Brooke Thorpe, a wonderful event marketing manager at Frost & Sullivan, sent me this site: Makers. What a fantastic site to share the story of modern women ‘who make America’. As a marketer, I am compelled to analyze why this site connects with me emotionally. Based on the following three factors, I believe they did a very good job fulfilling their mission.
- Great content with a simple and consistent creative approach
Instead of watching a speaker for 4-5 minutes, content creators inject photos and text into a speech to make the content stick. These photos and texts enrich the story telling and build emotional connections by giving viewers more context. The mixture of texts and photos is nothing new and is easy to do post production. They add so much color to a video. 
- Great content that is easy to find
Makers has a unique archive with an abundant selection of women’s stories told by the women themselves. If you click on “browse all videos” in the video tab, you are presented with an appealing page which grabs your attention. It’s easy for our eyes to scan all the content very quickly. In addition, the copy for each video is succinct and catchy with examples such as “Brenda Berkman, First Female NYC Firefighter”, “Marlenn Esparza, Boxer” and “Linda Fairstein, Sex Crime Prosecutor.”
- Integrated branded presence on site
Simple Skin Care is the sponsor for this site. The logo of the company is discreetly displayed in the top right hand corner. The same short video is embedded as a pre-roll on all videos. Also, on the right hand side of the page there are links to more information about the sponsor’s product but the branded presence is not intrusive.
Strong social media presence on Google, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. However, I noticed there is no cross promotion between the Simple Skin Care and Makers sites. Although additional funding is also provided by AOL, PBS, NoVo Foundation, Ford Foundation and others, only PBS created a page for Makers. Other charities offer little or no mention of this initiative. More integrated cross-promotion will certainly help raise awareness as would some targeted paid media.
In addition to focusing on those women who ‘make’ the US, it would be great to scale and interview more women who make the ‘world’. Women’s stories need to be told because we can learn, empower, connect and celebrate. #200makers.
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