“We are starting photo direction in select spots in Asia, this project’s actually on its 2nd year in the pot. It’s been a matter of getting all the right ingredients for what we originally envisioned and I believe we’ve found the talent we were always looking for.” announced founding partner Kyle Virina.

“H2O’s been slowly building its team in Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand. But I believe Korea and China – of course – may be able to present us with many collaborative opportunities considering their being media power-houses in the region.” he added.

“Media distribution is always a major challenge. This is why this down-stream portion was a critical area our business development team concentrated on the last 6 months so that we didn’t create a product to only find out we couldn’t roll it out in the end. We will be announcing in the next few weeks key partners in those markets I mentioned earlier.”

H2O recently secured exclusive distribution rights for military-grade technology that the firm plans on utilizing for the event as well as the companion advertising program for the documentary series. Virina concludes, “We’re very excited about not only on the content side but also on the platform portion as well. I liken this era of ‘media convergence’ to the early days of television when not only were people discovering what programs were being developed but learning more about the actual technology of the medium as well.”

Considering I basically spent my childhood either inside an ad agency due to both my parents or at a studio for a taping due to my grand-mother who was a screenwriter for the country’s top broadcast evening drama, things came “full-circle” when I left working in politics to wear the pinstripes for Madison Avenue then eventually into production. And now 30 years later, with streaming media and the global proliferation of mobile communication devices, advertising once again is bringing about the resurrection of the soap opera.

Whether it’s the drama of friends on Facebook or Zuckerberg’s life on the silver-screen, the soap has evolved and marketers are betting it will bring about revenue for the bubbly sooner than later.

Why Content Marketing Is King

BY MIKAL E. BELICOVE | October 20, 2011

When it comes to marketing strategies, content marketing has just been crowned king, far surpassing search engine marketing, public relations and even print, television and radio advertising as the preferred marketing tool for today’s business-to-business entrepreneur.

Late this summer, HiveFire, a Cambridge, Mass.-based internet marketing software solutions company, surveyed nearly 400 marketing professionals about the state of the business-to-business, or B2B, market, and discovered that marketers are retreating from traditional marketing tactics such as search marketing and have made content marketing the most-used tactic in their brand-enhancing tool box. Fact is, according to HiveFire’s B2B Marketing Trends Survey Report, twice as many B2B marketers now employ content marketing as they do print, TV and radio advertising, according to the survey.

So what exactly is content marketing? It’s the creation and publication of original content — including blog posts, case studies, white papers, videos and photos — for the purpose of generating leads, enhancing a brand’s visibility, and putting the company’s subject matter expertise on display. HiveFire’s researchers found that an impressive 82 percent of B2B marketers now employ content marketing as a strategy in their marketing programs. Coming in at a distant second place is search engine marketing at 70 percent, followed by events at 68 percent, public relations at 64 percent and print/TV/radio advertising at 32 percent.

Seventy-eight percent of respondents said driving sales and leads was the top marketing goal of their organization, followed by boosting brand awareness and establishing or maintaining thought leadership (both at 35 percent). Another 28 percent said their primary goal was to increase web traffic and 24 percent said it was to improve search results.

Part of the popularity of content marketing is its ability to generate qualified leads while engaging prospects in a branded environment without busting the budget. Nearly half of the content marketers interviewed said they dedicate less than a third of their budgets to such marketing expenditures. In addition to frugality, B2B marketers also believe most of their customers and prospects are online, which is why they’re focusing their marketing efforts on the Internet.

Finally, the survey shows that “content curation” — which is defined as the process of finding, organizing and sharing content — continues to gain strength as a top marketing strategy, up 17 percent from six months ago. Seen as a way for marketers to fuel their marketing programs, content curation does have its problems. Nearly 70 percent of content curators say lack of time hinders their efforts, with 66 percent saying a lack of original and quality content is a major drawback. Another 38 percent say difficulty in measuring results is the stumbling block and 37 percent say lack of staff to do the work is the hindrance.

Despite these issues, the survey makes clear that content marketing is only going to become more important going forward, whether you market to other businesses or to the public at large.

How have you used content marketing to enhance your brand? Leave a comment and let us know.

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