Marketing & Ultra-Processed Content
THE ULTRA-PROCESSED CONTENT CONCERN
…and why I will keep reading books (and eating my salads).
Back in the 90’s, my parents did not allow us kids to eat Nutella, McDonald’s, or drink Coke. We had a garden and grew our vegetables and fruits. I was very lucky to have grown up with a lot of organic foods. To this day, I am mainly eating (and craving) fresh unprocessed salads and steamed veggies.
I also love reading books and have limited the notifications on my smartphone to the five people in my non-archived chat feed on WhatsApp.
What do organic foods have to do with books and my smartphone? Cal Newport’s analogy resonated with me, comparing highly-processed food to highly-processed content. Consuming predominantly ultra-processed content, as Cal calls it, is likely just as unhealthy.
My ideal mornings begin with ignoring my phone and spending about an hour reading a book. I don’t feel the urge to check Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube. Instead, I look forward to sitting down with a hot cup of coffee, eager to learn from the author and discover ways to improve my life. This focused time often extends into over three hours of reading on my free days. I’ve never heard of someone reading a book that made them feel bad. This article isn’t meant to discourage social media use, but rather to encourage you to critically evaluate and potentially improve your content consumption habits.
Here are a few questions for you:
Social media content is highly visual; have you taken a moment to notice how most visuals make you feel?
Can you focus on reading for over an hour?
What happens to your imagination when you only consume images and videos, instead of reading plain text that requires you to visualise scenes or concepts?
Do you feel inspired and well-educated by content creators? Or do you feel pressured to find a niche, build a public presence, and monetise it?
What does it mean for marketers?
Most of the time, I work on digital campaigns where social media content plays a crucial role in advertising and education. However, I also organise events, and at one of the recent conferences, we gifted attendees a book on understanding personalisation in B2C marketing, written by one of our business partners. I loved that!
This is me thinking out loud in a blog post, critically examining our marketing content.
Should we continue fine-tuning our content to align with current consumption preferences, or should marketers take a more active role in encouraging people to read diverse content, especially books, again?
Even within my circle, I observe a mix of behaviours. Some people still read blogs and books, while others don’t read books at all, though all of them consume social media posts or watch video snippets. I wonder about those who no longer read longer texts—would they ever read eBooks? And how long can an eBook take these days for the majority to read it from beginning to end?
On the other hand, isn’t a book a great marketing tool, especially when it’s written by experts on a specific topic that helps others gain a deeper understanding? I regard books as high-value content pieces. Why? Not only because they likely took longer to write, but also due to the benefits I see in reading them, such as maintaining focus, gaining in-depth knowledge, and enhancing critical thinking skills.
What book can your organisation or team write to make an impact?
How can we make reading long-format content “cool” and “sexy”? Which are our role models that inspire us to read and think deeper? Will it help with our attention span?
What scientific evidence do we need to demonstrate that certain types of content consumption are less healthy and valuable for us?
How can you and I support that all people have access to books, considering that not everyone can afford to buy them?
