Dirty Air

This weekend in Abu Dhabi, the F1 season concludes, with three drivers vying for the title. It’s exciting, and I’m a fan, so for this 2¢, I am using this as an excuse to make a technical sporting analogy for content marketing.

If you are not a fan of the sport, and frankly, even if you are, it can be hard to get your head around the fact that the fastest car does not always win in F1.

This is partially due to the fiendish complexity of the cars' aerodynamics, which makes it hard for them to follow closely and, therefore, overtake.

Maybe you’ve seen this in the F1 movie, when the team demands a car that works even in the ‘dirty-air’ behind rivals, and Brad Pitt’s character, Sonny Hayes, asks for a car that is ‘built for battle’.

Think of your content and messaging as “dirty air”, creating a strategic advantage.

Good content, or a strong brand message, that sets the pace creates aerodynamic turbulence in the category; competitors following closely can’t race their race, their strategy has less grip, as they need to react, explain their differentiation, and get bogged down in competing on features and price. Performance drops.

If you can capture the imagination of your category, publish original, insightful, useful content, you can define the narrative, redefine the buyer's vision, and shape their expectations of the category. That’s dirty air: your ideas disrupt their airflow.

Maybe the CEO might consider it fluffy, soft, or slow, but good content marketing (or dare I say brand messaging) is an offensive move, as it forces competitors to follow, speak your language, and ride your turbulence.

Brad Pitt/Sonny Hayes had to ask for a car that was built for battle, not so he could win; he was on the back foot, it was a compromise, and the story was one of helping his teammate.

Weirdly, for this analogy to work, you don’t want Brad’s car, “built for battle”, you want your competitor to be worrying about your point of view and expertise, which I dare say doesn’t come from the average of your category’s thought leadership captured in an LLM.

What could you publish this week that would create the dirty air that means a competitor needs to rewrite a slide deck?

That’s my thought for this week, thanks for indulging me on this one.

And come on Lando 🙂