When Drew Davis of Tippingpoint Labs first brought up how "Finding Nemo" could act as the rationale for securing added budget for content marketing, I thought something was fishy. Why would a Pixar fish flick -- albeit the most successful DVD ever -- provide suitable ammo to change the budgetary habits of a CMO?

Here’s why.

Most companies invest a huge percentage of their budget in buying time and space – advertising, PR, and so forth – but much less on creating the actual message. Consider the Geico example that was shared in the Content Marketing World session:

• Geico has a $745mm marketing/advertising budget.
• Geico has 19 types of insurance. That’s $39mm (and change) for each insurance type if they were to divide the budget equally.
• $35mm goes to buying time and space -- blank pages, air, and so forth. Only $4mm for the messaging.

Now invert that budget allotment.

"Finding Nemo" had an $87 million budget. Eighty percent of the budget, according to Drew, was spent on making the film. The remaining 20% was spent on marketing the film. Again: 80% for creating the actual content, 20% on marketing it.

The results? Great content triggered significant action and created a demand. "Finding Nemo" is the No. 1 selling DVD of all time, and a term, “The Nemo Effect” – a rush to purchase clownfish that depleted clownfish counts worldwide (this really happened!) – was coined.

Geico has been wildly successful – you can’t swing a gecko without hitting some form of Geico outreach. Is this attributed to deft messaging or massive amounts of placement? But how much better could it be? What if Geico invested $35mm in ongoing content creation/messaging and $4mm in marketing/advertising? What if your company inverted this kind of messaging vs. marketing/advertising spend and invested in content creation for your audience(s) that creates demand?

Drew’s message to a CMO is this: If you want to increase awareness, buy ads. If you want to increase demand, create content.

I’d put my money on demand.

What do you think?