One of the most difficult debates that creative people face involves the combining of traditional advertising and digital media. In the entertainment industry, advertising creative people are in the business of creating promotion, while web designers/producers are in the business of creating content. At CBC, much of our digital output revolves around create sites that are digital “homes” for each of our entertainment/informational programs. Each show page features an interesting mix of promotional and original content. The original content is a kind of “value ad” for fans of the show – things like webisodes, video blogs, wallpapers, links and games, actor bios, past season episodes, blogs etc. While on the 7th floor at the Broadcasting Centre, the art directors and copywriters are finding creative marketing solutions to attract audiences to both the digital and broadcast content. But how do you define what is content and what is promotion? Where is that line in the sand? As a creative director, I come up against this constantly. Isn’t all original content that is value-added material, outside of the original show or series promotion? Or … like the digital folks debate, shouldn’t the definition of promotion lie only in the areas of “packaging” and paid media? It’s an interesting debate. The web producer says, ” I’m building a web page, I have my branding area on the page and that’s my promotional space for the brand – or the packaging. And that’s it. Blogs aren’t promotion – they’re content. Those video “prequel webisodes” that my department created are content. That video game we created is content…” But is it? What do you think?
