The content conundrum

Ask Tara Marsh, Global Head of Content at ad agency Wunderman, why content has become such a buzzword, and she will point out that it’s because people are getting used to ignoring traditional marketing. Forty per cent of people under 30 use ad blockers on the Internet, and 56 per cent of display ads are never seen by a live human being. Therefore, the content of marketing has to be something the consumer chooses to spend time with, relevant and valuable. “Because,” she adds, “you’re not necessarily competing with other brands but with ordinary, awful, amazing, everyday life!”

cat.a.lyst caught up with Marsh at Goafest 2016 where she made a presentation that touched upon various aspects of content. But wait, there are more buzzwords to contend with. Digital, for one. Insight is another. Is it easy then, to get them mixed up and finally not know what they mean? How does she demystify this to clients?

“I am very careful with my use of language with clients and the approaches we take with them. These words can be thrown around and end up being meaningless. To me digital is everything. TV is increasingly digital. I always say ‘content marketing’ and not content. Everything is content, an FB post, a tweet, the dress I am wearing, my nail art (pointing to her nails painted blue and gold) ... So often, clients say ‘I want content strategy’ and when I probe and ask them what they mean by that, they mean social. They basically want an FB campaign. It’s very important to actually define and get them to say what they mean by content. Social is a channel, content is the actual asset, the message that has to be distributed.”

In her speech, Marsh defines good content as something that finds common ground between the brand and the consumer and contributes to it. It has to inform, educate, inspire, be useful and allow one to experience it. Indeed, one point emphasised by many speakers at Goafest is how communication has to move on to being more tangible than ever. “It’s no longer sufficient to just deliver a product guide, product delivery is also assuming importance,” says Marsh.

Marketers who spoke at the conference emphasised the importance of advertising that results in more and more sales. Agencies should not ask clients to invest in advertising strategy that is not based on data that guarantees success. How does one measure marketing, especially this beast called digital/social which marketers are yet to get used to? Marsh says, “I find it quite interesting that brands will often challenge the ROI on digital vs TV. What strikes me about this is that the correlation between a TV ad and sales, you have no idea really, it’s all econometric correlation modelling, there’s no direct link. On digital models you can measure far more directly. Yet advertisers tend to do what they’re familiar with, so they keep buying TV ads as that’s what they’ve always done. I find that frustrating sometimes.

“There are different levels you can measure. But the ultimate measure is sales. That’s not always easy to do. You get as close as you can to the closest proxy is to sales. For Microsoft (her client) for example, it’s an email address. Because it’s a lead, and a qualified lead if someone has chosen to give you that email address. And then you have some assumptions about how many leads result in a sale. This is where we can learn from other industries, including publishing. How do you measure success? How much of an article does one read? How many articles does one read? How long do they stay on the site? Do they progress from this article to another? We need to apply exactly that thinking to a website content that a publisher does.”

Consumers’ video consumption is changing how we work as agencies and brands, says Marsh. The biggest trend she is seeing is video. “It’s a huge, huge, change. Video consumption on FB is massive. It causes a lot of challenges. Video production is a lot harder than all other kinds of content to produce. Creative agencies are used to making 30-second ads that cost $500,000, but Facebook videos are 30-second ones that cost $1,000.” Does her agency sell digital or social work to the client as a more cost-effective way of reaching more people?

“It’s not about cost-effectiveness but about finding your consumers where they are. For instance, if you’re targeting a millennial audience, at least in the US, 37 per cent of millennials are not subscribed to a TV channel, they aren’t even on FB, they’re on Snapchat. Where is my audience is what it comes down to, the combination of context, eyeballs and the right place for them to engage with the message. “It’s natural that brands and agencies get very excited about new platforms. Just this week, I was in a meeting with a client and he said what about Snapchat, but the audience is a very senior business buyer, and they are not on Snapchat.”

The attraction of digital has moved from efficiency, which is the cost side, to effectiveness, which is the actual impact of the work you’re doing. There’s no question more money will go to digital, she asserts, citing the case of Wunderman’s work on Flonase, an allergy drug of GlaxoSmithKline, which was launched entirely on digital channels, involving a content strategy on tumblr.

So what are the implications for credibility, then, of sponsored content?

Marsh agrees it’s a problematic area. “I don’t know that we have fully figured out or addressed it yet. Editorial independence is very important. Personally I think it matters a lot. When I read, I feel duped when I see in small print at the bottom of an article that it’s an advertorial. I think it’s a big risk actually, of brands not managing that.”

In the absence of clear guidelines, it’s now the agency’s and brand’s responsibility to ensure it’s reliable.

Really good publishers and good influencers won’t even work with a brand that didn’t align in some way with what they stand for.

She has this to say on the future of content: “I don’t agree with this but I think in five years, the line between editorial content and paid-for content by brands will be gone completely. We will end up in a world with premium content – independent, that people will subscribe to, and all free content will be brand-funded.” That’s dire, isn’t it? She agrees, but there’s no getting away from the possibility that sooner or later, “if you want really good quality news and information, you have to pay for it”.

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