Smirnoff’s “Tea Partay” marketing campaign is a terrific example of a well-executed content marketing strategy and a video that went viral.

For luxury lifestyle and travel brand advertising is often out of reach and, in fact, may be fruitless in “getting the word out.” Don’t fret! Enter: content marketing.

Brand awareness is critical to reaching a wider audience. One way we achieve brand awareness is through integrated content marketing strategies coupled with targeted media relations to place stories in the top tier media. In this digital age, content marketing is crucial.

Tools of the Trade for Effective Content Marketing

I just read a terrific article in the Harvard Business Review about the power of video content marketing. Many companies have seen increased sales by using the most widely-searched engine out there: YouTube. These viral videos are almost always low-cost and carry something big advertising lacks: authenticity.

A great example of top-notch video content marketing is Tea Partay, Smirnoff’s brilliant video highlighting their “Raw Tea” beverage that came out a few years ago. The video follows around a group of pastel-clad, collar-popped prepsters as they rap  lyrics like “from Maine to Amagansett, we may be vanilla but our labs are chocolate”. The video is tongue-in-cheek, clever and became a viral sensation, appealing to a broad demographic but specifically the luxury market (one that Smirnoff was not hugely recognized by).

Benefits of an Integrated Approach: Keep it Lean

We pride ourselves on getting “more bang for the buck” for our luxury lifestyle clients and one way we help them minimize astronomical costs associated with advertising is by integrating content marketing into their PR campaigns. Instead of hiring expensive outside advertising agencies who don’t know the brand identity and philosophy, many of our clients prefer to integrate content marketing into their campaigns.

Why an integrated marketing PR approach over advertising? It’s cost-effective: our campaigns are exponentially cheaper than advertising. Additionally, using a PR firm to integrate marketing keeps everything transparent and doesn’t involve countless outside parties.

Some of our favorite tools? Scintillating social media, engaging blogs, newsletters, videos, and in some cases webinars. We have seen tremendous results for our clients.

I love the term “lean advertising” and I was pleased to see the author of the article use it throughout. He delves into why diverse, clever, well-orchestrated content marketing strategies can be much more powerful than traditional advertising. He explains that content marketing’s “novel distribution strategies are perfectly suited to rapidly building brands on limited budgets – the core of lean advertising.”

So, keep it lean and trim!

By Brendan Drewniany, Account Executive