What Does Jason Bourne Have to Do with Your Content Marketing?

Going off-brand with your content could mean losing your audience. Learn what the Bourne franchise can teach us about brand consistency.

Takeaways

• Putting action icon Jason Bourne in drag dilutes the franchise’s voice and brand.
• Subtle inconsistencies in brand voice can confuse and alienate audiences.
• Maintaining brand consistency while expanding your brand story requires a delicate balancing act and intimate knowledge of your audience.

Kristina: Can Jason Bourne pull off a drag show? And what in the world does that have to do with content marketing?

Hi everyone, I’m Kristina Paider with Convince & Convert, and today I am talking about consistency versus variety in your content marketing. Jason Bourne is the character created by Robert Ludlum in the amazing 12 book and five film, so far, action series. By all accounts, he is a captivating character. He is Special Forces trained, multilingual, logistics maverick and a guy who is careful and calculated with every move he makes and every word he says, as they all reflect these qualities. Perhaps this is not unlike many companies today, minus the assassin training, of course.

But even Bourne cannot pull off a drag show, at least not in my opinion. It’s inconsistent with his character and the story being told. Now, adding a scene or moment of something off-character, off-genre, or off-tone, best-case scenario, will result in an audience trade-off. Worst case, you lose the audience entirely. A cross-dressing scene tends to lean towards something comedic or dramatic and, therefore, would dilute the true blue, action followers of the Bourne series. While it may, in turn attract a new stream of audience, that will only happen if it delivers on the, perhaps unintended, promise of having more dramatic and comedic moments throughout the new tone of the series. Ultimately, in our opinion, I think it dilutes the story.

Now, have other movies successfully, and with character, successfully pulled off such a costume change? Absolutely. Let’s take a look. Kurt Russell and Sly Stallone escape their pursuers in Tango & Cash. Whoopi Goldberg in The Associate ran an entire business in drag as a man on Wall Street and had to make appearances to keep up her operation. Dustin Hoffman did a great job in Tootsie, playing an actor who, in order to expand his choices of roles, changed his approach and auditioned for a role as a woman.

Now, I know you’re not gonna have the equivalent of Jason Bourne in a drag show in your content, but sometimes it’s good to think about this because even subtle inconsistencies can have the same effect. And even though Jason Bourne cannot swap places with Tootsie, having zero variety can be boring.

So, this leads me to the question of the week, when it comes to your content marketing. I’d love to hear how you balance consistency and variety. In what ways do you expand your brand story? Please take a second, leave a comment below. I’d love to hear from you. Thanks so much for tuning in, and see you again soon.

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