How many rock-and-roll puns can you squeeze into a presentation? Odds are, not more than Joe Pulizzi (“The Dick Clark of Content Marketing”) and Lee Odden (the guy I never, ever want to compete against … again) managed to jam into their sure-to-be-a-hit presentation: “36 Content Marketers Who Rock”.
The rock theme is not arbitrary. The deck was published to help promote this year's Content Marketing World (#CMWorld) event in Cleveland, home to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
As I’ve said on Pulizzi’s own blog, I have grown a bit weary of “ego trap” marketing - persuading people with ample followings to contribute to your content, so their networks will later amplify the distribution. But that’s because most ego traps have become obvious and lazy. There’s little unique about the sources, topics or even packaging. And, unless you have a book to hawk, there’s little incentive for the contributor.
But the Pulizzi/Odden collaboration is unusually well done. It includes lots of “new” voices (new to me anyway). The input is, for the most part, fresh and interesting (to me, strategist/columnist Scott Abel‘s tell-it-like-it-is, jail-house wisdom stole the show when he copped to the reality that we aren’t in the “content marketing” business, but rather the “people manipulation” game). The design is thematically consistent with many of the other (awesome) materials the event’s creative lead, Joe Kalinowski, has been producing.
But most of all, it's useful – something author/speaker Jay Baer advocates in his his best-selling title, Youtility. You see, all contributors are also presenting at Content Marketing World, and each of their profiles in the deck includes details on their session.
Simply put, it’s “content with a purpose,” but I’d expect nothing less from the people behind the project.