#LaOtraCarta (The Other Letter), or a Reflection on Branded Content.

Tomorrow marks a week since this Ikea experiment about Christmas was published -no more details, to avoid spoilers. What catches my attention about this video is its framing and the ingredients it brings together, What does a piece of content need in order to be catchy? Is it possible to spell out a checklist for creating content?

In the first 2 days they had already passed 2 million video views. Right now, as I write this post, a week hasn't gone by and they've already passed 3 million. And the truth is I'd love to know how much of this traffic was organic and how much was paid. I trust the responses to this post will answer my question.

A professor I had many years ago used to mention 3 basic pillars for building global strategies: Content, Context, and Culture. I'll lean on these 3 vectors to put together a basic guide for generating content for a brand. What are the keys for a piece of content, inherently tied to a brand, to become something worth sharing? Isn't that the wish of everyone who creates content?

Content or The magic of telling a tale. | If you have kids you already know what I mean. Have you ever told a tale? In my case it's a magical experience, because we've turned the nightly bedtime story into a game where my son picks the characters and the setting, closes his eyes, and I make up the story. Even recounting an experiment needs a plot. It's easier to present a quantitative report when you turn the conclusions into a story of learnings.

Ikea chooses to tell its experiment as a story. Writing a letter at this time of year is routine; turning that letter to the Three Kings into another letter that distills a beautiful message of austerity and of intent to do better for all of us who have children, is a valuable concept. The content turns into something more valuable than the format. Even if you have to pay to push it.

Context or the proximity of the story. | There's a Spaniard among the 150 injured... Those who studied journalism have mastered the skill of turning an isolated event into "public interest". Why do stories that mention the familiar, the local, feel so close to us? Attention is a muscle and it gets activated in many ways. One of them is turning an isolated, disconnected event into one that relates directly to us: "This could have happened to me".

Ikea turns the experiment into an invitation to reflect on the quality time we spend with our children. You may like Christmas or not. Being reminded of the time you don't spend with your kids leaves no one indifferent.

Culture or learned narratives, never questioned. | There's an experiment that has been running for more than a decade and that I recommend reading about: EGG (Electro Gaia Gram) At Princeton University they decided to measure something as simple as the consciousness of planet Earth. To do this, they distributed different computers in different parts of the planet -eggs- that emit binary codes at random. The surprising thing about this experiment is that those random codes have shifted at specific moments in time over these past 12 years, and Christmas Eve tends to be one of those globally happy dates.

It's very easy to reach for Christmas at this time of year. And that's what IKEA has done. Turning Christmas into an exercise in reflection is doubly valuable. The historical narrative of Christmas, tied to most of the cultures on our planet, is close to us by its very nature. It becomes truthful, credible and moving when it's joined to an additional message that makes us reflect. Bravo!

There's an additional ingredient in Ikea's story, and that's the brand's humility in staying in the background. And it could have been even humbler. It becomes the narrator of the story, and that makes any brand great. The values of the message stay close to the brand, and the brand never asked for it. It's clear we don't want to be sold to. We want to be convinced.

By the way, I ran the same experiment with my 4-year-old son and his answer was this: "I don't know. I do know what I'm going to ask the Three Kings for, but not from you" (here's a link with the real conversation)

This post was originally published on http://bernardocrespovelasco.blogspot.com.es/2014/12/laotracarta-o-una-reflexion-sobre.html

Other posts:

• In search of unicorns: digital marketer
• 5 steps to "enjoy" your job
• Sex, "Tags" & Rock n' Roll
• Gamification: 7 deadly sins

Bernardo Crespo is Digital Transformation Leader at DIVISADERO and a certified Ontological Coach by Newfield Network in Bogotá (Colombia). He holds a degree in Business Administration from UCLM and his final year of a BA Honours in Management and Economics at the University of St Andrews. Executive Master's in Relationship Marketing, CRM and E-Commerce from ICEMD, and he teaches at various business schools in Spain. He worked as digital marketing director at BBVA Spain.

These days I help companies navigate their Digital Transformation journey at DIVISADERO.

I've discovered, and keep discovering, the beauty of play applied outside of play #gamification