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Content Marketing All-Stars by News360
One-on-one interviews and insights from the world's leading brands and content strategists
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Content Marketing All-Stars Q&A: Brooks Thomas of Southwest Airlines
Tell great stories.
Southwest takes that often heard—and extraordinarily effective—advice to heart. The airline excels at creating content that engages, compels, and inspires. Over and over, the company produces pieces which tell extraordinary stories about its customers, its employees, and its brand.
How do they do it? Recently we chatted with Brooks Thomas, Social Business Advisor at Southwest Airlines, to find out.
Check out the full Q&A below:
Q: Starting broadly, what role does digital content play for Southwest? Why are you creating it?
A: Content plays a big role for us because it gives us the ability to tell a wide array of stories.
We pride ourselves on having the best employees in the industry and the best customers in the industry. Telling their stories authentically—I know that word is cliché—is what we seek to do.
We have both employees and customers sharing so many interesting moments; from trip planning, to the Southwest experience, to the lasting impact travel leaves. We want to harness all that and tell emotional stories.
Q: What is the team like that is pulling together these stories?
A: It’s not a single team, this really is a company effort.
We enable any Southwest employee who has a really good story to be able to tell it. We provide the platforms for them to share it on, and we’ve got teams like Social Business—which I reside on—curating those pieces.
We and the Social Customer Care folks are constantly harvesting customer and employee stories. Often that process starts with something as simple as a mention of Southwest on Twitter, or Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn.
We look as an enterprise – it really does transcend individual teams – how to distribute those stories internally and externally. Content at Southwest drives a larger narrative that extends beyond where it was curated. We look for ways to integrate it in other channels, in training opportunities, and shout-outs from leadership during major news and announcements.
Everybody here, in every team and in every city, is part of telling our story. That’s how it should be—everyone involved is part of the Southwest story.
Q: What are the mechanisms for employees sharing stories? Which platforms do you use to share and find stories?
A: There are a couple of different ways, but the one that is the most practical, and maybe the most obvious, is our robust internal online groups, particularly on Facebook.
Employees can go in and tag the right person with their story, and depending on the type of content it’ll make it to the right team. It’s a hub-and-spoke model for sharing.
We’ve had these Facebook groups for five or six years now and they’ve become very popular. People learn over time who to tag within the company. We’re like a family at Southwest; name almost any city or airport and I could tell you the name of somebody who is eager jump into action and help.
Social has helped to cultivate that company community. Friendships that used to be infrequent – “Hey I’ll see you a couple times a year because we work on opposite sides of the country” – can now be sustained digitally. Now people are able to constantly share really cool stuff with each other, which magnifies their relationships and also helps us cultivate an environment where the sharing is constant
Q: We’re big fans of the Southwest Stories on the website. Can you talk a bit about how that area came about and what it is?
A: It has a bit of an unusual origin story.
Back in 2004 and 2005 there was an A&E show called Airline which featured Southwest employees. We didn’t have any editorial control of the show, we just believed that our people would do the right thing and Southwest would be shown in a positive light.
And it did; after each episode we would receive an influx of applications from people who wanted to work for us.
When the show went off the air we experienced a big decrease, because the stories became much harder to find. Company blogs weren’t a big thing back then, but we launched one so that we could keep storytelling.
Over time the space grew to include video and became a much bigger thing. About a year-and-a-half ago we relaunched it as a community. We wanted it to be not just the stories we tell, but a discussion with peer-to-peer sharing; people helping people
Q: Another great offering from you guys is 175 Stories. Can you talk about what it is?
A: That has been a fabulous effort from our advertising folks in conjunction with our advertising agency of record, GSD&M.
We’d had the tagline “Every city has a story” peppered through our offerings for a while, but the idea hadn’t received the structure it deserved until the creation of 175 Stories. We called it that because that’s how many seats our new Boeing 737 MAX 8 holds. That aircraft went into service in October, which synched with our timing for a fall campaign.
175 Stories is essentially a combination of a lot of different storytelling efforts, but mostly involves our social content curation and advertising. The effort tells the stories of all the different people you might find on a flight. Some are real stories and some are produced commercials, derived from real situations.
We wanted to take that whole theme of “behind every seat is a story” and showcase it. We also wanted to highlight our coined term “transfarency” and show how we separate ourselves from the pack with two free checked bags—as long as weight and size limits apply – no change fees, and other similarly unique Southwest offerings.
Q: How do you measure the success of a piece of content? Which metrics do you pay close attention to?
A: It depends on the piece; where it is coming from and how it fits into the greater puzzle.
If it’s a piece that has some duality—for example, if it’s supposed to be building brand affinity and also encouraging people to apply for a job—then we want to be able to measure against both goals.
Typically, we’re putting out content because we want to build awareness around something, or we want to build brand affinity, or we want to inspire people to take action; whether it’s booking a fare, applying for a job, or simply engaging. Whichever of those is relevant drives the metrics we analyze.
Q: Finally, do you have any personal favorite pieces of Southwest content?
A: I’ll give you a newer one and an older one.
The older one is from a few years ago: I got a voicemail from a woman, Maraleen Manos-Jones, saying there was a crisis. She was in Albany, NY, and said she had a beautiful, healthy butterfly that had just emerged from its cocoon late in the season. She was afraid it wouldn’t successfully migrate south because by the time it got to around Kansas City in the midsection of America the temperature would be too low for a butterfly to survive.
So, she was asking of we would fly the butterfly down to San Antonio to be released in a botanic garden there.
We ended up doing it. We took her from Albany through Baltimore and down to San Antonio. We pitched the story to the press and by the time she got to the botanic garden in Texas there were throngs of cameras just waiting for this butterfly to be released. It was amazing, the story got picked up domestically and internationally.
We cheekily called it the “butterfly effect”: if we could raise awareness about something like climate change, or sustainability, or environmental friendliness, with one donated ticket—one butterfly—then we’ve done our job. In hindsight, seeing all of the coverage, we would have been crazy to pass on it, even though I’m sure many people thought we were crazy for pursuing it.
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The newer story involves a man named Earl Richards, who is a World War II veteran and describes himself as the happiest guy in Albuquerque.
He is also a huge Southwest fan. He sings for customers as they board; he asks to pass out snacks. He just loves the company.
So, we organized for him to come to our headquarters and get the royal treatment.
He was so taken aback that we would do this for him; he got choked up and was so thankful.
It’s a fun story and very representative of our customers. People take so much pride in associating themselves with us. That makes Southwest as much theirs as it is mine.
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#cmas#content marketing all stars#content#content marketing#CMAS QandA#southwest airlines#southwest#brooks thomas
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Content Marketing All-Stars Q&A: Anton Rius of 10,000ft
Content from companies that tackle complex problems can still be engaging and accessible for audiences.
A great example of this is 10,000ft. The resource and management platform excels at creating fun, smart, useful, and easy-to-consume pieces for its target customers.
Recently we chatted with Anton Rius, Content Strategist at 10,000ft, to find out how the company approaches its content strategy and development.
Check out the full Q&A below:
Q: For our audience members who might not know, what is 10,000ft?
A: 10,000ft is a high-level resource management and resource scheduling software platform.
We’re focused on helping creative agencies and other service businesses that do project-based work to manage their people, projects, and budget more effectively, and be more profitable.
Q: What is your background and what is your role at 10,000ft?
A: My background is in art and design but I actually started my working career in tech support.
I wasn’t happy with my career track at that time and then one day several years ago I discovered social media marketing. That was my gateway into content marketing and more recently, content strategy.
My official role at 10,000ft is Content Marketing Manager, but we are a flat organization, so our internal roles flex as we see needs and opportunities for the company. It’s a very collaborative work environment.
Q: What role does digital content play for 10,000ft? Why are you creating it?
A: I was actually brought in this summer to help build the next content model, so the role of content at 10,000ft is changing.
Broadly, I believe digital content is one of the best ways for businesses to build and nurture long-lasting relationships with people.
Fundamentally, it’s about those relationships. There’s a lot of noise out there in terms of content and a lot of companies approach it as another sales channel. But I believe they’re missing the point. I’ve always approached content strategy as the opportunity to improve every stage of the customer’s journey, from awareness to interest to purchase to support and advocacy.
And that effort shouldn’t just start and stop with Marketing. As I mentioned, at 10,000ft we work very collaboratively; everyone wants to help our community so most of my colleagues have an interest and a role in supporting our content efforts.
In terms of a broad goal, we use digital content to help people and companies be more successful with their project resource management. We know our customers are already successful. The goal of the digital content we produce is to help them get to the next level.
Q: We’re big fans of the blog. Can you talk a bit about the sorts of pieces you’re creating for that platform?
A: My colleague Natalie has been running the blog long before I arrived, and she’s responsible for a lot of the great content on there.
One thing I really love is the Two Beers series. We basically sit down with interesting people, share a couple beers, and get to hear about the topics and trends that are happening in their world. We get a lot of great insights from those interviews.
I also like the format of our case studies. Natalie doesn’t position them as the typical sales pitch collateral that you’re used to seeing. They’re focused instead on trying to dig into our customers’ stories and to understand how they found success overall. We talk about how our product helps them, but there’s a bigger story in each one.
Our blog is a continual work in progress. We’re always trying to improve the kind of content we’re putting out and are really trying to figure out what’s going to resonate most with our audience. There’s a lot more in the works, so stay tuned for that.
Q: Beyond the blog, what other sorts of content do you guys create?
A: We’ve done some video and we’re looking into more of that.
We also do some unexpected things, like physical content. For example, we created do not disturb cards for people who work in open office spaces. They were fun pieces of content intended reinforce the idea that people want to be less distracted and more productive at work.
We don’t want to restrict our content to blogging; we’re thinking about what’s going to be a great experience for our customers and for the people we’re trying to reach.
Q: How do you measure the success of your content? Which metrics do you pay attention to?
A: We’re tracking several different KPIs. It’s probably no surprise that we look at metrics like traffic, shares, and lead generation. We also look more broadly at things like the SEO value, sales value, and customer support value of each piece of content.
Anything we’re creating must have a reason why we’re making it. That said, the exact metrics depend on the type of content and where it fits into our customer journey. Every piece won’t serve the same purpose, but every piece should have a specific purpose in our strategy.
Q: Final question: do you have a favorite piece of 10,000ft content? What showcases what you guys do well?
A: A recent favorite of mine is our Essential 2018 Project Manager Report.
It was a collaborative research paper with our friends at the Bureau of Digital. The report helps project managers understand how they can thrive in their roles.
I don’t think project managers get nearly enough credit for the work they do. They keep everyone on track and on budget, but the role is often overlooked. It can feel like a thankless job and the goal of the report was to empower them with data and advice so that they can lighten their workloads, be more strategic, and get a better seat at the table at their companies. It’s had a great response so far.
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Content Marketing All-Stars Q&A: Allison Chesky of Resy
What’s the key to Resy’s content success?
Focus.
The restaurant reservation app’s pieces have a clear goal – helping consumers find where to dine – which gives them the clarity and strong point-of-view often missing from content from other brands.
Recently we chatted with Allison Chesky, Managing Editor at Resy, to learn more about how the company creates its exceptional blog, mobile, social, and email offerings.
Check out the full Q&A below:
Q. What is your professional background and role at Resy?
A. My background is in editorial. Prior to joining Resy, I earned my stripes working on editorial
teams of some storied magazine brands, culminating in a role as an editorial director overseeing digital, print, social, and creative.
The experience was invaluable for a few reasons, if none other than it was an excellent primer in quality standards (especially in the advent of digital). I was fortunate to learn from talented
editors. Working in editorial helped me develop a sense of what could exist, and how to realize a vision, building something from the ground up – from the story angle to the creative – and seeing it to completion in, you know, two weeks or less.
As for my role at Resy, I lead our content marketing, editorial, and social strategy, so my job is to tell the Resy story and the stories of the restaurants we work with. That includes creating content that’s engaging for our users, ideating email marketing campaigns, overseeing the blog and in-app copy, ensuring our messaging adheres to the brand vision, and crafting our creative for social.
One of the hallmarks of producing content for a tech company is how holistic we can be. I think the inherent nature of being at a startup lends itself to “stretching,” which is really beneficial from a content perspective because blog, email marketing, social, messaging—everything is aligned.
Q. What role does digital content play for Resy? Why are you creating it?
A. Our content, which bridges a few platforms, including our app, blog, and email, serves a few purposes— primarily to engage our users and provide a tool for discovery. Put simply, I hope that by reading about a restaurant or chef we’ve highlighted, a diner can discover something entirely new or a newfound appreciation.
Q. What sorts of pieces are you creating? And how is the content being created?
A. At Resy, we are obsessed with restaurants, chefs, and hospitality, so that’s the lens we apply to the stories we tell and the pieces we produce.
Our blog posts frequently feature Resy partners and chefs; however, we do also highlight chefs and restaurants who do not use Resy, but whose work we respect. It’s a testament to our devotion to the industry, and our love for it.
Our coverage is also sometimes indicative of trends we’ve observed in the data or where our users have expressed interest—whether that’s surrounding a highly-anticipated new opening or aimed at revealing the inner workings of a storied favorite.
It also doesn’t hurt that we work with wonderful restaurants and that the Resy team is deeply knowledgeable about hospitality and F&B. It provides us with constant material for content creation!
Q. How do you measure the success of a piece of content? Which metrics do you pay close attention to?
A. Engagement is, of course, an indicator, but the ultimate test is the trust we build over time with our users. It’s great to see a spike in reservations once, but it’s even better to see that we’ve built brand equity over time, and therefore have a user who will consider us—and our recommendations—in any market they travel to.
Q. Do you have a few favorite pieces of Resy content? What showcases what you guys do well?
A. Two of my favorite content pieces are The Resy Hit List, which can be found on the Resy blog and in our emails, and Why We Like It, a new feature in the app that’s our take on what makes that restaurant the ideal place to dine.
The team has a knack for predicting the hard-to-get-into places before they’re too difficult to get reservation for, so keeping up with our content and Hit Lists can help to inform diners’ decisions and encourage discovery of new and emerging restaurants.
We’ve also introduced Climbing on Resy (indicated by a lightning bolt beside a venue in the app), which uses real-time data of the most sought-after reservations, determined by Resy users, in a given market. It’s a democratized view of the restaurants that are being buzzed about.
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Content Marketing All-Stars Q&A: Anu Verma of Care/of
Care/of truly gets content.
The innovative health and wellness brand consistently creates beautiful, compelling pieces that engage audiences and further the mission of the brand.
Recently we chatted with Anu Verma, Head of Marketing for Care/of, to learn more about how the company tackles content strategy and development.
Check out the Q&A below:
Q. What is your professional background and role at Care/of?
A. I have had a few different roles in my career. I started out as a management consultant for a couple of years at BCG. While there, I was fascinated by consumer and luxury brands and I wanted to get a flavor for working in retail, so I took a role at Tiffany & Co.
After Tiffany, I went to business school at Wharton and transitioned to e-commerce brands, and after I graduated I spent two years in e-commerce marketing at Jet.com.
I joined Care/of in 2016, several months before we launched our brand, and have been focused here on building the brand and growing the business.
Q. For anyone who might not know, what is Care/of?
A. We are a direct-to-consumer wellness brand, offering vitamins and supplements.
We launched in November 2016 and our aim has been to innovate the experience of finding vitamins and supplements. We have a detailed quiz on our website where customers answer questions about their health and lifestyle. From that we recommend the right vitamins and right supplements for each person. Our aim ultimately is to help people be healthier, whether it’s through taking vitamins, learning about how they should be adapting their nutrition, or even building healthy habits. We just launched an app designed to make the vitamin-taking habit easier, too.
Q. What role does digital content play for Care/of?
A. It plays a tremendous role.
Content is part of all of our marketing efforts, from what’s on our site to what we post on social media. We also create a lot of content for our email newsletters, which are sent both to our active customers and to potential customers.
In all those cases we are thinking about the ways that digital content can help tell our story and help people find the answers to health questions that they have, as well as questions about our products.
We know that people don’t want long advertisements. So, we focus a lot on ensuring that our content is a useful resource, and in some cases, even entertaining.
Q. One of the things we really like is the library of health-related content on your website. Can you talk a bit about what that is and how it came about?
We know that people have tons of questions about vitamins and supplements: specifically, they want to take vitamins but they don’t know what to take. We realized that creating a library of articles was a valuable way to both get people the information they seek and to give them exposure to our brand.
It’s quite an effort to get the pieces written. We spent a lot of time determining what topics to cover, what the tone and substance of our pieces should be, and how we can present information in engaging ways. We see a lot of potential to keep investing in our articles and find new ways to have a conversation with our readers about personal health.
Q. How do you measure the success of a piece of content? Which metrics do you pay close attention to?
A. For the library pieces specifically, one way we measure success is by how discoverable they are within Google. Are they ranking well? Are they getting traffic? Are they showing up in response to certain searches?
We are also measuring how useful and engaging they are. So, how much time are people spending with each article? Are they staying on our site?
For the newsletter content it’s a little bit different because that’s going to a list of people who are already in some way familiar with our brand. So, we look more at metrics like click rate to paint a picture of how engaged our users are with the content.
Q. Do you have any favorite examples of Care/of content? What showcases what you guys do well?
A. One is an analog, not digital, example. Each month when someone receives a Care/of box, there’s a theme around it, complete with a notecard that often has a little game. It’s content that’s purely meant to put a smile on someone’s face, nothing more (and they’re games I would want to play, that remind me of games I played as a kid). Each month we see a pretty substantial number of our customers take part, and I’m really proud we’re able to create content that might create a little fun moment for our customers. That’s special.
On the digital side, I’m proud of all the research and thoughtfulness that goes into our library pieces. I sincerely believe we are helping people who are looking for answers to these sorts of questions.
An example, and of my favorite pieces, is an article on the best vitamins and supplements to take if you are a vegetarian. It highlights how you need to be mindful about the specific vitamins you take because not everyone’s diet is the same, reflecting one of the core values of our brand – that health is personal. .
Q. Finally, any advice from your fellow marketers? Any learnings from your recent efforts?
A. One is that patience is a virtue when it comes to SEO. We’ve been working on our library content for over a year and there have been moments where we have just had to sit back and wait to see if our strategies were working. It is a tactic that inherently takes time.
Another learning around search is the importance of tagging structures. The articles you wrte can be magnificent, but if you’re not investing time in the technical aspect, they may never really become meaningful traffic drivers.
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Content Marketing All-Stars Q&A: Matt Hayes of Leesa
When Leesa launched, the e-commerce firm made a commitment to donate one mattress for every ten sold, to plant a tree for every order received, and to donate time and money to organizations that help people seeking refuge from homelessness, domestic risk, and human trafficking.
That altruistic underpinning – the company openly says it measures success as much by its impact on the world as by sales and profits – can be seen in everything that it does, including its digital content.
Recently we chatted with Matt Hayes, Head of Marketing for Leesa Sleep, to find out how firm tells the story of its social impact program, and to learn how it approaches content marketing in general.
Check out the full Q&A below:
Q: What is your professional background and role at Leesa?
A: I’m the Head of Marketing and a founding member at Leesa. Before Leesa I was a partner at BrandJourney, an innovation agency that helps big companies like General Mills, Nestle and P&G disrupt themselves with new business ideas.
Q: What role does digital content play for Leesa? Why are you creating it?
A: Digital content was at the heart of our go-to-market strategy for launch, and it remains a core part of the way we do our marketing.
Early on, we knew we needed evergreen content from trusted influencers to help validate our product and brand. So, we leveraged hundreds of influencers to try our product and talk about it in an organic and authentic way.
A lot of our focus of late is using digital content, primarily video, to tell the story of our social impact program and highlight the stories of the lives that are being impacted with the donation of mattresses to homeless shelters nationwide. Having donated nearly 25,000 mattresses to shelters since our launch in 2015, this is a core differentiator for us in what is an increasingly-crowded bed-in-a-box category and it’s an important story to tell.
Q: We're fans of the Sleep Talk blog pieces; can you talk a bit about what those are and how those pieces are created?
A: Our Customer Experience team does a tremendous job of staying close to our customers and continuously learning about their pain points – from mattress buying to unboxing to ensuring the proper setup. The Sleep Talk pieces were created in response to learning of many of those pain points to help inform and quell pre-purchase concerns prospective buyers might have.
Q: How do you measure the success of a piece of content? Which metrics do you pay close attention to?
A: It depends on the content and its purpose. We are a direct response brand, so many of our digital assets are designed specifically with a strong call-to-action and offer to elicit purchase intent. With these, conversion rate and click-through rate are important measures. With our brand storytelling pieces, we look at engagement-oriented metrics like engagement rate, shares, comments, etc.
Q: Finally, do you have a favorite piece (or a few favorite pieces) of Leesa content? What showcases what you guys do well?
A: My favorite piece of Leesa content is our Social Impact Review.
It’s a beautifully-designed print -- and digital -- piece that highlights the social impact work we’ve done over our first two years as a company. It is the best representation of who we are as a brand and why we’re a different kind of company.
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Content Marketing All-Stars Q&A: David L. Smith of Mediasmith
GSD&M
If you want to know where digital marketing is headed, there may be no one better to ask than David L. Smith.
Smith, the CEO and Founder of Mediasmith, has been a longtime pioneer of new media strategy, execution, and measurement. Since the early days of the Internet in Silicon Valley, he’s been using, refining, and explaining emerging digital approaches.
So, which trends has Smith seen take shape in 2017? How does he see digital media and advertising evolving in the coming years?
Check out our All-Star Q&A below to find out:
Q: What is your background and what does Mediasmith focus on?
A: I go back all the way to the Mad Men era. I worked for an agency as a media planner in New York in the late 60s. A lot of what you see in the show is true, though we didn't drink before lunch.
I learned a lot from that period. In the early 70s, I came out to San Francisco and I've been here ever since.
This company, Mediasmith, has been around since 1989. We were founded in a marketplace where many of the independent media services at that time were just buyers. Their thing was: “We can buy it for you cheaper.” Because I'm a planner and a strategist, I saw a place for a company that was more strategy-oriented rather than just execution-oriented, or what they call now, activation-oriented.
Because of our proximity to Silicon Valley we’ve been involved with new technologies from the start. We got involved with the web in the mid-90s, and worked with a lot of early metrics companies such as DoubleClick.
Even today, metrics and data are a strong part of the underpinnings of Mediasmith.
People know us as being digitally-oriented, though 30 to 40% of what we do is still traditional media. We provide clients with a media mix that includes online and offline. We work in literally every medium that you could imagine for clients both in the US and abroad. It's media strategy, planning, buying, tracking, optimization, and analytics.
Q: Which digital trends have you seen take shape in 2017? Specifically, are there certain approaches, tactics, or platforms that you've seen as a major impact this year?
A: Certainly the emergence of new platforms like Snap. The continued growth of social media in general is an all-encompassing thing, whether that’s the president commenting on Twitter or simply the clout of a company like Facebook.
Another trend is the maturation of programmatic buying. We’re seeing more programmatic direct buys, not just using programmatic for leftover inventory. While that's been around for a while, it received a big boost this year.
A third trend is the whole area related to quality, fraud detection, brand safety, and transparency; understanding who's getting paid what within the digital ecosystem. It comes down to ads being seen by humans and making sure that your advertising is going to be effective. The first step of that is viewability; making sure that people rather than bots are making the call to a page.
Also, an increasing number of clients and advertisers are using multi–touch attribution. They want to know how much credit should go to different digital channels. Search, which is often the last-click, has tended to get all the credit versus a display ad where somebody was initially lured in.
It’s about understanding how everything fits together -- mobile, display, social, video, email, etcetera -- and understanding how to credit each of those things properly.
Then there’s the holy grail of measurement: being able to do attribution between online and offline. That is what more and more clients are looking for. Nobody has the silver bullet for online and offline attribution, but there’s a lot of progress being made.
Q: What are some examples of new or different things that you have worked with your clients on this year?
A: One is kind of a man–bites–dog story: twenty years ago when we wanted to buy digital, we bought a lot of it from print media and the digital was bonus. These days, and especially this year more than ever, we will buy digital campaigns and the print will be bonus.
That shows the maturation and power of digital. The fact that the publishers are willing to bonus ads in their magazines or in their newspapers in exchange for a significant digital buy.
Another thing that we've seen this year, and that we've started to apply more and more for our clients, is the whole area of influencer marketing. There's a lot of controversy about it, but when done well it can be very effective.
An example is that we were able to use celebrity chefs for a promotion with our client, BJ's Restaurants Inc.. It was an effective promotion because it used chefs outside of our own client but had an association in the related area.
Something that’s old-is-new-again is that clients today are looking to work across multiple media. Many agencies have sprung up focusing on a single channel – say Facebook or search – but increasingly, brands want to work across online and offline, or within multiple areas of digital. The idea of maximizing effectiveness across channels is coming back to the fore, rather than having a lot of individual efforts.
Q: As you look towards the year ahead, which digital trends are you watching?
A: So much of the stuff that's going on is really exciting.
Whether it's twelve months or it's two or three years, over the next period of time we're set to see the big impact of AI. And that’s already becoming visible. A great example is the way that Amazon uses it. If you like this, you might like that -- that kind of thing. And Facebook and Google are using artificial intelligence to bring us better targeting and to bring the consumer more appropriate content.
Another area is augmented reality. There’s been all this talk about virtual reality but augmented reality is going to be a bigger and bigger factor. It’s not just Google Glass 2.0; you’ll be able to walk down the street and see what’s in various stores through an overlaid display, or see the ingredients in a package, or see what a sweater is made from. And then there’s the inevitable combination of AR and VR, mixed reality (MR), which will be even more impressive.
Then there are driverless cars. People talk about it hitting the mainstream in years, maybe 2020, but in Arizona there are literally going to be driverless taxis in the next few months.
That’s going to produce a whole new medium: if the average person commutes for 60-90 minutes a day in their car and the driving is automated, then there’s an opportunity to install screens in the cars. Passengers can do conference calls, check their email and schedule, watch entertainment, whatever they want.
One more is the blockchain. It is being seriously looked at to help with the whole area of payments; to make sure that we're paying for something that is legitimate and understanding who's getting paid what in the media ecosystem. Blockchain is not necessarily fast enough to assist programmatic advertising today, but it will as computers inevitably get faster and faster. It’s going to be a big part of our industry.
IOT is starting to penetrate many homes. This is the deployment of sensors in almost everything new that you buy for your house. Thermostats, front door locks with cameras, lightbulbs, and many other things that can be controlled from your phone remotely.
Lastly Voice, led by Amazon’s Alexa but with significant entries by Google (OK Google), Apple (Siri) and Microsoft (Cortana). Voice is quickly becoming the new I/O mechanism, replacing the keyboard.
As a result of the above, the number of new media channels and platforms will explode over the next 5 years. And they will all have their own “native” metrics. Making the job of attribution even harder.
It’s an exciting time to be in the media business. And I can’t wait to see what is next.
#CMAS QandA#content marketing all stars#content#content marketing#marketing#digital media#advertising#digital advertising#mediasmith#david l smith#david smith
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Content Marketing All-Stars Q&A: Claire Cronin of Virgin Atlantic
What does digital content with a personality look like?
It looks exactly like what Virgin Atlantic is doing these days.
The airline has truly mastered the art of creating pieces that are funny, heartwarming, and entertaining.
How do they do it? What role does this content play for Virgin Atlantic? What are they working on next?
To find out, we recently chatted with Claire Cronin, SVP of Marketing at Virgin Atlantic.
Check out the full Q&A below:
Q. What role does digital content play for Virgin Atlantic? What are the goals?
A. Overall we want our digital content to showcase our brand personality, drive an emotional connection with our customers and encourage consumers to fly with us.
However, each piece of content plays a different role depending on the campaign and our objectives.
During campaign time, our content broadcasts to a wide audience with aim of increasing brand awareness and preference and generating bookings and revenue. Throughout the year we seed a regular drumbeat of engaging content into spaces where sharing is natural behavior looking to maintain brand advocacy and loyalty and encouraging engagement and interaction.
Underpinning all content is a strategy encouraging our customers and our people to create their own content and share – they are our best advocates and if they endorse our brand then they’re doing our job for us!
Q. We love the Ruby blog; can you tell us a bit about what it is and how the pieces are created?
A. We’re so glad you love Ruby!
The aim of the Ruby blog is to get under the skin of Virgin Atlantic and really tell the stories behind our people, our places and our planes.
We’re always looking for those stories that people might not know about, for example, how to change an aircraft tire, what’s it’s like to work in our Clubhouse or the best aircraft graveyards.
The long-form content of the blog gives us great content to share on our social channels, telling stories whilst aligning to our commercial priorities.
Q. Which metrics do you pay attention to? How do you measure the success of a piece of content?
A. It really depends on the objective of the piece – our hard hitting, highly targeted direct response pieces are all about driving revenue and our broader brand pieces aim to drive awareness, emotional connection and preference.
We set ourselves benchmarks around reach, impressions, views, click throughs and engagement based on previous performance of our social activity whilst also taking into consideration wider industry benchmarks.
When we release a piece of content, I immediately look to engagement – I still feel really proud when people start sharing and commenting. We also find initial high engagement gives an indication of the long term success of the piece.
Q. Do you have a favorite piece (or few pieces) of Virgin Atlantic content? What showcases what you guys do well?
A. This is a tricky one as I have so many favorites! Our recent content supporting our Where I want for Christmas campaign is a great example of a piece that showcases our Virgin Atlantic personality whilst supporting our commercial priorities around our winter sale.
I also love this piece which we created to bring our sponsorship of the NFL International series to life – it really heroes our most recognizable asset, our cabin crew! We find our followers on social love any content that features our crew.
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In the summer we brought out a flying with kids video which inserted ourselves in a topical conversation and really resonated with parents whilst showcasing our family offering.
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Q. Finally, are there any content trends that you're watching for next year? Any formats/platforms/approaches that you're excited about?
A. We’ve been watching AR / VR for a while now and have dipped our toe in this space but I’d really like to see this become more mainstream in 2018.
I feel that there are so many opportunities for Virgin Atlantic in the AR /VR arena – we offer a unique experience to consumers and if we can immerse people in our cabins, our Clubhouses and destinations on the ground through our content, we’ll definitely see more conversion and more people choosing to fly with us.
#virgin atlantic#Claire Cronin#cmas#CMAS QandA#content marketing all stars#content#content marketing#marketing
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Content Marketing All-Stars Q&A: Eva Taylor of Hootsuite
No company understands the importance of effective digital content better than Hootsuite.
Given that the firm specializes in providing social media marketing and management tools, it is essential that its pieces clearly engage audiences and truly deliver results.
So, how does Hootsuite develop its best-in-class content? How does it approach judging the success of its own efforts?
Recently, we chatted with Eva Taylor, Global Social Marketing Manager at Hootsuite, to learn more about how the firm tackles content creation and measuring ROI.
Check out the full Q&A below:
Q: What is your background and what is your role at Hootsuite?
A: My background is heavily rooted in digital marketing, content strategy, and campaign management.
One of my earliest roles was focusing on digital content strategy for an agency. Then I worked with tech startups in the e-commerce space and media firms before joining Hootsuite earlier this year.
My role at Hootsuite is Global Social Marketing Manager. I oversee our social media strategy and evaluate the ROI of our social efforts.
Q: What role does digital content play for Hootsuite? Why is it being created?
A: Doing social at Hootsuite, which is a social media company, requires us to be best-in-class. And content plays a big part in that. Everything we do on the Social team revolves around content.
More broadly, content is the basis for everything we do in Marketing. Content makes it possible for new customers to find us on search and social; and it’s what helps us keep our existing customers engaged.
A big part of our strategy is to ensure that we focus on creating customer-centric content that adds value. And we also want our content to position Hootsuite as a thought-leader in the social marketing space.
Q: What are the different content formats that you are creating?
A: We create a huge variety of different content types.
Our blog gets over a million visits a month, and we create a ton of content for that. We then use a lot of that blog content to inform our social content.
We’re creating much more than just text posts; we’re doing videos, infographics, guides, whitepapers, and webinars.
Our users range from small business to large enterprises, so a lot of the content that we create is designed to speak to varied needs. We consider how familiar they might be with Hootsuite or social media in general, and want to make sure that we address the different stages our audience might be at. We want them grow along with us.
Q: You said part of your role is evaluating the ROI of Hootsuite’s social efforts. How do you do that?
A: From a content perspective, there’s a lot that’s important. Traffic, leads, inquiries -- we look at it all.
A key element is tying content performance back to business objectives. So, pipeline, revenue, leads, etcetera, are also key indicators of success for us.
And engagement metrics such as likes, clicks, comments, and shares -- depending on the content format -- they're all critical for understanding how our overall content strategy is working and what content is resonating with our audience.
Taken together it also allows us to gauge how we’re performing.
Q: Any learnings from all that analysis? What are some approaches that have worked well for Hootsuite?
A: One is simply tailoring content to each platform.
So, for example, if we've got a blog post we might turn that into a social video for our Facebook audience because we know that's how they like to consume content.
Another example would be LinkedIn, we’ll tailor our content there towards thought leadership, or maybe culture and employment opportunities at Hootsuite.
It’s about understanding that different audiences on different channels have very different needs. We want to add value for the customer depending on where they are.
Understanding that has been one of the reasons why we see our engagement on social continue to increase and improve.
Q: Do you have any favorite piece or pieces of Hootsuite content? What showcases what you guys do well?
A: There’s one I like because it’s really meta: we did a social campaign and then we used that as an example of how to determine social ROI.
We used several different content types to tell that one strong story across different channels, including posts, videos, whitepapers, and webinars.
It started out at a high-level concept of what it was and why it matters and then it gradually became more sophisticated along the way.
So, we built a series of social videos which drove users to a collection of blog posts as well as a guide outlining how and why marketers should determine social ROI.
The campaign did really well for us in terms of engagement. The shares, the views, everything on the social side was strong, and on the business side we drove a significant amount of influence on the pipeline and leads.
Q: Are there any content or social media trends that you're watching closely? Specifically, are there any formats, platforms, or approaches that you think might have a big impact in the next year or two?
A: Good timing with the question. We do a campaign around social trends every winter, so we were just talking about this.
A few things came up:
Video. That’s not a new trend, but the way that users consume content has really shifted dramatically in the last couple of years. Videos have a big part to play in that. We expect to see more and more brands shifting to storytelling through video at all stages through the customer journey.
I think another interesting one that we’re watching is personalization, specifically looking at humans versus AI and automation. So, how can an AI be a helpful tool for marketers when it comes to predictive analytics and setting up content at the right time in the right place?
All of this ties back to the evolution of social ROI. As customer behavior changes, it’ll be even more important for brands to expand their view to look beyond just direct attribution. There’s so much more to look at when it comes to social and content.
#cmas#CMAS QandA#content marketing all stars#content#content marketing#social media#social media roi#hootsuite#eva taylor
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Content Marketing All-Stars Q&A: Jeff Martinez of FedEx
The content of FedEx is as global as its business.
The multinational delivery services firm produces a wide-range of compelling marketing collateral for every region of the world, tailoring the pieces to local languages and tastes.
How do they do it? How does FedEx create content at scale? What has the company learned from its experiences with international creation?
Recently we chatted with Jeff Martinez, Global Content Production and Brand Journalism Advisor at FedEx, to find out.
Check out the Q&A below:
Q: What is your role at FedEx?
A: I work on the Global Content Production and Brand Journalism team. We are part of a larger team that encompasses our group, Global Media and Social Media.
We are the storytellers of FedEx. We do everything from breaking news to customer stories to corporate social responsibility efforts to team member profiles that appear on about.fedex.com and our various social channels.
Q: Why are you creating content?
A: There are a lot of different groups in FedEx that are creating content for various reasons. Some work on how to videos, some have an internal focus, others are more for advertising purposes.
For us, our ultimate goal is to humanize our brand. We want to go beyond just the products and services we offer and talk about our culture, our customers, and how we help businesses grow.
It is putting a face to FedEx. We want to show that we are not only shipping packages: we are helping businesses succeed and delivering for good.
Recently we’ve been focused on disaster relief because of the hurricanes, earthquakes in Mexico and California wildfires. On about.fedex.com we’ve documented relief efforts to show what we’re doing and why it is important for companies to be involved in communities. Telling that story helps to humanize the brand and show that we want to have a positive impact on the global community.
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Q: What is your team like? What are the skill sets of the members?
A: We have a team of 6 that includes photographers, writers and producers. Most of us come from either a news or television background.
I specifically lead the Global Production Network and team up with our regions on international storytelling.
Q: What’s the scale of your global content production?
A: To give you some history, when I started in 2011, there was very little international content produced out of the USA. FedEx has so many great world-wide stories to tell so we started the Global Production Network.
We originated with Europe and now we’ve since been around-the-world, including to MISA (Middle East, India, Australia), Latin America, Asia, and North America. As of spring, 2017 we’ve been to 14 countries and over 35 cities.
The goal has always been to get a good base of content to tell the FedEx international story and also to get the regions set up to be able to produce their own journalistic content.
So, we focus on showing local teams best-practices of video and photographic storytelling. We essentially teach them how to fish so they can produce their own content that’s cost effective, not cost prohibitive and more documentary/journalistic style vs. advertising.
Q: What lessons have you learned from the experience of growing the Global Production Network?
A: It gets easier as you go along.
There are so many challenges that go along with creating international content. Language barriers, local laws, permits, proper visas for video production, the list is pretty much endless and you really need to have all of your t’s crossed and i’s dotted.
Those are the sorts of things that become easier over time.
In terms of a specific lesson, one was around interviewing.
When we are creating content in a foreign language we are working with an interpreter or with a local FedEx team member to translate. Initially we would translate each question and answer as we went along, but that disrupted the flow. Over time we learned to have the native-language speaker ask the questions directly and then do the translation later. We go into the interviews with the questions and talking points we need to hit ready to go.
It sounds basic, but something as simple as changing that order of translation really helps the quality of content.
Q: How do you maintain a brand voice and content quality standards across so many regions?
A: When we start creating content in a market we are always there to show the local team the dos-and-don’ts of the brand from a global perspective.
We talk about how to tell a good story and explain that not everything has to come with a strong advertising angle. We discuss how to let the customer or team member tell the story. That’s the sort of thing we work hard to instill.
Q: How do you measure the success of a piece of content? Which metrics do you pay close attention to?
We look at many elements to determine success, and pay attention to metrics associated with all of them.
That includes: How and where was the content used? Was it shared in multiple social media channels? Picked up by a traditional media outlet? Modified for an advertisement in one of our global regions? Repurposed in our FedEx Small Business Center or some other external FedEx site?
Also, did the content perform in social media? How many “likes” or “shares” or “retweets” did it have? What was the sentiment in the comments section? Did it meet or exceed our social media benchmarks? How was total engagement?
And we look at whether a piece of content has life beyond a single moment in time. For example, if we feature a small business customer who has a strong sustainability angle, can we repurpose the story for our Global Citizenship Report? Can we use the product this small business makes for a “gift giving” story during the holiday season?
Q: What are a few pieces of FedEx content that showcase what you guys do well?
A: There are a couple.
One is a video featuring a company called Devoción, which is a coffee firm that ships fresh beans out of Colombia.
Their whole idea is going from farms in Colombia to the cup in the United States within 10 days.
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The reason I like the piece is because it shows what this company does and also shows how FedEx helped them completely change the way coffee can be transported. The other great thing is that we were able to repurpose this video in different ways, including a cut down version used in Instagram and in social that basically tells the whole farm to cup story in 15 seconds or 17 seconds with a branded endpage.
Another one is about a woman, Cleuza, who makes dance costumes. She started making them for her daughter, then more people in her area, started shipping in Brazil, where she is located, and now ships internationally.
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I like that we were able to tell her story and that it had a strong woman entrepreneur angle. She basically started sewing in her house and became an international business. It is about a mother, a daughter, a small business and a dream. It’s a motivating piece for women or any entrepreneur trying to start a business.
With that one too we were able to cut it into a thirty second piece that aired as a television commercial in Latin America.
Q: Finally, which content marketing trends are you watching closely?
A: Some of us on the team come from the television/documentary backgrounds. So, for us organic storytelling -- having other people tell your story -- is natural.
Now you see many more brands starting to do that. They’re creating more documentary-style videos and moving away from agency-produced videos. That’s one shift I see clearly, moving from being brand-centric to story-centric.
Another big thing is creating different versions of the same content for different mediums. Five years ago when I did a cut-down version of a longer video one of the responses was: “Why do we need two videos if it’s telling the same story?”
Now it’s commonplace to create custom versions for different social channels. I see that trend continuing as there become more and more channels. Custom content isn’t going away any time soon.
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Content Marketing All-Stars Q&A: Joshua Coon of Kodak
Want to see modern content marketing at its best? Then take a look at what a company founded in 1888 is doing.
Kodak, the storied imaging and technology firm, has been at the forefront of the field over the past few years. Among other things, the company has launched a highly successful podcast, built a large audience for its blog, and engaged audiences through creative social media takeovers.
On top of all that, Kodak has come full circle with content: it recently launched an old-school print magazine.
Recently we chatted with Joshua Coon, Director of Content Marketing and Campaign Activation at Eastman Kodak, to learn more about these efforts and to find out which trends in the space he’s watching closely.
Check out the Q&A below:
Q: What’s your professional background?
A: I have a pretty diverse background.
Before Kodak, I worked at a sporting good company, a durable goods company and I’ve worked on the agency side things as well.
I went to art school for illustration and design. That process, of working as an illustrator and artist, informs a lot of how I approach marketing and the work I do at Kodak.
Q: What is your role at Kodak?
A: I’m the Director of Content Marketing. I think of myself as being the company’s storyteller.
A lot of what I do is tell stories about the brand’s past, present, and future. I want to show the brand’s relevance and its authenticity in the world we live in today.
Kodak has such an incredible history – we’ll be 130 years-old next year – and I want to highlight that richness.
There’s also the incredible work being done every day with our products – many of the biggest movies that come out in theaters are shot on Kodak film. Photographers all over the world are capturing moments and creating art on our film.
So, I’m focused on telling both those stories from the past and those stories that are happening right now. It’s really exciting – I have so much to work with.
Q: What is the benefit for Kodak of telling those stories? Why is the company creating content?
A: It accomplishes a variety of things.
Kodak has this rich history, but it’s also no secret that we hit rough patches with the transformation to digital.
Part of the reason to tell these stories is to showcase the relevance of the brand today.
When I started here a lot of people were asking why Kodak would keep making film. But there’s this passionate community of folks who are still shooting on film – and now it’s having a renaissance. It’s part of that embrace of things like vinyl records, printed books, local food and craft beer – people want those more intimate, authentic experiences.
With our stories, we’re showing all the incredible people that are using our products today and by highlighting their work we showcase how both the current generation and the next are using our products. Film isn’t a thing of the past in fact it’s used by some incredible storytellers and artists the world over.
On the historical side, Kodak has a lot of fans -- they love our products, they love the history of the company -- and there are so many interesting things we can share. For example, the lunar orbital mission that photographed the moon so the astronauts could safely land was created not just with Kodak film, but with our engineers deeply involved is the project.
There are all kinds of incredible stories that have never been told before.
Q: What sorts of pieces are you creating?
A: We’re not working with huge budgets here; we have modest resources.
That forces us to be really resourceful. We very much have a start-up mentality, and we look to accomplish as much as we can with what we have.
For example, we started our podcast, The Kodakery, with internal resources. We produce the show in-house, we edit it in-house, and we market it in-house.
It's something that’s grown substantially over the last couple of years. We’ve done interviews with everybody from Oscar-nominated directors and cinematographers to New York Times best-selling authors.
That came out of a looking at the types of resources that we had available and making sure we spent budget in a way that would give us the most bang for the buck.
Similarly, we have a lot of stuff happening with our social media team which makes the most of what we can do. So, we do Instagram takeovers that mobilize the photography community around the world.
Another interesting project from our team is the Kodachrome Magazine.
We had all these great long-form interviews from The Kodakery podcast, and that led us to launch a print magazine. Also, the idea is that we’ve got this passionate analog community that’s looking for hands-on experiences.
And a really important part of our business is print technologies – we make huge printers that print everything from newspapers and magazines to packaging – so this was a way to showcase the entire breadth of the company. By putting out a magazine using our own technology we’re walking the walk and showing that we believe in print.
The magazine costs $20 a copy. We put it out in May and the first issue sold out in 48 hours. So, we went back to press and we’ve just launched issue two.
It's a product and it's also a content marketing program. It's analog now, but over time we’ll start to share the content on Kodak.com and on our social channels.
I'm really, really proud of both The Kodakery podcast and the Kodachrome magazine. With them, we’re telling our story through the stories of the people who use the mediums we create. We’re showcasing their successes and how they are impacting the world.
Think about what George Eastman did. He democratized photography for anyone and everyone. At every moment of modern history, Kodak was there and in many ways we still are. Our channels now showcase how we’re still a core part of creation.
The Kodakery and Kodachrome capture the spirit of who we are now, why we’re relevant, and where we came from.
Q: Any learnings from launching the podcast? Any tips for brands looking to make their podcasts successful?
A: Podcasting is a fascinating and a frustrating medium.
You’ve got all these different platforms and different channels. There’s not a core distribution point where you put it up and get full-picture metrics back. So, we’ve had to monitor the podcast very carefully.
One learning from our experience is that we advertise and promote an episode many more times now than when we started. In the beginning we would put it out and promote it a bit on social media and Kodak.com, then move on to the next one.
What we found is that podcasts have a long tail and that it helps to put them back out when they’re relevant. So, we have an episode about the lunar orbiter missions, and when it’s an Apollo Mission anniversary or there’s a NASA breaking news story we have it ready to share again.
After we release an episode now, we keep re-sharing it. We find that we get new listens and new audiences coming in each time. We also use a lot of assets that come out of a podcast – such as quotes – to create sharable pieces like graphics and animated GIFs. That helps keep our social media channels alive with new content. We try to maximize everything we can from each episode.
Q: How do you judge the success of a piece of content? Which metrics do you pay close attention to?
A: We use a robust set of monitoring tools and analytics tools.
We look especially carefully at engagement. For us it's really, really important that when we put content out we’re seeing conversations about it. We want to see people talk about it and interact with it.
To give you an example: we recently had a great Instagram takeover Ben Stockley, a photographer whose image is featured on the cover of the second issue of Kodachrome Magazine.
He took over our Instagram channel and interacted. He talked to people, he answered questions, gave behind the technical insights, he got really involved. That gives people a rich, meaningful experience that adds value to their lives. And that is beyond just what you can measure purely with metrics; it’s about a deeply positive interaction with our brand.
Q: Final question: which content marketing trends are you watching closely? What do you think might become important in the coming years?
A: I always find it hard to prognosticate because there's always a new thing that just explodes suddenly.
That said, one of the things that we’ve learned from our experiences here at Kodak is that audiences -- especially younger audiences -- don’t want to be marketed to. They don’t want you to just sell them something. They want things to be useful and to add value to their lives.
Like what we’re doing with the magazine or The Kodakery, I see a lot of other brands starting to generate longer-form, richer, better-produced content. Brands are trying build relationships that are more meaningful. I think that’s going to continue to be a trend.
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Content Marketing All-Stars Q&A: Whitney Drake of GM
How do you tell the story of a multi-billion-dollar, multi-national company that has been around for over a hundred years?
That is the challenge facing the Communications team at General Motors.
Every day they produce compelling content related to the automaker’s activities across a host of different countries and brands. These pieces come in a wide-range of different formats, including text articles, digital videos, and graphics.
How do they do it? How do they consistently create so much great content?
To find out we recently chatted with Whitney Drake, Manager of Story Bureau and Analytics, at GM Communications.
Check out the full Q&A below:
Q: What role does digital content play in GM's communications efforts?
A: Within GM communications we look at digital content from both a proactive and reactive perspective. We’re leveraging it to effectively tell our brand stories and to ensure we are prepared to respond in the digital space.
Content has always had a significant role in our communications effort, what we have changed is the speed and cadence in which we bring digital content to life and how we measure it. We try to look at the whole digital landscape and figure out where and when a story will have the greatest impact, whether it is through timing, outlet, or assets. We’ve evolved from the days of a just looking at a piece of content as a press release or words on paper.
Q: What sorts of pieces are you creating? How are they being created/what is the team like?
A: The team is creating interactive speeches, images, graphics, videos and the overall treatment of a creative activation. They are integrated from the onset of a conversation to help guide creative production while also laddering back up to the overarching objectives. We are looking to tailor assets to the medium we want to hit and ensuring the team has all that is needed to do so.
Our team is centrally located but pulled in when and where needed. We have a creative director, video and graphic production, broadcast management, editorial, researchers, analysts and media experts that make up the team.
Q: We really like how your News and Stories section covers a range of topics such as sustainability and technology in-depth. How do you choose your content focus areas? How did those become priorities?
A: Our news and stories align with our business objectives. We always ask how does this story align with our overall business priorities, how will it positively contribute to moving our products, people and communities forward. We’re focused on putting the customer at the center of everything we do and the stories we produce are a reflection of that philosophy.
Q: How do you measure the success of a piece of content? Which metrics do you pay close attention to?
A: We are 100% focused on earned reach across the digital space. How many people are we actually reaching, how often is a piece of content being shared, and is it changing people’s perception and raising opinion and consideration.
Q: Finally, do you have a personal favorite piece (or pieces) of GM content? Which pieces showcase what you guys do well?
A: Immediately, our work with the Chevrolet Camaro at Nürburgring comes to mind.
Lap time at the world famous Nürburgring Nordschleife, known as the most challenging track in the world, has become the standard of performance for manufacturers and tuners alike. So, when the new Camaro ZL1 1LE was expected to time faster than any of its Chevrolet predecessors, we knew there was an opportunity to generate heavy buzz.
We sent a film crew to capture it all (in-car, aerial, interviews, driver prep, etc.) Then we researched the hottest racing video games for inspiration and designed an interface to overlay the video, making it feel much more modern and interactive.
Three days prior to its release, we posted a teaser video on the Chevy Camaro Facebook channel. This post, accompanied by targeted media pitches, generated 24 articles by key enthusiast outlets. 54% of the articles embedded the Facebook post/video.
We timed the announcement to occur on the first day of the Camaro ZL1 1LE media drive where Chevy’s Chief Engineer and lap driver were in attendance – making it easy for journalists to get the full story and conduct interviews.
The full 7+ minute video was posted on YouTube and embedded into the press release, helping to generate 158 online news stories; 40% embedded the full video. However, the biggest hit came from Camaro's Facebook community. The video was posted 30 minutes after the press release and quickly began generating heavy views, engagement and shares.
The Facebook video alone received over 1.6 million views, with 74% of the views coming from shares.
We knew the Camaro’s time would garner coverage, but through integrated storytelling and powerful assets, we transformed what could have been standard coverage into a powerful moment in car history for enthusiasts across the globe.
To date, coverage of the Nürburgring Lap Video and teaser have generated 182 online and print news articles, resulting in an estimated earned reach of roughly 2 million people.
#cmas#content marketing all stars#content marketing#CMAS QandA#communications#gm#general motors#Whitney Drake
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Content Marketing All-Stars Q&A: Alicia Tillman, CMO of SAP
Alicia Tillman, the recently appointed Global CMO of SAP, is a true marketing all-star.
Tillman, who previously served as the CMO of SAP Ariba and held various executive leadership positions at American Express, has an extremely impressive track record of building strong brands, pioneering innovative tactics, and dramatically growing businesses.
Recently we had the opportunity to chat with Tillman about her new role, her vision for the SAP brand, and her thoughts on current marketing trends.
Check out the full Q&A below:
Q: What is your background?
A: My background is in accelerating business transformation by consistently delivering customer value and driving brand growth.
Prior to being appointed as the Chief Marketing Officer for SAP, I spent two and a half years as the CMO of SAP Ariba. I was drawn to the role because of the company’s goal to double the size of the business within five years. The challenge excited me and I knew this would give me the freedom to push the limits in creative marketing. While at SAP Ariba I lead a successful rebrand of the company to further align with SAP’s vision – to help the world run better and improve people's lives.
Prior to that, I spent 11 years at American Express leading their marketing and corporate communications in the company’s business travel division.
Q: How do you envision your role as SAP's CMO?
A: I plan on taking a dynamic approach to my role as the CMO of SAP. It is my responsibility to drive brand growth and accelerate the company’s marketing strategy and brand recognition across the globe.
With the full support of our global team, we will push the envelope when it comes to utilizing emerging technologies to drive best-in-class customer experiences that keep the SAP brand top of mind.
One of our goals is to be a purpose driven brand, which I’ll continue to foster by strengthening our efforts in promoting a culture of gender diversity and leading the tech industry in opportunities for women.
I also plan to embark on new partnerships that elevate our brand and will hold myself responsible for promoting our exceptional product innovation and purpose driven initiatives.
Q: What are your biggest priorities going in?
A: The SAP Brand is one of our most valuable assets. It’s also our biggest growth driver. In fact, brand is the leading purchase driver in the enterprise software industry, accounting for a full 43% of the buyer decision-making process.
With this in mind, my biggest priority will be to continue to grow and elevate our brand. Our brand connects people to the promise we hold close as a company to improve people’s lives. This is doubly important because not only do we want to be recognized as a top brand, we want people to associate our brand with that vision.
Q: What do you see as the role of digital channels and content in SAP's marketing efforts?
A: Marketing is not only the steward of brand, but the voice of the customer. Our company-wide pledge, to put our customers at the heart of everything we do, is a very real and tangible commitment.
Great marketers are those who adapt to a customer-centric vs product-centric approach.
We see our digital channels and content as being an extension of our brand. We leverage these channels to provide a consistent and authentic experience that enables us to get closer to the customer than our competitors. We’re also using them to showcase who we are as a company, creating innovative campaigns that showcase SAP as the digital transformation leader that we are, and our commitment to making the world run better.
Q: Finally, which marketing trends are you watching closely right now? Which tactics, platforms, and/or ideas might have a major impact in the coming years?
A: Something I’ve not only been watching closely, but also working to implement, is the idea of purpose driven marketing.
Today’s modern brands are embracing the idea of going beyond the functional value they provide by aligning with a cause. Aligning shared values with customers to elevate your brand and make the world a better place is a huge opportunity.
I think we’ll start seeing more of this with an increasing number of brands adapting to the growing social consciousness of today’s consumers. I’ve been noticing a shift in the values that make a brand “good”, and that the most iconic brands of the future will be those that collaborate to advance humanity.
Today’s consumers are more socially conscious than ever, and will inevitably follow the brands that are also adopting a higher purpose.
Another marketing trend I’m seeing right now is around the connected customer journey. While this is not necessarily a new idea, I believe we’ll continue to see it grow as a business imperative, as marketers continue to adapt to the growing customer need for companies to interact with them in real time.
Today’s customer wants a company that’s always thinking ahead, and knows the next step in their journey before they do. Companies will lose out if they are not able to provide this type of consistent and genuine experience at every step of the journey.
#Alicia Tillman#cmo#sap#cmas#CMAS QandA#content marketing all stars#content#marketing#content marketing
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All-Star Q&A: Doug Michelman and Tracy Palmer of Sprint’s 1Million Project
Compelling brand content can not only help the bottom line, it can help the world.
Case in point is Sprint’s 1Million Project.
The charitable corporate initiative from the telecom giant aims to provide home Internet access to one million high school students in the United States – and digital content is playing a key role in the effort.
Through a recent series of exceptional pieces, Sprint has been telling the stories of students in need of connectivity and showcasing how it is helping.
To learn more about this content and the undertaking overall, we recently chatted with Doug Michelman, President of the 1Million Project, and Tracy Palmer, Vice President of Brand Advertising at Sprint.
Check out the Q&A below.
Q: What are your roles and responsibilities at Sprint?
Doug: My title is President of the 1Million Project. My job is to bring the 1Million Project to life. So, I get to get up every morning and help thousands and thousands of high school students reach their potential.
Tracy: Man, that's a tough one to follow. I am the Vice President of Brand Advertising for Sprint. I oversee social, communications, and YellowFan Studios.
YellowFan, our in-house studio, allows us to do things like the 1Million Project. We have writers, art directors, and our own production abilities, which allows us to create the content to make sure that we're helping Doug and the entire 1Million Project and make the world a better place.
Q: What is the 1Million Project?
Doug: The 1Million Project is a massive initiative to help address a problem which is called “the homework gap.”
The homework gap is not an issue that's discussed around dinner tables every night but it's a real problem, and it's part of the wider, broader digital divide issue.
The challenge is that, increasingly, all school work is assigned online, is often completed online, and is submitted online.
Most classrooms today are wired and have broadband connectivity, but there are still about 10 million students who go home every night to a home that doesn't have Internet access. That’s largely because they can't afford it; it doesn't fit into a family's budget.
That creates great inequity between the haves and the have-nots, because some students go home to a home where Wi-Fi and connectivity are taken for granted and then there are millions of kids who don't have that ability.
For those latter kids, learning and studying is limited to the hours that they're in the school building. When they leave the school building, they are cut off. They're cut off unless they take extra measures to get connectivity back, such as going to a library, or McDonald’s, or Starbucks. We hear stories all the time about students who go home and then when their parents get off work at 10:00 PM, they get taken to their aunt’s house or someone else’s house who has Wi–Fi. They study from 10:00 PM till 1:00 AM and then they go home again.
As a wireless company, we're helping to address that problem. We are in a unique position to make a difference and help address this problem because we have the network that can provide that connectivity. So, over the course of the next five years we intend to help a million of these high school students in need. We'll give them each a free device -- either a smartphone, a tablet, or a hotspot -- and free wireless service through their high school years. They’ll have the opportunity to be connected everywhere, everyplace, and so they can study where and when they need to -- just like their other counterparts at school who happen to have more money than they do.
Q: What role does digital content play in getting the 1Million Project story out?
Tracy: First, it’s important to know that Marcelo Claure, the CEO of Sprint, for years has been involved in many, many different organizations and community efforts. When Marcello came in, he said, "You know what? We really need to, as a company, pick one thing because the smaller the amount of dollars that get distributed, the less difference we can make.”
And so he said let's pick something that is very, very important to us and make it part of the soul of our brand. Something that we can all get behind.
This project is huge for us as a brand. And Marcello is adamant about getting stories out and helping people understand some of the specifics around the homework gap that Doug was speaking about.
Being a mobile technology company, the 1Million stories and content is a good fit for our audiences. We want people to know what’s going on, to share, and to find out how to get involved.
Many of the pieces of content that we've developed have been the stories around the lives of some of these kids. We feature them on social media and across other platforms – it’s the kind of stuff that connects. People see these and want to know how to make an impact as well.
About a year and a half ago we decided to bring some of our creative initiatives in–house, which is how YellowFan Studios came about. That’s been an amazing opportunity for 1Million. We're able to send our production crews with Doug and his team when they go on-site to distribute the devices at the local schools.
And because it’s our own studio, we can drop what we're doing and run off and meet Doug in a school and capture that content. Then we can we can turn it into pretty much anything we need – social, video, text -- because we have editing and finishing abilities here as well.
Q: We love the Inquisitive Minds video series. Can you talk a bit about what it is and how it fits into the 1Million Project?
Doug: From my point of view, we need to engage various constituencies for the 1Million Project. We need the support of school districts, we need the support of parents, we need the support of local governments, and we need the support of generous donors to make this program a success over its lifecycle.
There's no better way of engaging those audiences than telling the real gritty stories of high school students around the country who have the need for connectivity, by showing the difference that this solution can make in their lives, and by highlighting how grateful they are for having the equal opportunity to succeed in school and achieve their dreams.
So, the Inquisitive Minds videos are the greatest manifestation of that.
Tracy: These kids we feature in the series have amazing stories. Trevonte, Hannah, Marleni – I get choked up thinking about them.
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I also smile. I feel proud to be part of this -- it's like you go through it again every time you watch each video.
Doug: The Inquisitive Minds series that Tracy and her colleagues are working on is one of the most important things we're doing right now.
We've been looking at some other ideas for the future which would be equally powerful in different ways. We want to capture a viewer's attention. The goal with the content to make a viewer stop, pause, consider the challenge that these kids face, and then maybe want to support the effort in some way.
Tracy: This is a project that people on my team are jumping up and down and knocking the doors over to be part of.
The way our company has rallied around the 1Million Project has made us a closer. We’ve been able to mobilize 30,000 employees for good.
It’s shown us how can we help, what can we do, how can we participate, how can we support each other. It shows our employee community how big of a difference we can make as a larger group versus individual pieces.
Doug: Tracy's team's been doing a lot of work for a project we're going to launch in about a month in which we're going to ask every one of our 30,000 employees to become a fundraiser for the project. We're using a social fundraising platform called CrowdRise for that.
We're asking every employee to go out and use their social platforms and email networks to make appeals for their friends, families, and networks of contacts to contribute to this effort.
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Content Marketing All-Stars Q&A: William Mattiace of Nissan North America
As with so many other areas, corporate communications/public relations has been transformed by digital.
Gone are the days when the field mainly involved crafting press releases for journalists. Today, it’s possible -- and necessary -- to connect with audiences directly.
A firm that has fully embraced this shift is Nissan North America.
The automaker has been excelling in developing content pieces that smartly use digital platforms to capture the attention of both consumers and the media.
Recently we chatted with William Mattiace, Content and Editorial Communications Manager, Nissan North America, to learn more about how the company approaches content strategy and content creation.
Check out the full Q&A below:
Q: What is your role with Nissan?
A: I have been in this job since May 8, so I’m relatively new. I was with Ford Motor Company for about five years before starting my role with Nissan here in the U.S.
I work mostly on the earned media side, on the public relations/communications team. Any piece of content – a news release or photo or infographic -- goes through our team. We make sure that it passes the litmus tests of: Is this it interesting to people? Will they be engaged?
It’s hard for brands to speak like humans most of the time. That’s the team’s goal: to ensure that we sound relatable and say something interesting.
My job often intersects with the paid marketing side. We want to have one voice, one story, and one message. No matter where a customer potential customer happens to run into Nissan content, we want things to be consistent and to ensure than an engaging story is being told.
Q: Why are you creating digital content? What are the goals?
A: If you’re not creating digital content these days, you’re probably not going to be selling much or be on top-of-mind for consumers.
I think it’s strange when companies have a digital department versus a traditional department, because it’s all so digital these days.
If you’re not doing digital content then you’re not you’re not reaching your customers and you’re not telling the story of your brand. Today everyone’s mobile phones live in the palms of their hands; they’re constantly swiping and flicking and paging through.
Maybe, just maybe, you’ll get a glimpse of their attention. So, the more you have out there that’s digital the better your chances of being seen.
In this chaotic media environment we’re all competing for a second or two seconds of someone’s attention.
Q: What’s the team like and what sorts of pieces are you creating?
A: We are essentially a former TV news crew, but our medium is no longer a television. It’s now a phone or a tablet or a computer.
We still do traditional public relations – such as press releases – but our mission is to also to get the consumer’s attention. That’s new for communication and public relations people. We have not able to communicate directly with the consumer this easily in the past.
But now we are creating tweets, we are creating GIFs, we are creating infographics, that we know are going to be going to be seen directly by the consumer.
When we tweet out something for Nissan about a piece of news it links directly back to our media site, which in the past was just for media. Now we’re seeing a tremendous amount of consumer traffic on NissanNews.com. It’s a great reminder that those press releases, although traditional, must be written in consumer language. They must be something that people can understand and they must be memorable and be interesting.
Q: Which metrics do you play close attention to? How do you measure whether or not you are capturing consumers’ attention?
A: I often get in trouble with our friends on the social media team because impressions always crack me up. I don’t think impressions is the most important metric to consider – but I’m also not sure what is.
I really encourage the team to measure engagement. We try to look at things like comments and sentiment. And if people ask questions I think that’s a tremendously powerful way to measure if something was successful. Because if people are asking questions then they’re paying attention and you’ve captured their imagination a little bit.
We also look a lot a who shares pieces, where they were shared, and when they were shared. Of course on the PR side we still count clips and coverage, but even on those stories we’re now looking at how much they’re shared and commented on. It’s a whole new level of engagement compared with the past.
Q: Do you have a few favorite pieces of Nissan content? What exemplifies what you do well?
A: One of my favorite pieces is a pretty new one.
We had the solar eclipse this summer and down here in Tennessee -- where our headquarters is ----- was in the path of totality. So, in nearby Nashville we had an artist make the largest lawn art ever created. And team members stood in it during the eclipse.
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We knew there was going to be news coverage about the eclipse and we knew that people would see what was Nissan doing. It was a creative way to do something very different surrounding the event and get brand recognition.
Another favorite is called Rear Door Alert. It was invented by two moms and engineers at Nissan, and it’s basically technology that monitors when a rear door is opened and closed. If you open and close the front door and don’t reopen a rear door, the vehicle will honk at you as you’re walking away to make sure there’s not, at best, some leftover food in the back or, at worst, your child.
It’s a cool feature and to showcase it we created a video where we had of one of our employees act as a mom who left something in the backseat. It was a very visual way to tell the story.
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Q: Finally, are there any content trends that you’re keeping a close eye on right now?
A: One thing that I’m keeping an eye on is how to reach that coveted Millennial audience. That doesn’t necessarily mean new digital platforms are going to come out, but more knowing what’s popular and resonating on each of the existing platforms.
For example, everyone loves the filters and Snapchat. So, how does a brand leverage those?
Everyone loves the stories on Instagram. How does a brand use those and make the most of the swiping up and down and left and right?
We just announced that we’re one of the first brands to work with Facebook on their Camera Effects feature. With our Die Hard Fan App college football fans can now take a photo and add a face-paint, augmented reality filter to show their support.
It’s an example of how we’re striving to use what’s up-and-coming on these platforms. We want to engage our customers where they are and in the ways they are using technology organically.
#cmas#CMAS QandA#content marketing all stars#content#content marketing#William Mattiace#nissan#nissan north america#marketing
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Content Marketing All-Stars Q&A With Katie Riddle of Pace
How do you create content that spurs audiences to purchase?
Katie Riddle is the perfect All-Star to tackle that question. As a content strategy lead at Target she found innovative ways to use visual pieces to showcase the company’s products. Now as Director of Content Strategy at Pace she works with a with a wide-range of clients to develop compelling messaging for their products/services.
So, what does she think makes for engaging, sales-improving content? Which new tactics is she experimenting with? How does she see content marketing evolving in the coming years?
Check out our Q&A below to find out:
Q: What is your background and your role at Pace?
A: My background is almost equally on the agency and corporate side. My last two positions were with Target and Intercontinental Hotels Group, the parent company of Holiday Inn and Hotel Indigo.
I worked as a content strategy lead at Target. Primarily I helped with visual strategy – how to use photography and video to showcase products online. I worked on how to replicate the in-store experience digitally; how to recreate that sense of touching and seeing a product.
At IHG, I was recruited to create a content strategy practice. The organization wanted to start telling stories that help people enjoy their travel experiences, that get the story of the brand across, in a business that is very price oriented. It’s a big challenge.
At Pace, we have a strategy team of 12 to 15 people. I’m the Director of Content Strategy, and my team and I help clients find the stories that connect their brands and their individual product lines to the people who are using them. So, we find the messages and themes that resonate with target audiences. We want to give people a way to understand the whole offering of the company and why what is for sale is valuable.
I guess I’m mid-career now. When I was in school there weren’t any degrees in digital marketing or content strategy, so I’m of the generation that has had to learn on the job. And it’s really been fun to make it up as I’ve gone along!
Q: Any big learnings from your time at Target? How did you use content to replicate the in-store experience online?
A: At Target, it was a painstaking experience to figure out how people wanted to experience products online. We did a lot of research and user interviews.
For instance, when someone is looking for a DVD player online, what content do they want? Well, it turns out they really want to see the ports on the back to figure out if it supports the outputs from their television.
So, we made sure to include the photography that was most useful for each product.
We also partnered with vendors to create product videos. You can only get so much information from a still image. We tried to provide the most useful photos, but you get so much more out of even a 15- or 30-second video.
Lastly, for the designer collaborations like Target + Missoni, we started doing video and 360-degree image capture during the photo shoots. That way people could really see the products move and get a sense of them. We saw a lot of interaction with that content, in large part from people who didn’t live near a store and couldn’t just run over to try something on.
Q: What is the difference between good brand content and bad brand content?
A: Good brand content is content that is truly useful to the consumer. It’s human, relevant and emotional. It meets a need.
Bad brand content just pushes the company’s point-of-view in a lightly veiled way; that doesn’t engage consumers. It’s just self-serving.
Brands should approach content from the perspective of unmet customer needs.
Q: Which content marketing trends are having an impact in 2017? Which trends to do you see becoming important in the coming years?
A: The first one -- and this isn’t new and will continue forever – is an increased focus on measurement.
When content marketing was a shiny new object it was a lot fluffier; people didn’t care as much about effectiveness. Measuring impressions doesn’t connect back to action.
Now people are paying much more attention to whether content sparks someone to buy or interact. A lot of CEOs and marketing leaders are saying: “Okay, content is cool and fun, but what is it doing for us? Is it truly driving incremental revenue or engagement?”
We’ve seen that across our clients; nobody is interested in doing content just for the sake of it anymore.
A second trend is personalization.
It’s a huge content and technology challenge to get from content that is trying to speak to everyone to the holy grail of one piece of content for one person – or one small audience -- specifically. It’s really hard to get there; there are challenges with content scale, meaningful segmentation and tagging architecture. You need to have sophisticated technology that can identify people who match detailed customer types and then serve the right pieces.
One more trend I’m watching closely is AI and voice-controlled experiences. I really think it’s going to be huge in the future.
When you start dealing with natural language everything changes. Currently, content is optimized for how people write and read – that is going to have to evolve.
People use slang when they talk. They don’t use complete sentences. You need AI to understand those patterns and serve the right responses to searches.
AI also comes into play with things like the Internet of Things and chat bots. How do you create content for those sorts of experiences? How do we develop a bot with enough natural language that it passes the Turing Test, truly replacing a “personal” interaction? How do you deliver the right content to appear on an interactive refrigerator door? All of that is very different from how we think about content today.
Q: How have you been experimenting with new content technologies, platforms, or tactics with your clients? Any examples that you can give?
A: We’ve been helping clients quite a bit with their digital analytics and content delivery. We have been looking to create ways to find, measure, and optimize content.
For Choice Hotels we are targeting pieces towards certain audiences. We’re moving from a “one to many” content strategy to a “one to some” relationship. This involves working on back-end systems, the content creation and tagging, as well as defining meaningful segments. We are in the midst of validating personas and content performance.
Another exciting thing we’re doing here at Pace is that we opened our own content production studio, The Outskirts. We always have had writers, editors, designers, etc., on staff, but this studio gives us a proper space for doing photo shoots, creating stop-motion animation, editing video, etc.
With social media moving at the speed of light, you can’t work on the production of a video for three days and expect it to still be relevant. Having the studio on site will give us the ability to create timely, scalable content for clients at a moment’s notice.
#CMAS QandA#cmas#content marketing all stars#content#content marketing#katie riddle#pace communications
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Content Marketing All-Stars Q&A With Steve Rubel of Edelman
Want to truly understand how content is changing? Then you need to listen to Steve Rubel.
As Chief Content Strategist at Edelman, Rubel spends his days identifying and explaining the rapid shifts in how consumers access information, use technology, consume media, and engage with brands.
So, what is this Content Marketing All-Star seeing in the landscape today? And which emerging trends is he keeping a close eye on? Check out our Q&A below to find out:
Q: What is your background and what does your role as a Chief Content Strategist at Edelman entail?
A: I’ve been in communications for more that 25 years. Mid last-decade I helped launched some of the earliest social media programs in PR.
Simultaneously I launched a blog that chronicled the challenges and the opportunities the PR community faced with the rise of social media.
This lead to my hiring by Edelman in 2006 and I've proudly called the firm home ever since -- coming up on 12 years.
My role as Chief Content Strategist is to help us figure out what's going on with all the different ways people get information. I look at the holistic media landscape and the entire marketing landscape to understand the different ways our clients should be considering going to market and engaging stakeholders.
I would say my role is three parts: I spend a significant amount of my time – a third or a half – as a researcher trying to figure out what’s happening outside of our walls by talking with large platforms, meeting with media company CEOs, and meeting with vendors; another big part of my job is with others here to synthesize all that information into a story that we share internally and with clients; finally, I’m out in the industry sharing what we have learned and our vision of the future.
Q: When you think across different platforms -- social media, native advertising and sponsored content, etcetera -- do you see a thread or consistent theme on what makes for good content versus bad content? Is there a foundational aspect to what works?
A: I think the word “good” is subjective and it needs to be applied.
The highest-quality doesn't always win on the Internet. It’s the folks who also understand the dynamics of distribution, how technology is changing, and behavioral patterns, who are the most successful.
Let's take the media world. In the late 90s and early 2000s when the broadband desktop became a mainstream phenomenon, Yahoo was the model. It was aggregating a lot of high-quality content in one place and a group of media companies benefited from partnerships with Yahoo.
Then in the mid-2000s there was a group of media companies that benefited from developing a search-centric strategy: they delivered content which answered questions in headlines, things like that, and they did extraordinarily well.
Now we’re in the social and mobile area, and another group of media companies – those that understand the psychology of sharing and how content elevates people’s identities – are thriving.
So, the quality is important but quality is increasingly table stakes. It's the folks who understand the dynamics of distribution and consumption who do well.
Q: As you look at both 2017 as well as further out, what are the big content trends that you're seeing? What are you keeping a close eye on right now?
A: I think that a lot of us forget that the rise of the smartphone is only a 10-year-old phenomenon; in terms of mass adoption it’s even less. It's only really six or seven years, maybe five years, where it has become a mass device, and obviously in some countries, that's still to come.
A lot of the things we are looking at are driven by the fairly recent rise of smartphones.
One of the big trends is the dynamic that exists between platforms and publishers/media companies. Depending on the estimates you read, roughly 70% of the digital advertising spend is now concentrated in two companies: Google and Facebook.
With that comes a host of issues. For media companies, it raises the question of how to stay afloat in that dynamic.
We are also watching the concerns marketers have with digital platforms and ad measurement. Traffic fraud and measuring viewability is a major issue, and there’s this circle of mistrust that exists right now between marketers, media-buying agencies, platforms and publishers.
More broadly, there’s this incredible disruption in the media buying communities as it relates to the supply chain right now. I think that's an important dynamic that's worth following because it's going to impact which kinds of content succeed going forward.
Q: How does that translate into what you guys do with your clients? Are there any different approaches that you're taking or different tactics you’re using?
A: A lot has changed. Let me give you two examples:
When you look at the media side, the majority of consumption is taking place on mobile and you have two companies that are kind of polar opposites – Google and Facebook -- which control the vast majority of distribution.
Given that, we’re increasingly working with data providers to figure out what types of stories, what types of content, and what types of creators over-perform on social networks. We then try to reverse engineer what they're doing and apply those learnings to an audience development strategy for clients. We also to look at the reporters who are cultivating strong communities online, and how we can engage them in different ways.
So that's one way that we're applying our thinking in our work.
Then, on the marketing side, our leadership recognized about five or six years ago that we needed to have a centralized media buying function to amplify the content we create and the content that we earned to help it be seen.
That’s not a new idea in marketing, but that was a new idea in communications. Many didn't believe in it.
But we saw that not only do we have to believe in it, but it's necessary
Q: Finally, are there any trends that you've seen emerging in terms of how content marketers are using data?
A: I think a challenge is that many brands are disappointed when they measure content marketing performance, but that’s because they’re using the wrong yardsticks.
Take baseball: If you get a hit one out of every three times you bat over the course of your career, you’re a Hall-of-Famer.
If I told you that you are going to play a game and you're going to fail to reach base -- you're going to underperform --two out of every three times and still be considered a world-class, you would say that's crazy.
But that's a standard belief in baseball.
There needs to be a reset in marketing around the expectations of content. For measuring content success, you need the right frame-of-reference.
It may not be as simple as how many people read that essay or watched that video. It may also be about whether that piece started a conversation, or sparked media coverage. And, ultimately, did it affect a sale.
The problem is that we're applying metrics, like page views, from the 90s and the 2000s. Today’s landscape is entirely new and so we have to change what the expectations and yardsticks are.
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Content Marketing All-Stars Q&A: Noah Mallin of MEC Wavemaker
Which fresh content marketing platforms and tactics should you be keeping a close watch on? How can your brand make the most of these approaches?
To find out what’s hot in content marketing – and what brands can do to capitalize on these new opportunities – we recently chatted with a true industry all-star: Noah Mallin.
Mallin is the Managing Partner and Head of MEC Wavemaker North America, a groundbreaking WPP practice which marries content, data, distribution, and evaluation. In his role he has had a hand in developing a host of highly-innovative -- and highly-effective -- experiences for a wide-range of brands.
So, which trends is Mallin keeping a close eye on? Which evolutions does he think will matter most in the years ahead? Check out our All-Star Q&A to find out:
Q: What is your background and what your role is at MEC Wavemaker?
A: I’m the Managing Partner and Head of MEC Wavemaker for the United States.
Wavemaker is MEC’s content and experience offering. We leverage data to create great experiences that people can have with the brands we represent.
My background is pretty varied. Before I was at MEC, I was at Digitas, where I had the good fortune to work with clients like American Express. I helped to develop content-heavy programs like Unstaged -- which was American Express sponsoring up-and-coming bands and pairing them with hot directors -- and Small Business Saturday, which was an amazing experience as well.
Before that, I was at Reprise Media, where I started the social practice. I was at Business Wire before that, helping brands tell their stories through more of a public relations lens.
I've also been involved with organizations like the Online Publishers Association, which is now Digital Content Next.
So, I've had a long history of working with content and experiences , especially in the digital space.
Q: Broadly, what do you think the difference is between good brand content and bad brand content?
A: Great content is something that's compelling enough to make a person want to spend time with it and feel like they got some value from it.
Ultimately, that's the most important exchange that we can help to foster: that exchange of attention for value.
If somebody can experience a brand’s content and feel like they learned something, that they felt something, then we know we have been successful.
Q: As you look at content marketing in 2017, are there any trends you’ve been watching closely? What has been having a major impact?
A: The biggest thing that I've seen happening is an increasing focus on how data can be used to create the right content experiences for different audiences.
In addition, there’s the increasing use of data to understand what a successful outcome is. From a measurement standpoint, brands are focusing on the role that content plays in the consumer journey. We've done a lot of work on that -- and I think we have a pretty good system for doing that -- and it's something that I hear talked a lot about now.
Q: How have you been experimenting with new content formats and approaches in 2017? Are there any examples that you can give?
A: I think a good example is something that we launched recently for Ikea.
It’s a back-to-school campaign and we knew that we wanted to reach a younger demographic, and that’s an audience that's tough to reach as well as engage with.
What we did was work with influencers to connect via Snapchat; not just via our own channels but theirs as well. We worked with them to create video content which was designed so that the people viewing it could alter the outcome – almost like a choose-your-own-adventure.
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Although, Snap is where we promoted it we also made sure that it was discoverable in sites like YouTube where people do a lot of searching.
What was interesting to us was that we could see a measureable difference in the amount of time that people were spending with the content. If you think about the perception of a platform like Snapchat, most people would say you're lucky to get six seconds worth of viewing on any video. We're seeing 20 seconds or more on these pieces.
We even saw fans of these influencers make their own cuts of the videos themselves, so that they could say: “Oh, look what happened when I made these decisions.”
When we saw that happen we knew that we are really connecting with the audience we wanted to connect with.
I also like it because it broke the template that people had in their minds of what is possible with a platform like Snapchat. Of course, you have to know a platform well to break the rules, and that’s a big part of why we were successful.
Q: Are there any big evolutions in content marketing that you see on the horizon? What will be impacting the field in the coming years?
A: I think what's interesting is how many brands are going through transformations and becoming more customer-centric. And part of doing that is being able to convey your brand story.
So, an interesting trend is the shift in how content will be used to bring brands to life. I think we’ll increasingly see things like brand documentaries which tell the stories of these transformations. I think it’s powerful -- if done right -- to show how their world is changing through elements like digital transformation and the rise of Millennials in the marketplace, and to show how brands are working to match those changes.
Also, and this is almost retro, but I think one thing that’s going to develop over the next few years is brands creating more long-form episodic video content. This is almost a throwback to what you saw in the early days of television, when there were things like the DuPont Theatre or the General Electric Theatre.
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