The Content Cookbook

Formats are repeatable recipes for differentiated content

Welcome to the Creativity Business, a newsletter about earning attention and differentiating yourself as a marketer or content creator. If you’re not a subscriber, sign up and get content & differentiation strategy delivered to your inbox every two weeks for free.

Also… my new book, Earn It: Unconventional Strategies for Brave Marketers comes out Oct 1 (very soon!) and is available for pre-order now.

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The Recipe for Great Content is a Recipe

Formats are like recipes for content. There are specific ingredients put together in very specific ways that deliver a delicious final product. If you follow a great recipe, it’s hard not to deliver something very tasty. It’s the same with a content format.

While you can and should put your own individual variations on a format (we’ll get to that shortly…), the power of a format is that audiences recognize it as something they are familiar with and already enjoy. A great format has already been proven again and again to earn attention. It is not an accident that every episode of Wheel of Fortune follows the exact same pattern.

The more you watch your favourite sitcoms, the more you see recurring structural patterns that are unique to that show. Take Seinfeld, for example. If you watch enough episodes, you know that there will be several unrelated plotlines that somehow intersect with each other at the end of the episode in a surprising and funny way. This is one part of the recipe for a great Seinfeld episode.

Formats are underutilized by marketers and creators, though they constitute a huge area of opportunity for differentiation and earning attention. In television, formats are a big business. They are invented and sold over and over to broadcasters in various territories. Dragons’ Den is an entrepreneurship TV format that originated in Japan, which was then sold as a format in the Uk and Canada as Dragons’ Den, before being sold and produced as Shark Tank in the United States.

Reality shows are also formats. The Bachelor is a format that has been licensed to other geographic territories outside America. Same with Love Island. Same with Big Brother. If you have watched these shows more than once, you know that there is a very, very specific recipe for each episode. (“This is the final rose of the night.” “Take a moment and say your goodbyes…” )

Subject Matter + Unusual Format = Memorable, Differentiated Content

The key with a format is to adapt it and make it uniquely yours. Carefully copying someone’s recipe is not what I’m advocating for. Instead, use storytelling structures that are proven to work, but use them in creative new ways and contexts that then become your recipe.

I would like to encourage you to think about pairing your unique subject matter with a format that is not normally associated with it. A few editions ago, I shared a great example of this - Mohawk Chevrolet is using all the conventions of the format of The Office to make videos about their car dealership. It’s brilliant and successful. I’m pretty sure it’s the only car dealer on the planet doing this… and that’s why it stands out.

The good news is that applying a format to your content strategy is easier than you might think. Formats are everywhere. You just have to find one that inspires you, reverse engineer the key elements in the recipe for the format, and then creatively apply that recipe to your unique subject matter.

The Areas of My Expertise

I am a giant fan of John Hodgman’s book The Areas of My Expertise, a fake “Almanac of Complete World Knowledge.” I’m not sure I’ve read anything like it before. It was published in 2006, and to this day, I still tell people about it. One of its strange obsessions is American hobo history and culture. There is a section of the book— pages and pages and pages long—that is nothing but a list of seven hundred(!) hobo names. (Hellooo, Ironbelly Norton and Thermos H. Christ!) 

To help you see the scope of potential formats at your disposal, I’ve written an homage to Mr. Hodgman that is focused on the areas of my expertise—forms and formats for content. This is a giant, incomplete list of ways that we all communicate and interact with each other. As you think about your content project, browse the list and see if any forms or formats jump out at you. Think about how to infuse your idea with an unusual format.

So without further ado, here is an exhaustive but unfinished compendium of forms and formats to inspire you: 

Layout by Peter Cocking at Page Two, excerpted from Earn It: Unconventional Strategies for Brave Marketers.

I could go on and on with this, and I’m sure there are loads of inspiring ideas you have that aren’t on this list. The point is, there are a lot of forms and formats we are all familiar with. Using familiar forms in unfamiliar situations is memorable and earns attention. Unusual combinations work. Identify a few formats that you love and see what it feels like pairing it with your subject matter. You might be the next Mohawk Chevrolet!

For example, If you work at an insurance company and want to create content about different life stages, what would it look like if it were a scavenger hunt? Or a game show? Or a high school science experiment? Or a diary entry from someone at each life stage? You make the information you want to transmit much more memorable by presenting it in a surprising or unconventional way.

Just adding a format can transform an average idea into something really memorable that earns lots of attention.

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Earn it Updates

It’s Alive! It’s Alive!

A few days ago, the doorbell rang. A very sweaty FedEx guy was standing outside my door with two stacks of boxes. The first physical copies of my book were sitting on my porch!

I’ve been living with the digital version of Earn It for months, but opening a box and seeing a REAL BOOK inside is a wonderful and surreal experience. The design work from Peter Cocking at Page Two is next level - the physical book has some really unconventional design choices, from paperback cover flaps that fold out and turn the cover into a poster, to starting the book as soon as you open the cover.

Interviews and Webinars!

• Thanks to Sam Sethi and James Cridland for having me on Podnews Weekly. You can listen to our conversation here or you can read the interview in the Podcast Business Journal.

• I’m doing a free Office Hours webinar with Harry Morton and the team at Lower Street on Wednesday, September 18th about why you need an attention strategy and how to create one. Sign up to attend for free here.

• I’m doing a virtual talk at the Branded Podcast Symposium on September 25th about how to make shows that stand out from the crowd. You can sign up for free here.

• If you’re looking for a podcast guest, a speaker, or a customized workshop for you team, and you’re interested in rethinking marketing, building an attention strategy, or differentiating your brand, I’d love to talk with you! :-) (I’m going to be in Austin and Toronto in mid-to-late October and Montreal in November.) You can reach me here.

Kind Words

Speaking of Podnews, thank you to Radio Futurologist (real title) and Podcasting Wizard (not a real title) James Cridland for giving Earn It an early read and sharing this:

"If you should pay attention to anything right now, it’s this book. Steve Pratt highlights the only thing that really works in marketing - and the way to get there. This book is required reading if you want to rise above your competitors - while delighting your potential customers.”

–James Cridland, Editor of Podnews

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What’s Earned My Attention Recently

Dan Heath has a new book!

I am a fan of pretty much everything Dan Heath puts out into the world. I have read several of his books multiple times because they are that good. I also really love the podcast he started last year called “What It’s Like To Be…” that explores a different career every episode. (So if you’ve ever wondered What It’s Like To Be A Mystery Novelist, or a Tennis Coach, or a Mall Santa, or a Baseball Stadium Beer Vendor, you know where to listen…)

All this to say, I am very excited that Dan just announced his next book on LinkedIn. Here’s how he describes Reset:

“RESET will help you get unstuck, shake off old habits, and overcome the inertia of “the way things always work.” You’ll learn how to vault forward and make progress toward what matters—without the need for an influx of new resources (which, for most of us, is not forthcoming).

The book showcases normal people in normal situations who transform the way they work. There are no case studies of the usual stars of business books (Google, Nike, Starbucks, Apple, Netflix, etc.). No exhortations to embrace AI. No mention of anything Elon Musk is doing.”

You can pre-order Reset now.

The Launch of Sequel!

Two of my good friends and extremely creative and talented former colleagues, Tori Allen and Andy Sheppard, have launched a brand new podcasting company, Sequel. They’ve assembled a terrific team of audio storytellers and they already have a phenomenal roster of clients. Congratulations! 🎉🎉🎉

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Thanks for reading this edition! Let me know if you have any examples of unusual formats and subject matter that you love.

Steve