Looks like content is no longer king
As Isentia walks away from the world of content marketing and downgrades its profits after the fall of King Content, The Content Brewery’s Malcolm Auld considers what it all means for the future of the industry.
One of the most common conversations in marketing circles over the last couple of years, has been how to replicate the King Content hustle, and flog a fledgling content marketing agency for an outrageous amount of money, making oneself filthy rich.
Hardly a marketer I’ve spoken with could believe Isentia paid $48 million for this unproven content marketing business. “Where is the value” everyone asked? Well it looks like there wasn’t much – value that is.
Recently, Isentia announced it was dropping the King Content brand after a $4.4 million loss in the previous financial year. Mumbrella reported Isentia wrote down $37.8 million and closed offices around the world.
And as reported in Mumbrella today, Isentia has decided to get out of content marketing altogether. It certainly didn’t get anything out of content marketing, so to speak.
It reminds me of the first dot.con when big ad agencies rushed around like headless chooks overpaying for website production studios that had fancy names. I sat in one meeting where a young kid with a very small company, but building websites for some well known brands, turned down a $1m cheque. He wanted more, despite the cheque being more than twice his annual revenue.
Suffice to say, after the dot.con collapsed, nobody knocked on his door and his business is still about the size if was 17 years ago and he’s still just making websites and apps.
But content marketing is an industry in itself, though Gartner’s Hype Cycle already has the alleged industry on the slide into the trough of disillusionment.
Which brings me to a speech I delivered at the NZ Direct Marketing Conference. As I’m curious by nature I asked the audience (about 200 marketers and agency types) the following questions:
- Who wants every brand they come in contact with to deliver more advertising and an increasing volume of content to them at every opportunity possible?
- Who wants more email in their inbox?
- Who wants more notifications on their mobile?
- Who woke up this morning craving relationships with consumer brands? And can’t wait to read the thought leadership on toilet roll brands?
- Who has walked out of a retail store or café because you didn’t get served?
The answers were fascinating.
- Not one marketer in the room wanted more content delivered to them by marketers.
- Not one marketer in the room wanted more email.
- Not one marketer in the room wanted more notifications.
- Not one marketer in the room woke up thinking about brands, let alone wanting relationships with them.
- Every marketer in the room had walked out of a store because a salesperson hadn’t tried to sell them something.
This is fascinating stuff, folks. After all, if marketers and advertisers don’t want what the content marketers and the cyber-hustlers are flogging, why do they believe their customers want it?
Taking their answers once step further, the whole audience believed the premise of content marketing – that brands should deliver content at every opportunity possible to anybody who remotely comes in to contact with the brand, but should not try to sell anything – is complete and utter bullshit.
Not one executive in that audience believed, by show of hand, that marketers should be doing content marketing. As consumers, marketers hate content marketing.
So if the industry doesn’t believe in content marketing, why are marketers wasting shareholder’s precious investment on it? It appears that content marketing has rapidly become a punch-line to marketing jokes.
But one has to wonder, why didn’t the management at Isentia ask these questions to protect their shareholder’s funds?
And why do I have images of the emperor’s new clothes, and lemmings jumping off cliffs?
Gotta go. I have an idea for an anti-content marketing, content marketing business.
Malcolm Auld is founder of The Content Brewery. This post originally appeared on his blog.
Time to jump ship as an iSentia client
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Ironically, the simple fact of writing this piece and mentioning the fact that you’re from The Content Brewery is content marketing in itself…
If you think the definition of content marketing is that ‘brands should deliver content at every opportunity possible to anybody who remotely comes in to contact with the brand, but should not try to sell anything’… well, no wonder you think it’s a load of bs.
There are absolutely great examples of content marketing done well. Content as a form of customer engagement/loyalty. For example, retail brands sharing beautiful and interesting images for their followers on social media/email. Or companies sharing useful tips related to their space (eg Evernote sharing tips on how to be more productive).
Or companies publishing ‘thought leadership’/opinion/advice that encourages conversation and builds credibility/trust with them – something that’s essential for B2B companies like EY or Cisco where clients buy the people and reputation as much as the product.
Targeted, relevant, interesting/useful/entertaining content – but not necessarily a straight ad for a product – absolutely influences sales.
Just like what you’re doing with your article, Malcolm… Or would you just call it PR instead?
(That said, I agree that the former owners of King Content made a motza without a solid, long-term business model behind the continued success of the company.)
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Hello from 2015
https://mumbrella.com.au/what-does-the-demise-of-content-marketing-world-sydney-tell-us-about-the-industry-311690
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Consider Streem if you intend to make that jump
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Yawn
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I wouldn’t paint the rest of the industry with King Content’s brush, like saying there’s no money in financials because of Bear Stearns.
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Never knew what ‘content’ means. I’m not alone. Insentia didn’t know either.
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King Content was an early mover and the previous management should be commended for building and exiting the business successfully.
The problem with King Content is that for a number of years they failed to evolve and deliver a quality service that would retain the big ticket clients.
The model was to have a great sales pitch, then fulfill the work with low paid freelancers. As literally everyone else in the industry clambered onto the content bandwagon (publishers, PR, ad tech, media and creative agencies) the quality of the work just didn’t stack up for the price.
In an industry with a chronic over supply of vendors you need to be pretty good or very cheap to survive. In the end King was neither.
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Just to correct something.
Elspeth, at no stage in this article did Malcolm Auld mention that he was from The Content Brewery.
Those references would have been added by someone at Mumbrella in the lede and the source after the article.
I also note that Mumbrella removed the last sentence from the originals blog post as it contained a link to the website which could have been seen as inappropriate.
And no I don’t know or have ever worked with Malcolm Auld.
Anyway, I’m off to chop some firewood. If the axe gets blunt I’ll know where to go to get it sharpened.
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I’m not sure you’re on the right track here.
Yes, no one wants ‘generic’ notifications and similar. But there are things you do want to know. You want to know when something is shipped. Or an Uber is arriving.
Content marketing isn’t actually about more noise (badly understood that way), it’s about a value exchange through comms. Or creating a product in itself from your comms.
Medibank’s LiveBetter program is a great example of this done well. Content can be done — and I think your premise and assumptions are probably a little lazy here.
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Rubbish content that just adds noise is no longer King. If you write content to help prospects and clients then it is one of the best forms of relationship marketing out there.
There is not one good way to market your business though. You need to use content to enhance your other offline activities like telesales and direct mail.
Content is King if done well…
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Classic “thought leadership” move.
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Just what I was thinking, Elspeth.
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“After all, if marketers and advertisers don’t want what the content marketers and the cyber-hustlers are flogging, why do they believe their customers want it?”
Because it pays the bills? Duh!
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As someone who works brand side, there’s no way I’d be calling the author to help work on my brand.
Angry? Check. Overly opinionated? Check. Sense of being right? Check. Stuck in ways and unwilling to consider new ways of working? Check.
I don’t think anyone’s ever pretended the practice of content marketing is something new – the term itself of course is.
Content marketing isn’t, as is intimated, a matter of delivering more emails, more content to people. That’s absolute crap, and no one wants that.
At its essence, content marketing is about delivering relevance and value to customers, and helping customers ‘get’ your point of view, your why.
And, if as brands we’re doing that – and it’s achieving on measurable short and long term business objectives – then we’re doing our job very, very well.
By the way – the answers to the show of hands are correct. No one wants those things.
The fact they are used to belittle great content, though, suggests the author doesn’t understand the premise of content marketing in the first place.
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