Content Marketing: it’s not your grandma’s marketing (unless, of course, your grandma is Betty White)

She’s 93 years old, stars in a show called Hot in Cleveland and has more than one million followers on Twitter (is your grandma even on Twitter?).

She’s Betty White and she’s everything that’s right with marketing today.

In fact she’s proof, I’d argue, that what we know as Content Marketing today will simply be Marketing tomorrow.

Let me tell you why.

See, like typical grandmas, marketing used to be all about the safe and sound. Put your (product related) message where the largest audience is and wait for the world to knock down your door.

Oh, sure, the kids all liked the sugar cookies at grandma’s house, too…because that’s all they had to choose from. But that strategy won’t work anymore, for grandma or brand marketers. There are simply too many other doors that all look the same.

And sugar cookies? Please.

Today’s marketing — Content Marketing — gives people what they want and pulls them toward a helpful brand, rather than pushing a message at them that’s sponsored by a brand. (Yuck.)

News flash brands: people have found ways to avoid these messages; they're even willing to pay not to see them — can’t you see they don’t want them?

The best example may be Betty herself. Is she in a rocking chair at some nursing home playing it safe? No way! She’s rocking hilarious TV commercials for brands like Snickers, hosting her own practical joke show Off Their Rockers and starring on Saturday Night Live.

Let the difference here be a lesson to you, brands. Do you want to sit around pushing advertising messages and waiting for your time to come (looking at you Radio Shack)? Or do you want to get out there and market yourselves with the gusto of one Betty Marion White?

I would recommend the latter.