What Heated Rivalry Can Teach Us About Content Marketing
If you haven’t heard about the TV show Heated Rivalry, do you even know any women or gay men?
The six-episode series*, based on a romance novel about two archrival professional male hockey players who fall in love, became an unexpected smash hit at the beginning of the year, generating a slew of media attention, think pieces, fan TikToks, Reddit conversations, and so much more. Viewers reenacted scenes, debated the characters’ motivations, analyzed moments in excruciating detail, and interpreted the story against the background of their own experiences. (One of the most amazing and touching developments is how straight men are responding to it—but that’s a topic for a different newsletter.)
It may seem like a stretch, but there’s a parallel there for content marketing. Stay with me: okay, potential leads for healthcare or edtech companies probably aren’t going to write sexy fan fiction about a product or service. But audiences are constantly interpreting your content through the lens of their own experiences, resources, and constraints. They’re asking questions like:
“How would this work in our workflow?”
“Could this apply at our scale?”
“What’s the risk of not doing this?”
A lot of B2B content, understandably, tries to answer every question and anticipate every objection. The most effective content often focuses on something different: it establishes a clear point of view, presents the logic and proof behind it, and then leaves room for audiences to think about how they might adapt it to their own environments and needs.
This sparks engagement via LinkedIn comments, community conversations, questions during webinars, and more. That’s where trust grows.
When you design content with this framework in mind, your audiences do more than just consume it—they participate in it. And that makes it more likely that they’ll see themselves actually using your solutions.
*I must point out that the series is quite, uh, explicit. Consider this your NSFW warning.