Conference Call Annoyances Rescued by Awesome Hold Music - Great Content in Unexpected Places

Not long ago I walked into an empty conference room, sat down, opened my calendar invite and prepared myself for the hassle of dialing into a conference call. It was a typical conference call; I was in an otherwise empty room getting ready to talk to 10 people over the phone.

Previous experience had me prepared for the standard drill of conference call hassles. You know the process, you enter a massively complex code, wait on hold, get interrupted every 5 seconds as someone new joins the call and as people talk over one another. It's an uber-fun meeting where the conversation seems to revolve more around statements like, “no no, you go first,” “who just joined” and “can whoever is in traffic please go on mute,” than the actual subject matter of the meeting.

Fun, fun times. But this time was different.

This call would be the first of 2 or 3 calls on my schedule that day, and the last thing on my mind was the actual software hosting the call. That all changed within seconds as I found amazing content, in a completely unexpected place—the conference call hold music (and to some degree the ease of dialing in).

Yes, the hold music was blowing my mind. The wait time that most conference call companies fill with musac, elevator music or soft rock hits from the 80’s, is replaced with this piece of awesomeness:

The song is what got my attention, it was entertaining, but it in the end, it was the company that developed it, UberConference, that received my lions share of my interest. As I waited for the call to start, I found myself on their website, learning more about their product offering, founders and becoming a brand fan.

I learned that the song was originally written in 2012 by co-founder Alex Cornell. It was originally recorded in a very different style and was so well received that it garnered great coverage in TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal and more. In 2014, they challenged a band they like, Scott Bradlee and the Postmodern Jukebox, to as they put it “rework the song in as many styles possible.” The result is impressive to say the least.

Based on the simple brilliance of my experience, UberConference has qualified for my second installment of Great content in Unexpected Places (the first installment was about TSA). After all, no one expects to be both entertained and intrigued by a brand while on hold - it’s simply unheard of…

With this great discovery come 5 useful content marketing tips

• Do something unexpected: Always find a way to be clever with your content, don’t simply do the things that everyone expected. UberConference could easily have simply had a lovely mix of Whitney Houston and Rick Astley musac playing, but they dialed it up a notch—and it worked. 
• Use content to lure people to your website: When making unexpected and clever content choices, always think about how they will lead people to your website (or other desired CTA). And, more importantly, make it stupid simple for people to make the connection between the content and what action you want them to take. A link is best, but if that isn’t possible, make sure you make it simple for people to make the connection between your brand and the content. 
• Entertain with content: Great content marketing can do many things, like educate or help your brand become known as a thought leader, but it should always entertain. After all, there’s a lot of content out there and in order for yours to stand out it should be fun. 
• Offer customers a gift: People like free things, and if you’re able, offer customers a free download (or another fun perk). In the case of UberConference hold music, customers are invited to download the song and use it as their own hold music. I might have taken things one step further and gated the download in order to gather email addresses, but I am sure they had their reasons for making it a simple download. 
• Reuse content: Many have used the “leftover turkey” analogy of content marketing, made popular by the amazing Rebecca Lieb of Altimeter Group, which points to the fact that most content marketing can, and should be, carved up and used in different formats. This music started as one piece of content marketing in 2011 and was so delicious the first time that UberConference decided to repeat the recipe once more in 2014, with a twist. The lesson: always reuse content!

And, UberConference doesn’t stop there, cruise around their website and you’ll discover other great content, like their brand video explaining their benefits. It's pretty entertaining for anyone who spends much time on conference calls.

 ***this article was originally written for and published on my blog The Marketing Test***