‘Content is king, but shit content is just shit’: Dee Madigan

This is 100% correct and as someone who has been producing and publishing branded content for television and digital audiences for over 20 years, I could not agree more.

YouTube gave advertisers the creative license to place ‘content’ and duration flexibility, that was cost prohibitive on television. All of a sudden, ‘advertising agencies’ became content producers.

Good and effective branded content is not about the brand. Yep – true!

Dee is correct – your audiences don’t want to hear about your brand, just as none of us sit down and watch an hour of TV ads on a Thursday night.

There are some very clever brands who use content effectively, but more often than not, they are nimble, challenger brands or where they have in house production and can sustain the publishing frequency that is needed and delivered cost effectively with an eye on ROI. That’s good content but these campaigns never make the industry awards, but they work and make sales..

Yet the advertising agency industry is continually confused between what is content and what is an ad – the two disciplines are mutually exclusive. People don’t sit down and watch an hour of TVCs – they watch their favourite tv show for the entertainment. Brands who think “integration” is key – need to be very careful also. No Producer wants to compromise the audience entertainment with product placement, so whatever you get is going to be marginal at best.

Again, marketers need to think about establishing and using their own platforms to build content and control their narrative, but give the audience a link between improved information, lifestyle, benefit with an inspiration to engage with the brand as secondary.

The best branded content does not even feature the brand. Imagine an agency with the balls to tell their client that!

Branded Content works to create either information or entertainment that provides a basis or branded platform where other aspect of the brands marketing mix can be leveraged such as CRM, In-Store, TVC, experiential – but a content campaign that is full of brand messaging – or worse, product placement and demonstration, is just shit content.

Good Content takes brave marketers. It’s about a “less than more” approach and a longer term and carefully considered platform and investment. It is not for every marketer.

An effective content production is no different to producing an effective entertainment program for broadcast TV. The Ad agencies can knock themselves out within the ad-breaks. It is a completely different discipline – TVC versus TV programs (content) and I congratulate Dee Madigan for calling this out.

There is nothing wrong with short form online video or product DIY or influencer lead content, but what is frustrating is that too many marketers post poorly produced crap and then wonder why the audience engagement is low.

There are some very clever brands who use content effectively, but more often than not, they are nimble, challenger brands or where they have in house production and can sustain the publishing frequency that is needed and delivered cost effectively with an eye on ROI. That’s good content but it will never make the industry awards.

I have just experienced a major retailer client who thought good content was simply turning the content into an online product catalogue. Catalogues are the things that clogged our letterboxes and no ones reads.

I might be mis-understanding but I think even this misses the point of content – this will lead to cheap TVCs rather than something which builds an audience and a following. Content needs to inform and or entertain, with the by-product of sales or communicating product benefits. I’m not sure that researching an insight is going to lead to an entertaining content series. There’s two amazing agencies proving huge capabilities in content in Melbourne. One won and ARIA in 2021 for best film clip, another has an amazing film in the international short film festival circuit. They aren’t for brands, and they aren’t ads, but they prove to brands that the people in those agencies can entertain an audience and think differently. They have the ability to create new and different outcomes for clients beyond banners and 30″ TVCs.