Day three at came screaming straight out of a jungle. Jaipur Women Blog’s Lady Boss Ana was going to talk about content marketing today. I could hear something roaring in the background. There were some bees, some monkeys, wild boars, birds, and more.

Ana then asked the students to pretend to be invisible in the ocean. While someone was an octopus, another was a fish, someone a killer whale, crabs, lobsters and even the iceberg.

Ana explained the purpose of the activity, “This is how content marketing works. It needs to be invisible at all times. If you’re promoting a brand, you have to disguise it within your blog posts in such a way that neither it feels promotional, nor the product is undersold.”

“Now, if you’re wondering why you need content marketing, I have the answer for you. Content marketing uses blogs, podcasts, video and social media as a vehicle. And 86% advertisers need content marketing. You need it because you need money to run your blog.”

We went on to do an activity to see how the audience would sell a product. As examples, we used brands like Nike, iPhone, and Kellogs Coco Pops. Food names make me hungry.

“Promotional content works best when we take an evil concept and turn it into good. Pick a social issue, and get the brand to be a social agent. For example, in one such campaign, we invited angel investors to participate in our campaign Halo. Where the investors used bangles as Halos on the top of their heads! These investors encouraged women entrepreneurs to seek investment from them. Another such initiative was our Aid to Maid campaign.”

Ana continued, “Promote your brand in the form of a story. Let’s do an activity to explore it more. Take a minute to write a story about your favorite brand. Write it within three sentences.”

Well, I’m going, to be honest, some stories were bad, some really cool, some insanely hilarious!

There was one that said, “Once upon a time there was Kingfisher, it was a good airline, but Vijay Mallya escaped to another country in another brand’s plane.”

Needless to say, laughter filled the room, because of Vijay Mallya!        

Ana explained the importance of representing oneself as the ambassador of a brand. While someone was wearing Aldo shoes, Mango Jeans, a Fossil watch, and what not, they learned how exactly they could promote the brand using just what they were wearing!

We did my favorite exercise after this. Each table was supposed to write down a challenge for another table, and in return perform what they were given.

They were discussing in bunches, and we could sense mischief brewing.

The clever folks gave some pretty cool tasks:

Doing Yoga on the table, becoming Superman with the tablecloth as a cape, dancing on ‘beat pe booty’ (come on folks!), boogieing on the chairs, some of them mimicked Ana and me, too. It was kinda accurate. Tehehe. See how we take revenge, tomorrow!

It was not a challenge without-reason! It is a method to make the brand visible through content marketing. Give challenges to your audience, because tension creates attention.

We ended with homework for the students and told them about tomorrow’s workshop with The Shivani Patil.

We even got a really fun picture with the Father at St. Xavier’s College!

Fashion workshops are always fun; I can’t wait for tomorrow, already!

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