CES 2011 is all tablets, wireless connectivity, Internet-enabled 3D TVs and Android-fueled smart phones. Look at the innocuous next generation Chumby2 - essentially a bite-sized internet-enabled tablet for the end table. Each represents the diversification of internet and content access.We are accessing content in more ways via more devices. Add that to the established trend for people to spend time and get information via social networks. We are not spending significantly more time on brand web sites. And while TV-usage may be trending up in the US, I guarantee you much of that is multiplatform time (laptop open). Oh and don't forget that professional media companies from B2B trades to B2C multiplatforms are hungry for content. The time for brands to step into the role of their own media company is here.
Content Activation = Create, Distribute, Promote and Measure
Today, the corporate marcom lead has plenty of reasons to see the value in developing a complete content strategy to reach corporate communication goals and to reach product brand marketing goals. Brands can build virtual engines to create a mix of multimedia and more spontaneous content that is designed to either be useful or entertaining. This causes people to spend time and interact (i.e. "engage") or spread that content across their social graph (i.e. advocate). Brands must distribute that relevant content across an ever-changing ecosystem of owned, co-owned (e.g. Facebook), earned (e.g. bloggers, media) and paid platforms (e.g. all types of ads from advertorials to print ads to online display). But feeding the fire hose with the right content is not enough. Brands must take responsibility for promoting content to get in the hands of people who will engage and advocate. Lastly, true content activation culture requires constant measurement to understand performance and the diagnostics or levers that can be pulled to improve impact and outcomes.
Chief Content Officer vs. Process
There has been a lot of good discussion about the notion of a new C-suite position - Chief Content Officer. LinkedIn has a group dedicated to the concept (but where few members actually carry that or a related title.) I particularly like Greg Matusky's take on a job description:
"If you can write like a journalist, think like a marketer, and understand the vast and shifting seas of digital communications, Mega Global Corporation needs you to express our world view and communicate our value to financial and consumer markets, partners, and governments.
You must be able to manage a worldwide editorial staff, producing both written and visual communications, and must be able to deliver daily, even hourly, content that is fully optimized to gain visibility over digital pathways.
This individual will report directly to the CEO, but will have the strength of character to beat back corporate encroachment in favor of honest, accurate content that provides real value to worldwide audiences.
Most important, this individual must understand how to monetize this content throughout the enterprise, converting incoming interest into business opportunities for the organization as a whole. Compensation: Name your price if you can deliver on the seemingly impossible yet urgent responsibilities described here."
I am not convinced that centralization in the C-suite is the only way to go to create a culture of "content activation." Equally important is the right mix of teams and process to make it happen.
Creating Responsive Content: Analytics Team
What are customers searching for and what are they saying in online conversations about the product, brand or important ideas that connect with them? This sympathetic intelligence fuels all of our best content strategy. We literally make content that has the words and ideas people are looking for. Of course that content must be useful or entertaining to customers and it must authentically represent our brand or products. This isn't about tricking people to consume content. It is all about relevance.
Brands should establish or expand the role of existing groups to take responsibility for this intelligence. The Analytics Team is constantly sensing what customers need and want. That is feeding into creation and distribution strategies. There is a "geek factor" here that is best delivered across the enterprise form a single group. In other words its hard to get right and this type of foundational knowledge and insight should come from one place such that it cascades throughout the organization from a consistent center.
Establishing Clear Brand Themes: Theme Development Process
In corporate communications we call it a message platform. Marketing teams think more in terms of 'brand story.' Internal communications think more in terms of values and principles. Our customers and employees are seeing both what corp comms delivers and what marketing publishes. They ought to be aligned. the disciplines ought to work together to establish a common and focused story platform. I will call it "theme" as it can sit above and drive individual stories (or campaigns). We don't need a single unified team but a process that brings marketing and communications together. Their goal should be to define three themes that can drive their work over a half year or longer. These themes can be revised from time to time yet ought to be consistent for long stretches as they are likely derivative of true culture and ought not to change like so much campaign "fashion" (i.e. constantly changing campaign messaging). Product brand stories can be written in alignment with these themes. Even short-lived campaign ideas can be derived from them. It's important to establish and communicate across the entire enterprise.
Train on Technique: Content Optimization Process
There is quite a bit of technical and process know-how needed from meta-information creation to advanced techniques in search optimization to really succeed with content activation. But most groups who create content can get it. I am arguing against a centralized 'content factory' responsible for all content creation and optimization. I just don't think that is realistic. Too many disciplines within the enterprise have an interest and need in content creation. It is possible to think of the content factory as a federation of distributed groups. Let's simply establish a common process for making all content work as hard as it can. Let's train our teams in this highly valuable optimization process.
Always Be Assessing Progress: Measurement Team
Every week, brands should be looking at a dashboard of performance. That must have the simplified view of key performance indicators as well as enough diagnostic data to know which levers to pull to improve things. This is best left to a Measurement Team both cause its geeky but also because senior leadership will trust the numbers from an independent group. The only generalization that I can make about what these measure should include is that the ought to report both on whatever KPIs describe the action you want from people and those that reflect increased advocacy.
Teams and Process
Don't get me wrong. I love the idea of the Chief Content Officer. But this lucky guy or gal will still have to establish the teams and process I have described to actually implement a content activation culture in today's business enterprise. The benefits of this approach include:
- More people talking about the brand in relevant ways
- Input into how your brand is talked about
- Increased brand presence in search engines
- Alignment of internal and external communications
- More customers and prospects spending time and interacting with the brand via content
- Treating employees like the advocates they are
- Moving beyond a campaign marketing cadence into an always-on relationship
- What else?
John, I couldn't agree more with some of your comments. Having said that, one of my concerns about today's almost faddish focus on "content" is how often the discussion is divorced from the context of customer needs and buying processes. In other words how will the content strategy and each component of it serve what the customer needs to know, believe or feel to progress that customer's relationship with the brand or potential purchase decision. (I'm thinking of considered purchase categories here, rather than impulse buys. IMHO considered purchase categories will benefit more from a coherent content strategy than brands that represent impulse buys.)
Yes, social listening and monitoring software represents an important advance here, but let's be honest, it's just revealing the footprints a customer leaves behind, and even those are imperfect or potentially misleading. A 140-char tweet doesn't leave a lot of room for insightful dialog... So we need to inform our customer insights with a much richer set of sources, of which the social inputs are just one set.
Enterprises (i.e., your firm's clients) need to develop a coherent view of buyer personas, people's needs and motivations, and how those qualities evolve across the purchase process through to product usage, and hopefully the advocacy phase. And we need a context or lens to connect these buyer/customer insights to our content strategies (and of course, the product/brand strategies over the customer lifecycle).
As I'm sure you agree, the marketing funnel has outlived its usefulness. We need a new insight and engagement framework, mapped to the customer lifecycle, to guide our architecture of the content strategy, so we can deliver the right content (informative or entertaining), to the right person, at the right time/place/context, respecting that person's likely device preferences for that type of content consumption. And we must know the purpose that content is intended to serve, from the buyer or customer's POV. This to me is one of the most important, and challenging, aspects of the shift from the broadcast- or publisher-centric view of marketing to the customer- or buyer-centric view. This is the true meaning of "sympathetic" (or empathetic) intelligence that you refer to.
Developing a new framework like this is hard enough, but when you're also dealing with entrenched marketing functional silos, disconnected information repositories (or lack thereof), as well as outmoded skillsets — this whole marketing makeover becomes very daunting (and ultimately will require significant investments on the part of your clients). Not to mention "instrumenting" the change process so clients see measurable benefit, payback, ROI — whatever they care about — to keep them incented to work through the painful changes.
I agree that federated approaches are most likely the best; however, some empowered change agent with a direct connection to the CEO and COO will have to play a key role in driving these changes.
Keep up the great work. I love your blog.
Posted by: Christine Thompson | January 10, 2011 at 12:42 PM
With the absence of Chief Content Officers at most corporates, advertising agencies have an opportunity to step up and play this role within campaigns that they develop. Unfortunately this is easier said than done as budgets only stretch so far, and the agency doesn't always have that crucial internal influence.
Brands need to do more to embrace content (both self-generated and user-generated) and support their agencies who are develop campaigns that generate, and leverage content for the benefit of their brands.
Posted by: Carl | January 30, 2011 at 07:49 PM
John, I've learnt that management buy-in is key here, but you also need to get staff on board as well. Trouble is, the product managers and engineers are often to busy with their day jobs to tweet. And I think their CEOs are OK with that :)
I'd love it if agencies would become involved, but so few of them grasp the fundamentals of social business marketing (less so in Israel; more so in South Africa).
That said, I was in Jo'burg on a freelance gig around last year's World Cup soccer event and was pleasantly surprised to see how many companies themselves had got on board with Social Media marketing.
You can read my article here: http://www.brainstormmag.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3919:advertising-gets-social
Posted by: Russel Harris | March 22, 2011 at 05:57 AM