Content Marketing: What's Innovative is Aligning Content Marketing with Business Strategy

Source:  New York Times – March 8, 2012

The traditional advertising business has been in free fall for a while now. More and more brands are looking at content marketing as a way to build brand preference and stay top of mind. Case in point: General Mills, the venerable consumer-packaged goods company. General Mills and its agencies recently rolled out a new site that promotes the Nature’s Valley line of granola bars.

Generally, the New York Times does not bother to talk about a new website, but this is an example of a consumer-packaged goods company investing $1M in content marketing. The site consists of trail maps for three of the most-visited national parks in the US: the Grand Canyon, Great Smokies, and Yellowstone. The way the trail maps are presented is not new and not presented in a particularly novel way. Indeed the presentation of the trail maps themselves was borrowed from Google Street View.

What makes this case innovative is the way General Mills is using this type of content to keep their granola bar brand top-of-mind with families and active adults who plan on visiting the national parks this spring and summer.

Relevant Links
Virtual Hikes Promote Nature Valley Granola Bars
Nature Valley Trail View