A PESO for Your Thoughts

Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned media all need content.

The best part about my job as Executive Creative Director and Content Evangelist at Catch+Release is the constant learning. I’m always researching and looking for ways to help our creative partners make their campaigns more authentic and effective. It’s fun to be able to help others make award-winning work. So each week, I’m going to share something I’ve learned that I think will help the modern marketers and creative professionals. (Hey that’s you!)

This Week’s Topic: The PESO model in marketing

One thing I learned this week that really got my creative brain firing was a thing called the PESO model in marketing. It’s a breakdown of the four main ways that brands distribute their marketing and core message to their target audience. PESO stands for Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned media. The PESO model reminds us of the importance of a fully integrated marketing approach in a world with more media outlets than ever before.

Paid Media is anything you pay for. Paid search. Social Media ads. TV spots. Billboards. Direct Mail. Paid gives you immediate and generally predictable results. But it’s expensive and doesn't engender much consumer trust.

Earned media is press coverage and media mentions. This brings the most credibility but it is the hardest to secure because it means creating real news.

Shared media is also known as social media. It’s a two-way dialogue. Shared media helps build community and gain loyalty. Getting organic reach takes breakthroughs in creativity (also known as “going viral”) but innovation and experimentation is pretty low-cost.

Owned Media is anything you own. Your website. Your store. Your blog. Your building. Your trucks. Your landing pages. Your emails and newsletters. These are fully in your control and are pretty low-cost. But they require consistent content creation. And they must be maintained regularly.

In other words: there are more channels than ever before. And many organizations are still unclear as to who – inside or outside the company – should be responsible for what when it comes to content creation, curation and distribution.

Diagram of Marketing Channels Categorized by PESO

Same Rerun. Different Channels.

These four categories have always existed, but the list of channels within each is a lot longer and looks different from decades ago. To be fair, changes are inevitable and they actually occur more regularly than you’d expect. I started as a creative professional in advertising in 1992, so I’ve witnessed firsthand several seismic shifts (and the resulting corporate responses) in our industry. When the internet and connected computers first showed up in the 1990s, we siloed everything. “Digital” creatives, it was said, did not understand how to do “general” advertising. And vice-versa. “Direct Mail” creatives were especially trodden upon. (I started as a Direct Copywriter and could not wait to get that awful word off my resume.) TV was king (or “Above The Line”) and everyone else just served the TV campaign (“Below The Line”).

A lot of agencies and marketers still operate this way. Some hire agencies for content needs they deem “big” and handle other “smaller” things in-house, often with dedicated teams for each media that pops up. But as the PESO model reminds us, the world has changed. Everything is connected. There are more channels than ever. And none of them are more important than any other. They also need to publish content constantly and consistently. Video. Audio. Text. Pictures. More. More. More.

Of course, all these channels evolved differently. Each is unique from the other. The PR world has its culture. Social media managers have theirs. And webmasters focus on their own projects and goals. So while everything is connected, professionals are still required to master unique specialties. It’s like 1992 all over again. (Cue the Seinfeld bassline.)

The Customer Connection

What connects all these different worlds? Just like in the 90s, it’s the customer. They are the ones who are consuming all this content in different places. So it would make sense that the customer be the foundation upon which all these programs base their strategy. One way to keep a pulse on the market is to monitor the content being generated by your audience every day. It’s super easy to do this, because people post to social media all the time. A constant feed of User Generated Content can inspire, educate, and enlighten everyone in your marketing team so that you can build a brand story that speaks to your precise audience.

You can eventually start to consider licensing this type of content for your marketing campaigns. What exactly are you looking for? Here's a short list of the kinds of UGC you might want to start gathering that would be useful in campaigns for all 4 PESO content buckets:

Paid

Deliverables: Traditional ads, sponsored posts, influencer partnerships.

UGC Integration: Go beyond influencers and curate and license content from smaller creators who hit your target bullseye but might not consider themselves professional “influencers”. This can give your campaign a grass-roots feel. Or use UGC as a casting agent and hire these creators as talent in your created ads. Or do what Tide did and license their content and then mess with it. There are lots of ways UGC can enhance an idea and make it feel more real.

Earned

Deliverables: Press mentions, reviews, user-generated content.

UGC Integration: You can use quotes and videos from real customers to build out your press pitches. And you can find stories too. UGC also helps you see trends coming early.

Shared

Deliverables: Social media posts, shares, and community engagement.

UGC Integration: If you have a Social Media Manager, they will be an excellent source of UGC. Dig into their curation process. Ask them for accounts you should follow to keep tabs on trends. And, of course, make sure they are compensating creators whenever they use their content.

Owned

Deliverables: Websites, blogs, email campaigns.

UGC Integration: Content licensed from real users can add an authenticity to your website that invokes trust and makes your brand story real.

We’re All Storytellers

It’s time to forget the titles and disciplines. Think of every team member as a storyteller. And whether it’s Paid, Earned, Shared or Owned, think of every medium as a storytelling opportunity. It’s a story that is already being told by your customers and prospects. When you use their stories to tell your story, everyone wins.

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P.S. Like the blog’s thumbnail? Shoutout to @justpez from our Creator Community!