Welcome to the World of Earned Media

The year is 2012. Advertising is no longer about signing an influencer to endorse your product. It is about aligning yourself with an influencer and winning over that person’s community, harnessing it as your own. We no longer live in a “Volkswagen: Think Small” world – we can only re-live that era through episodes of Mad Men.

Instead, we live in a “Volkswagen: The Force” world [See video below] – a place where your product is no longer enough on its own. To have a successful campaign, advertisers are forced to pair their products with Star Wars, cute animals, and laugh-out-loud comedy.

Earned media is the opposite of paid media. It’s publicity achieved by avenues other than traditional advertising. It’s quite the buzzword these days – a fancy way of saying free media coverage. Everyone wants it. Every day, ad execs sit around boardroom tables brainstorming ways they can get it. Well, the secret’s out. Here’s how you get it: collaboration. To borrow a term defined by Fast Company magazine, to achieve guaranteed earned media as a brand, you must "co.create."

The music industry has already taken this idea and run with it. Hip-hop, for example, is synonymous with collaboration. How did Run-DMC and their brand infiltrate the rock community back in 1986? Easy, they hopped on a little song with Aerosmith called “Walk This Way” and created an entire new genre in rap-rock. Fast forward to 2012, where Jay-Z and Kanye have similarly teamed up to make it big: The partnership of the music industry’s two biggest stars made Watch the Throne the most anticipated concert tour of 2011. We all wanted a piece of that luxury rap lifestyle they were co-creating.

Jeep and VOYR recognized this and took the Watch the Throne collaboration to the next level with the creation of their Jeep + VOYR + Jay-Z/Kanye campaign. Jeep (in conjunction with VOYR) leveraged the tour and gave Jay-Z and Kanye fans exactly what they wanted: all-access. Throughout the Watch the Throne tour, Jeep served up behind-the-scenes videos of the creative process and work that went into executing Jay-Z and Kanye’s artist-driven spectacle.

Whether or not you’re a fan of Jay-Z and Kanye, you can’t argue with the success of Jeep and VOYR’s Watch the Throne campaign. It’s an example of why collaborating with relevant influencers in the name of community is incredibly important in 2012. Brands and advertisers can no longer silo themselves and “Think Small.” Not only do the cubicle walls have to come down, but your office walls also need to collapse if you are to co-create a successful advertising campaign.