If you’ve ever watched The Christmas Story, then you’re familiar with the scene where Ralphie receives his Little Orphan Annie decoder ring in the mail and runs into the bathroom, anxious to decode the message… only to discover that the top secret message is nothing but, “a crummy commercial” for Ovaltine.
Crummy commercials and slick marketing however are not exclusive to scenes in The Christmas Story. In fact, they are what have been responsible for breaking the trust and relationship between brands and consumers, making everyone now leery towards marketing messages. The history of brands breaking this trust has now caused companies to have to work diligently to maintain the promises and beliefs that they have shared with their customers.
Nobody wants to be marketed to, but they do want genuine engagement. At The Social Media Magnet, our principles are based on Genuine Story, Earned Trust, Sincere Promises, and Deep Belief in the relationship between the company and their customers. We teach our students this with the belief that a viable organic content strategy must support and embrace these principles on every level. We also teach this in the hopes to inspire the next generation of marketers to not focus on slick selling tactics, but instead on building customer relationships that can be trusted in.
If you are a professor interested in exploring how we teach our students these principles, check out our Professor Overview page. If you would like to explore the curriculum for yourself before committing to it, request our free Professor Preview.
