No longer a ‘little island’ – how content marketing found its place in the world
Following on from the recent Mumbrella Awards, the winner and nominees of Best Content Marketing Strategy discuss how the medium is evolving, where brands are still going wrong and what’s next on the horizon.
At first glance, the winning campaign for Best Content Marketing Strategy at the Mumbrella Awards seems a tad too ambitious to be considered a mere content marketing strategy. ‘Born This Way’, for car oil brand Nulon, comprised a series of 32 videos and was executed over an 18-month period. The man behind the project, The Edge Agency ECD Matt Batten, explains it was a decision made because car nuts tend to be ravenous for information.
“Other campaigns talk about the benefit of the product,” he explains, “but we talked about the benefits of the brand. What it means to be a car nut – not ‘we love oil’. We were only supposed to do the launch film and three mini documentaries, but the videos got such good traction we kept going and it became 32 films when we turned the tap off in January.
“It wasn’t treated as we get in, we get out and then we do something else. This was the way we treat and speak to people.”
Really, it’s typical of the evolution the industry has gone through. Over the past few years, content marketing has progressed from a few cheaply-made blog posts and YouTube videos to encompass the entirety of the marketing spectrum. Today, the practice stretches across almost all mediums and has marked a shift away from interruptive, sales-led campaigns to something today’s apathetic, ad-blocking digital natives will actually consume.
And while many marketers and agencies laud the discipline’s ability to build brand awareness and loyalty without pushing an aggressive product promotion, others have raised questions about its credibility and effect of the overall bottom line.
In another example, fellow nominee CHE Proximity also decided brevity was not the way to go when it came to creating 40 different videos for Velocity Frequent Flyer.
“People are constantly bombarded with the same types of messages,” the agency’s group creative director Brian Jefferson explains. “We were thinking how do we not get ignored when putting campaigns out. So instead of just one or three ads, we thought about running an almost infinite narrative.
“It may have seen six of the episodes and that might be enough to get you to where we want you to be – transferring your points to Velocity. That’s quite an admin task. But what made it possible though was that the episodic nature meant you would not see the same ad again.”
Meanwhile, Simon Joyce, the CEO of Emotive – the agency behind Audible’s viral campaign starring 80s crooner Michael Bolton – acknowledges more time and attention is paramount. “More and more brands are losing emotional resonance as marketers chase digital,” he says. “So often digital platforms promote 10 or 15-second interruptive ads.
“The reality is, if you restrict your time to communicate a message, you risk losing emotional resonance, which affects long-term shareability, social engagement and purchase decisions. More time spent with brands equals a better pay-off.”
This little island
Nevertheless, it’s undeniable the words ‘content marketing’ have gained something of a poor reputation in recent months. Often referred to as simply a “buzzword”, the medium has become associated with the numerous ‘spray-and-pray’ videos appearing on social media feeds, that disappear within a swipe. And while many enthuse the discipline’s brand-building potential, ultimately the end goal is a sale, according to 80 percent of Australian marketers.
Indeed even Jefferson agrees the term has become somewhat overused. And far too many are missing the point of it. He says: “It’s become a buzzword for anything that’s filmed in the sphere of the internet.
“A lot of brands fall into the trap of putting too many advertising layers into it. The role of the content is to compel and engage the audience; how you build something on the back of that content is what you do with it next. You can’t always get a sale from an episode, or watching a short film or seeing the latest viral thing, but you can compel them to respond to something. It’s part of the wider mix.”
Meanwhile, Joyce agrees the term has become clouded within the advertising lexicon. But like Jefferson, he agrees there is a bigger picture at stake that marketers are often missing.
“There is so much confusion around content marketing: it’s this little island,” he says. “But really its success works in just the same way as any other campaign; it’s just the way in is a little different.
“We set Emotive up because YouTube had become a dumping ground of branded content. There’ are primarily two reasons. Most brands in Australia are playing at campaign content marketing. And there is a disconnect between the content strategy and the campaign strategy. When you get it right, they should be supercharging each other.
“Once people understand content marketing, it will no longer be an isolated part of the campaign.”
The marketing mix
Nevertheless, successfully competing for reach and engagement in an increasingly crowded social media sphere is far from an easy task for any brand. Not only are brands in heavy competition with publishers’, organic and friends’ posts, they are increasingly forced to rethink their amplification efforts in order to keep pace with Facebook and YouTubes’ algorithm tweaks.
For Batten though, the key to navigating the platforms’ idiosyncrasies is for brands to start building stronger content baselines. “Even though the algorithms may change, if the appetite is there, big organic reach is possible,” he argues. “There is a baseline in the algorithm that knows this audience likes this type of video. The other side of organic is when people seek it out. They know what they like and they know where to get it. The long-term play is where this succeeded.
“One of the things holding back content marketing is that many brands are using it as a bit of a proxy SEO play. They’re doing churn and burn, short-form, high click content, so they get higher click rates and better search rankings. But doing content properly should be something for the audience. A video that was nine minutes did really well because the story was right. The length should not matter if the story is there.
“Content is no longer a subset; it has to be part of the marketing mix. Like you can get your TV ad from the same agency that does your content, but it will not be the same film. Content marketing is not dead, but the previous way people have been treating it is.”
With the latest appointment of E!’s managing editor Ashley Spencer, and a whole new team dedicated to producing local digital content and personalised native opportunities. Find out more about E!’s vision for the Australia market in the below video.