Reading Ogilvy with Knowledge Graphs in Mind

Just like no teenager sat to write content, when the muse gifted them the idea for their first poem (ref. Clue 17), no one of us woke up today with the feeling that we need content.

We don’t need content.  We need solutions. 

We need answers, inspiration, information.

We need facts.

And so do the people we market to.

As the third commandment of Ogilvy’s rules for great marketing campaign reads:

“Give the facts.”

Ogilvy David. Confessions of an Advertising Man. [1st ed.] [1st ed.] ed. Atheneum 1963.  https://archive.org/details/confessionsofadv00ogil. Accessed 5 Jan. 2023.

Rereading Ogilvy With the Web of Data In Mind

Aiming to give facts, in a flooded with information environment, increasingly algorithms-mediated, is a matter of “content” (ref. clue #18) well described with data, as to be findable and useful.

Think about it, on a typical day in cyberspace you go through tons of “content” – emails, chats, internal memos, blogs, social media endless text deserts, product descriptions, reviews you name it. And then you try to make sense of all this. Or in the best-case scenario least tame this content elemental force by tagging, labelling or categorizing it in order to be able to use it when needed.
Revisiting a short movie about the Semantic Web, you end up tagging the tags , as Weinberger put it:

With that in mind, put your digital marketing hat, and let’s try to find a way out of this content chaos. For the sake of the people we communicate with through “content”.

Isn’t it obvious that the Web doesn’t need more “how to date a Scorpio” blogs for link building, or larger pieces of content about “The Best Iphones for 2023”?

Just like keyword stuffing stopped working, knowledge-thin content is now useless. Content for the sake of content is useless. Not only that but also content lacking the understanding that this is data that we publish, won’t perform well on the Web. We need to weave content and data together. All the time. We are to  weave a Web of People, Content & Data.  

We need to think about “content” not only from the perspective of “words being diplomats […] dressed up for a special mission, carying important messages […]“, to cite Ann Handley’s revised “Everybody Writes” <3, but also as data – well defined, unambiguously defined and made accessible, that is dressed properly for the context of its environment.

In other words, on the Web the surest way to give facts is to give not only “content” but also machine-readable information accompanying that content.

And Now The Knowledge Graphs Part

Today knowledge graphs, from Google’s Knowledge Graph, through the giant public DBpedia’s, all the way to IKEA’s one, enable all kinds of “content” experiences. As is often the case these experiences are mostly related to chatbots, platform interactions, data-fed assistants. 

“Knowledge graphs are critical to many enterprises today: They provide the structured data and factual knowledge that drive many products and make them more intelligent and magical.”

Fensel, D. et al. (2020). Introduction: What Is a Knowledge Graph?. In: Knowledge Graphs. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37439-6_1

Seen from the perspective of creating marketing communications, both open and enterprise knowledge graphs can serve as a living system helping marketing communications professionals do their knowledge-intensive job better and on the other hand assist people in looking for solutions on the Web, providing interconnected data and … structured content.

“Structured content means organizing and treating digital content like data, with the goal to establish a single source of content truth that enables us to “create once, publish everywhere” (Flagg, 2013)”

Stephan, Annelisa, Amelia Wong and . “Redesigning Getty.edu with Structured Content.” MW2020: MuseWeb 2020. Published February 26, 2020.
https://mw20.museweb.net/paper/redesigning-getty-edu-with-structured-content

As digital marketers, we need better understanding and more importantly processes for content operations that support data-centric content creation. 

Wonderful work has already been done from which we can learn and start our own.

To mention just a piece of it, here’s a visual from a research on how a knowldge graph can enable the interaction of users with various content.

 

Simply put, a knowledge graph can help:

• e-marketing with reasoning methods and tools, we can derive dialog-based bots for specific tasks and domains from a Knowledge Graph.

• e-commerce based on the semantic descriptions of services and products, a goal-oriented dialog can be designed improving the process of reserving, renting, booking, or buying goods and services.

Another example comes from the recent work Knowledge Graphs for Online Marketing and Sales of Touristic Services. This is where a Linked Data based content management architecture has been proposed and implemented.

 

And if you are still in doubt about why would we need knowledge graphs for marketing or any other corporate communication and activities, please have a look at Olaf Hartig’s brilliant presentation about “Jumpstart Brew”, depicting a world where each and every operation has its own knowledge graph and the more these graphs talk to each other the better the service.

 

Marketing in Triples 

Working to find, enable and build artifacts of digital marketing communication (“content”), we have a lot of work to do and lots of fight for structured content to lead in terms of organizational communication practices, tools and mindset.

We are now in the business of building better, more meaningful knowledge-exchange experiences.

Because, remember,

“The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything. She wants all the information you can give her.” 

Ogilvy David. Confessions of an Advertising Man. [1st ed.] [1st ed.] ed. Atheneum 1963. INSERT-MISSING-DATABASE-NAME https://archive.org/details/confessionsofadv00ogil. Accessed 5 Jan. 2023.

Today, we can give all that information in triples.

We are now in the position to use the affordances of the Semantic Web to enhance the rhetorical powers of content and its ability to inform, persuade, educate and entertain. 

Semantic Web interfaces don’t have to be ugly anymore.

I have been lucky to work with Wordlift on thinking through a way to present a product knowledge graph, for example. A living proof of enhancing the user experience through Linked Data.

We also have the brilliant Andy Fitzerald, who built a boutique knowledge graph to create smart content at scale.

And also Aaron Bradley blazing trails with the EA knowledge graph.

Of course, no talk about structured content, the Web and great content practices can do without the amazing Mike Atherton and his “BBC Wildlife” case.

Last but not least, today I am given the chance to walk my PhD thesis talk towards a vision of marketing where we don’t manipulate the marketing mix, but rather manage knowledge. I do that thanks to Ontotext who invited me to work with them on developing a knowledge graph from marketing content (more on that soon). 

So, for me the way is straightforward. We need great marketing coupled with practices at the intersection of content and data management.

On the streets of Cyberia, when we wonder how a person would choose our semiotic trail to follow, we need to think about this person as a user foraging the Web of Linked Data. 

Why?

A Tim-Berners Lee’s quote will help me give the ultimate answer:

Because the Web is yours. It is a public resource on which you, your business, your community and your government depend.

Long Live the Web

Thanks for reading!

Stay tuned for my (slowly :)) upcoming book Being Dialogic. Where I straddle interpretive routes to better understand, connect and apply the concepts of the Semantic Web, intertextuality and dialogic communication in digital marketing communication.