your blog, but they can also add some humor to something that could be construed as a somewhat dry topic. And since I know my audience is a bunch of stressed out, grumpy students, I figured they could use a laugh.

So in conclusion, writing a compelling blog is a lot like creating the perfect ice cream sundae. The bowl is your audience, holding all that delicious goodness in place. Ice cream = blog; boring, mundane, very vanilla. All that extra stuff you put on top (chocolate, chocolate, CHOCOLATE) that’s your tone. It adds personality and makes this ice cream worth eating. And obviously the extras are just the cherry on top.

That metaphor was a bit of a stretch I know. But I bet you all want ice cream now. 

Its an Absolutely Amazing Story...

This week I would like to focus on the content of a brand near and dear to the hearts of many.

Absolut.

That’s right. The vodka.

We’ve all had that night that ends with us curled up on the bathroom floor, pleading with a friend to never let us drink again.

In my case this night involved a 26er of Absolut Raspberry, and since then I’ve swore off this particular flavor. But my own bad judgment doesn’t change the fact that Absolut is an advertising guru. Their advertising does what it’s supposed to do; connects the consumer with the product. Watching one simple commercial makes you not only crave the product and the rush it provides, but the lifestyle that comes with it as well. There’s not one pimply, nerdy virgin in the Absolut world. Everyone is a smooth, beautiful party animal, dripping in money and swag.

It’s content like this that makes people forget the pounding head and cold sweats that accompany the morning after an Absolut night out.

Now I would love to talk in detail about Absolut’s blog, launched in 2008, but unfortunately it has since been taken down. The vodka giant’s blog entitled In an Absolut World, There are no Labels was dedicated to breaking through the stereotypes forced on the LGBT community. I wish this blog was still accessible because I would have loved to see more. Absolut used a very newsworthy and controversial topic to drawn in viewers. The blog’s main purpose was to discuss the issues surrounding homosexual discrimination, or at least that’s what Absolut wanted the viewer to think. Using this hot topic as bait, Absolut drew in new consumers with the promise of a supportive and enlightening discussion, when in reality they were just selling their brand. In this case the content had very little to do with the actual product, it was just used to add to the overall brand image and popularity.

Absolut uses many different forms of advertising and creates a plethora of content which is shared over a variety of platforms. One example of their unique content that really caught my eye was a series of videos Absolut recently released entitled Transform Today. These videos center on a group of people creating a variety of different art pieces.

The future is not a given. It’s yours to create. Embrace imagination. And the power of creation. To change tomorrow. You must first transform today.   

The campaign’s tagline relieves nothing about the actual product of Absolut; it is purely about creation and transformation. In fact the product is barely mentioned or showed in the videos at all. This is exactly why I like this kind of content. The viewer isn’t smothered by the product but is rather enjoying a good story. Absolut features a musician, designer, digital media artist and graphic novel creator in these videos. These four people talk about transformation and their artistic journey. Absolut products are featured for maybe a grand total of two seconds in a two-minute video. The rest of the time is spent on these four individuals, their artwork and their outlooks on transformation. The visuals, the graphics and the narration, all work to paint a picture and tell the viewer a compelling story.

The video itself is artsy and stylish. This isn’t just your average floating head testimonial. It goes along with what I mentioned before about the sleek, cool Absolute world. The artists and styles of the video are versatile, while at the same time, work together to create a longing in the viewer. The creativity and stories of the artists are meant to be inspirational to those watching and make you want to be like the people featured.

Absolut’s Transform Today campaign goes beyond this form of videos too. They also created a longer, more in depth series of videos called Open Canvas. These videos carried on the same theme of Transform Today but on a grander scale. In August of 2013, Absolut brought together 25 contemporary artists in order to transform a mundane city block into an extraordinary work of art. Unlike the sleek, almost music video feel of the Transform Today video, Open Canvas is more like a documentary, with interviews and point of view pieces. Though the message of The Future is Yours to Create is featured throughout both of these videos, it is expressed in two very different ways.

In my opinion, Absolut is not only amazing at telling compelling, one might even say intoxicating stories, but they also inspire this kind of creation in other people as well. Many of the great stories of my life start out with a vodka cranberry or two… or three.