Moving consumers to action has always been a unique challenge for marketers, but experts today note that it’s an even more interesting endeavor in the current state of the world.

Marketers and executives in the entertainment industry gathered recently for Variety’s day-long, in-person Entertainment Marketing Summit to discuss the state of content marketing.

While the event was centered on a specific industry, the challenges and discussion can apply to a range of industries focused on content and distribution.

Variety Editor-in-Chief Claudia Eller asked Sony Motion Pictures Group and Amazon Studios executives how the challenge of moving consumers to action has changed in recent years.

Ukonwa Ojo, chief marketing officer for Amazon Prime and Studios, discussed how the pandemic and “social upheaval” have dramatically changed marketing goals.

In the entertainment world, the focus became seeking out how the audience needs the industry as a form of escape. But each industry has to determine how its consumers need what they have to offer, and be able to build a compelling content marketing strategy around this need.

Marketers must be able to cut through the massive amounts of content available today in order to actually touch consumers in ways they can relate to — thus differentiating themselves from whatever else is available.

Sony president Josh Greenstein commented on how data and feedback have made it much easier to reach people directly.

“In the old days you put the trailer out and you put out a poster,” he said, “and you basically lived and died by your TV campaign.”

Now, the marketing process can begin much sooner.

The first season of “Thursday Night Football” is going to be exclusive to Amazon’s platform. Ojo said the goal is to make the launch “very elevated,” and use technology to gamify the experience.

The marketers explained how their approach must strike a balance between algorithms and “hand-crafted” marketing messages — something many industries are familiar with navigating.

One of the biggest content marketing trends of 2022 is personalizing experiences and making marketing more human.

Ojo said Amazon’s goal is to make every customer experience feel personalized, driven by a mix of humanity and automation.

The marketing experts also touched on quality of content above all else, expressing that the good content will no doubt stand out from lower-quality content.

According to Forbes, the high-level goal of any content marketing program is to have the right mix of content available that resonates with the target audience at every stage of their purchasing journey.

Content also must not just be content for the sake of content, but instead be driven by data and fulfill a specific audience need.

Marketing experts acknowledge that creating meaningful, purposeful content can be difficult. Many brands hire a digital marketing agency to help them create the types of content they need to educate the audience and lead them to their services.

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