http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjiXevb11Rk

It’s often said content is king. It’s easy to see how it reached its throne. From Doyle Dane and VW to Got Milk? to BBDO’s Voyeur, memorable advertising has always relied on a thought-provoking or standout creative concept, rooted in content. In most instances, the content was set in stone, approved by clients and brought to life by focusing on production values. An advertiser’s budget built the brand.

Will this always be the case?  Should advertising be as polished as possible?

In an insightful video, which you can view above (tip of the cap to influxinsights), Clay Shirky, an adjunct professor in NYU's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program, muses on how audiences engage with web communications. He argues that the traditional marketing/promotions model, which continues to shape the way that both interactive marketers and agencies produce work, is essentially about production values — the bigger, the better. He goes on (and I paraphrase): If a website looks too polished, if it screams, “I’m an advert”, people won’t touch it.

This same principle should be applied to web content — and all advertising copy for that matter. If content is too slick, the audience will go out of its way to avoid your message. Looser, more conversational content not only welcomes people into the conversation, it encourages audience participation. And yet even interactive copywriters continue to follow the traditional media modus operandi. We develop content for a singular objective, polish the copy, set it in stone and launch the project. Most content has a finite lifetime — the length of the media buy or a financial quarter. Then the next project comes along. And we start over.

Why?

In the interactive realm, we have virtually limitless opportunities to reach our audiences with websites, social-networking forums and other new forms of communication. Our conversations never have to stop. Neither does our content. It should be living — updated frequently to keep up with how people take in information.

Copywriters should become self-reliant and familiarize themselves with technologies that help their content go from conceptualization to the public sphere in less time. The online world is a neverending focus group that writers can use to take risks, try new ideas and hone in on the right message.

That way the best content, the best idea, has a chance to evolve into something more. And audience conversations can reach new heights.