Earning Attention with Brave Content Marketing: Q&A with Author Steve Pratt

Jordan Kelley, Content Director, BrandStorytelling

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In today’s fast-paced advertising world, capturing audience attention has become a complex and challenging endeavor. Traditional marketing strategies often fall short in an environment flooded with content, and navigating this shift requires a fundamental change in approach. In his new book, Earn It: Unconventional Strategies for Brave Marketers, author Steve Pratt tackles the need for bold, creative strategies that go beyond mediocrity to truly engage consumers. BrandStorytelling caught up with Pratt to discuss the inspiration behind Earn It, learn more about his take on the limitations of conventional marketing, and dive into the concept of "creative bravery" as a key to breaking through the noise in today’s saturated content landscape.

What inspired you to write Earn It? What gap in the marketing landscape are you aiming to address in this book?

I was inspired to write Earn It by my experience working with brave brands and marketers who produced truly original podcasts and achieved significant marketing success. I believe that there is a more effective way than the status quo for brands to connect with potential customers, and this book is my attempt to create change.

It starts with a focus on attention. Attention might just be the most valuable commodity on the planet for marketers. There is a dramatic mismatch between the amount of attention available and the volume of messages and content attempting to get that limited attention. And for a marketer, if your efforts aren’t earning attention, you’re wasting a lot of time, effort, and money.

Ultimately, whoever makes the most compelling and valuable content wins, because that’s what earns all the attention. Today, there have never been fewer barriers for brands to create world-class experiences for the audiences they are seeking to connect with. However, too many marketers either don’t know the strategy and process for doing it… or they’re stuck in an outdated mode of interrupting people with ads the audience doesn’t want, doesn’t like, and can ignore at will.

Here is the litmus test I believe every piece of marketing should attempt to pass: at the end of spending time with your marketing efforts, would the audience say that it was time well spent?

Most brands aren’t there yet, but that is the change I’m advocating for.

What do you see as the main limitations of traditional marketing strategies and why are they not as successful in today's content-saturated environment?

Acceptance of mediocrity and resistance to thinking differently are the two main limitations preventing marketers and brands from being more successful.

Consumers are absolutely bombarded with attempts to steal, hijack, capture, interrupt, or buy their attention every day. And we’ve all built up very strong filters and barricades to keep unwanted messages at bay.

As a result, the bar for earning someone’s precious time and attention has never been higher. We do not suffer through things we don’t find valuable. We don’t choose boring. We don’t choose average. We don’t choose mediocrity.

If you want a particular group of people to give you their time and attention, you have to be exceptional. You have to be unexpectedly and surprisingly valuable. And you have to do that consistently. You have to earn it!

How would you define creative bravery, and why is it essential for successful brand marketing today?

Creative Bravery is shorthand for making the best possible “show” that you can make as a brand or marketer. “Show” is a deliberate term - a show is a spectacle designed to engage an audience (A white paper is not a show 😜). Creative Bravery is also the courage to make something uniquely yours - something differentiated that stands out from the crowd and that can only come from you. If you’re producing content, you can ask yourself these questions to gauge your level of Creative Bravery at every step of the journey:

If I didn’t work here, would I listen to this/watch this/read this?
Is this so good that, if I didn’t work here, I would tell others about it?
Could any of our competitors put out this same content?
Are we doing anything selfish that will make this less valuable or interesting for our audience?
- Is our CEO hosting the show?
- Do we talk about our own products and services in the content?
- Are we interviewing our own customers and staff in an attempt to show how smart or great we are?
Will this be time well spent for the recipients?

Setting the bar high for Creative Bravery at the start of a project makes is harder to slip back into mediocrity.

In a world where marketers are often pressured for immediate results, how do you recommend balancing short-term goals with the long-term process of building consumer trust and engagement?

Producing content for audiences is a lot like starting a new relationship. It would be really awkward and uncomfortable if someone offered up a marriage proposal on the first date. Marketing is not sales. You have to start by earning people’s attention. Without their attention, you have nothing. If you earn their attention on a consistent basis (not just once), you begin to build trust–trust that your efforts are not a bait-and-switch infomercial. And if you continue to produce awesome value consistently over time, trust evolves into a relationship where your audience looks forward to hearing from you and wants to spend more time with you. That is where they transition into becoming customers.

I know we live in a short-term ROI, urgent results culture, but there is a problem with expecting short-term results from content. It doesn’t work. Consumers are highly skeptical of brands and marketers. It takes time to build trust and relationships. Patience is a virtue and creating value for others is hard work. There are unpopular ideas, but they’re true.

In Earn It, you emphasize that every marketing strategy needs to be as unique as the business it represents. Can you share an example from the book where a brand successfully used an unconventional strategy to stand out and grow?

Figuring out a gift for the audience that only you can give to them is another way to frame Creative Bravery that delivers fantastic marketing results. Do you have any areas of deep expertise or experience that would be exceptionally valuable to your target audience? That is a key question to answer for a content strategy to differentiate and position your brand very effectively.

Oatly, the oat milk company, is one of my favorite examples of a company that doubles down on their own values, voice, and mission with massive Creative Bravery. I read all the copy on their cartons of oat milk because it’s surprising and entertaining. (Who reads copy on cartons???) There is a section on their website called “What We Believe” and it’s bold and brilliant. They recorded a series of Oatly jingles that are ridiculous. They’ve even created a website featuring stories about people that don’t like Oatly and where their brand has created controversy.

Can you even remember the name of another oat milk company? If an oat milk company can earn this much attention–oat milk!–think about what other marketers and brands could do if they doubled down on who they are and infused it with Creative Bravery.

Collaboration with other experts plays a key role in Earn It. How did insights from leading figures in creativity, marketing, and media influence the strategies you present in the book?

I am exceptionally grateful to a group of experts who agreed to participate in the book as Attention Coaches. Dan Heath (Made To Stick), Jonah Berger (Contagious), Ann Handley (Everybody Writes), and Michael Bungay Stanier (The Coaching Habit) have all written brilliant books that influenced me and my thinking. Jenny Ouano, Dan Misener, and Tom Webster are some of the smartest people I’ve been lucky enough to collaborate with during my own Brand Storytelling work. They brought research, data, and insights from their own experiences that really fleshed out the strategies earning attention at every step of the journey.

With content being everywhere, consumer attention has become an extremely valuable commodity. What advice do you have for marketers trying to cut through the noise and truly connect with their target audience?

You have to start by learning as much as you can about your target audience. What do they want? Where are they currently underserved? Who is already reaching this audience and what are they offering? And how can you provide something different than what is already out there that they will value? Something that can only come from you. This is hard work to figure out, but again, it’s worth it. Once you unlock the intersection of your own unique expertise and the creation of value for others, you have the ability to earn attention.

Another element in cutting through the noise is figuring out how to create something that people will remember and that stands out. One technique is to create an unusual format for your subject matter. I am currently loving Mohawk Chevrolet’s parody of The Office to market their dealership. I’m pretty sure no other car dealerships are making mockumentaries, and that is why Mohawk Chevrolet is earning so much attention. It’s one of one.

Spending more time upfront designing unconventional content pays off in spades.

Finally, for marketers who are just beginning to shift away from conventional techniques and embrace more creative, earned strategies, where would you advise they start?

Pay attention to what you pay attention to. What are the filters you have in your own life for what truly earns your time and attention? How high is the bar?

And also pay attention to what you deliberately ignore, avoid, and skip. What are the signals for you that something will not be worth your time and attention?

Finally, some closing prompts to consider. Think about what you’re currently doing as a marketer.

Is there considerable time, effort, and resources going into projects that are likely to be ignored?
How you could more effectively focus on creating work that is highly valued by the recipient?
How would you rate your existing marketing on a Creative Bravery scale from 1-10?
Would the recipients of your current marketing say that it “time well spent”?

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Earn it is now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and more.

About Steve Pratt:

STEVE PRATT is the author of Earn It; Unconventional Strategies for Brave Marketers and the founder of The Creativity Business, which offers consulting, workshops, and keynotes to help companies develop differentiated content, marketing, and messaging that earns attention.

Steve is also the co-founder of the world’s first branded podcast agency, Pacific Content, named one of Entrepreneur’s 100 Brilliant Companies. Pacific Content worked predominantly with US-based brands, including Ford Motor Company, Audible, BMW, the New York Times, Dell Technologies, Face- book, Rocket Mortgage, Slack, Shopify, Zendesk, Morgan Stanley, Charles Schwab, Prudential, Adobe, and Atlassian.