Respect is really the cornerstone of an effective content strategy. If you don’t approach your customers with respect, it will be painfully obvious in the content you offer them. Most traditional advertising copy (and sales strategies) are based on the notion that customers want to know about features and benefits. I think that’s still true, but what happened along the way? Companies started bullshitting about the features and benefits of their products.

Take, for example, a recent ad campaign by a major brewery that promotes the “triple hopped” brewing process as something that distinguishes their beer. However, it’s no secret that their beer a) has little hop character to speak of and b) lots and lots of brewers add hops at least three times during the brewing process. If you didn’t know this to be true, you do now, which brings me to the main point:

Don’t bullshit about the features and benefits of your products. You will be called out on the internet by consumers.

So now you know that this ad campaign is touts features and benefits that don’t really exist. Don’t you feel a little misled? How would you feel about a company that kept offering content that was ostensibly useful, but it turned out not to be? I like the purported educational intent of this campaign, which is to educate consumers about the brewing process and how ingredients distinguish products. But where’s the respect?

Not that they asked, but if this major brewery wanted some marketing advice, I’d tell them to be transparent. For content marketing to be an effective part of features and benefits marketing, companies have to have to be honest with their customers about what really makes them different. There are legitimate features of the beer that they can educate consumers about. For example, American breweries have perfected the light lager style. Consumers don’t realize that it’s a legitimate style of beer, that it’s distinctly American. Why not an ad campaign that celebrates the history of the style and touts its refreshing qualities in relation to other styles?