After a radical overhaul, the corporate website of Coca-Cola (Coca-ColaCompany.com) now demonstrates how story-focused customer media and engaging content isn’t just for product marketers anymore.

Hammock’s current Idea Email focuses on the approach the Coca-Cola Company has taken to radically pivot away from what most companies do with their corporate websites. Traditionally considered little more than a brochure website and repository for press releases and administrative content, Coke has transformed the site into an ever-changing and engaging “publishing model” site called Journey.

Here are some of the lessons learned from the first six months of the new approach, according to Coca-Cola executives, including Ashley Callahan, Coca-Cola manager of digital and social media communications, who made a presentation about Journey at last week’s Custom Content Council Conference. We also added some observations from our analysis of the site.

Starting tonight, John Lavey, Hammock COO and Rex Hammock, CEO, will be in Chicago attending the annual conference of the Custom Content Council, an organization Hammock Inc. co-founded with five other companies that today has more than 100 company members and is the leading professional organization for branded content and content marketing (or, as we refer to it at Hammock, “customer media and content”) in North America.

Leading up to today’s conference, the Council released findings from its 13th annual research of the use of various types of media and content companies and other types of organizations (associations, non-profits) use for marketing and communications purposes.

After the jump, we’ve posted the full press release outlining the findings of the research that reveals spending on production and distribution rose to $43.9 billion, the second highest amount to be recorded. All forms—print, electronic and other—experienced growth; a 9.2% rise over last year’s 40.2 billion, with print still claiming the lion’s share of dollars spent in content marketing. Of the average overall marketing, advertising and communications budget, 39% of the funds were dedicated to content marketing.

Recognizing the customers’ ultimate objective isn’t to buy pots and pans but to become better cooks, Williams-Sonoma elevated the role of customer media and content, making it a part of the brand’s core mission. 

To find these features on Williams-Sonoma.com, hover your cursor over the Recipes tab.

In the current issue of The Idea Email, we explain why we’re inspired by how the retailer Williams-Sonoma has made the creation and use of customer media and content a part of their mission statement.

Here are three of our favorite ways they display their commitment to “helping customers become great cooks” in a way that adds value to the cookware they sell. (We could have added lots more.)

The Sous-Chef-Series: Williams-Sonoma has partnered with The Tasting Table for a free weekly email and website series featuring the stories of up-and-coming chefs from around the U.S. Why we like it: Great stories and recipes are coupled with Williams-Sonoma cookware that’s related to the dish being shared. A great example of “content-enabled commerce.”

While Rex Hammock was in Oxford, Mississipi earlier this week (see previous post), Mr. Magazine Samir Husni interviewed Rex and posted a couple of “Mr. Magazine Minutes”–Rex’s answers to a couple of questions.

On his blog, Professor Husni wrote:

“You can call Rex Hammock, the founder and chief executive officer of the Nashville-based Hammock Inc., any name you want, except that of a Luddite. Rex bought his first Apple Mac in 1984, and has been tempted by the Apple ever since. On Twitter he is simply known as @R. He is all over the web, the digital sphere and more.

So when Rex came to speak to my magazine students at the Meek School of Journalism and New Media yesterday, I seized the opportunity to ask him two questions, after he completed his presentation to the students.

Here are Rex’s two Mr. Magazine minute videos. (If you are on the front of the Hammock Blog, click through to see the videos)

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[Post by Rex Hammock]

Even if you’ve never heard the term “behavioral retargeting,” you’ve experienced it. Online, it’s used by advertisers in a strategy called “advertising retargeting.” Here’s an example (based on a true story) you’ll recognize: You visit a few websites seeking information about a certain model of car. The next thing you know, you see banner ads for that car appear on practically every website you visit. That’s “behavioral retargeting.”

However, advertisers and online media companies are savvy branding professionals, so they’d never use a term like retargeting since that might suggest advertising is all about shooting things at potential customers over and over. They* call retargeting interest-based advertising.

In general, I’m not opposed to the use of behavioral retargeting, I mean interest-based advertising — especially since the organizations* that support interest-based advertising also provide you easy ways to opt out of it. At times, I’m even a big fan. For example, I don’t mind advertisers knowing I have a passion for bicycling — I like that I get all sorts of bike-related advertising on websites that have nothing to do with the topic. As I often say, advertising that I request and want is not advertising, it’s information.

Why Not Interest-Based Help?

Hammock partners with HealthTrust, one of the country’s leading health-care group purchasing organizations, to publish The Source, a quarterly magazine for supply chain managers, health-care executives, pharmacists and clinicians from a variety of disciplines. Q1’s cover story featured Matt Mayer of Franciscan Alliance, who, with HealthTrust’s help, was able to save $28 million in supply chain costs in 2012.

Finding members such significant savings, especially in today’s squeezed health-care environment, is one of HealthTrust’s biggest priorities. The magazine’s aim is to showcase practical strategies and best practices for duplicating those kinds of success stories in hospitals and care facilities nationwide.

HealthTrust members receive the print edition, but anyone can view archives since 2008 on The Source‘s website. Take a look at the entire Q1 issue here.

[Post by Rex Hammock]

I recently ran across an insightful essay named, “The best interface is no interface,” written last August on the blog of the San Francisco-based product design firm, Cooper.

I recommend reading the entire essay, but here is a key quote:

It’s time for us to move beyond screen-based thinking. Because when we think in screens, we design based upon a model that is inherently unnatural, inhumane, and has diminishing returns. It requires a great deal of talent, money and time to make these systems somewhat usable, and after all that effort, the software can sadly, only truly improve with a major overhaul. There is a better path: No UI (user-interface). A design methodology that aims to produce a radically simple technological future without digital interfaces.

At Hammock, we share a similar a point-of-view. We believe that one of the signs of great customer media and content is how well it removes barriers between customers and the organizations with which they choose to have relationships. Taken to its logical conclusion, the goal is to remove everything between the two, or, at least, to make it appear that transparent.

credit: ThinkStock

(This essay was sent today as part of the Hammock Idea Email series called “Beyond Selling.” You can receive each essay via email if you subscribe here.)

The term content marketing is becoming as widely used as the term social media–and that shift comes as welcome news at Hammock. Helping clients create and manage initiatives under the content marketing umbrella is what we’ve been focused on exclusively for more than two decades.

However, during that time, we’ve discovered that content that solves business challenges can often fall outside the traditional boundaries of what many companies consider marketing

Great content strategies encompass every facet of an organization: They are visible everywhere customers turn to research products they’re considering buying, and they’re apparent everywhere customers look to learn how to get the most out of a product they’ve purchased.