UK: Month in Content Marketing Sept 2011
September saw the pace pick up again after a quiet August with customer publishing agencies getting back into pitch mode: Seven looked at the latest trends in customer publishing, Future created an interactive Xbox magazine, Story Worldwide uncovered East London in a series of short films for Westfield and The River Group looked at the trustworthiness of British media with branded magazines coming up trumps.
Let us start this month's content marketing round-up with Marketing Week's in-depth feature on customer publishing in which APA's COO Julia Hutchison provided comment. The article debated whether all magazines will go down the digital route as customer titles explore online engagement; Julia argued that this depends on the brand's objectives and choosing the right medium for its audience. The article noted that moving readers from print to digital helps brands to carry the conversation with their target audience as well as adding another dimension to the content. Julia said: "Brands have to think about the appropriate medium in which to produce content for their audience. Print can be effective at driving people online but for certain brands perhaps the most appropriate customer journey might be to read the magazine and then visit the store".
The APA is also delighted to announce four further speakers to the already impressive line-up for the 2011 Summit entitled Content + Convergence which will take place on Wednesday 23rd November. Following last year's success, speakers confirmed this year include Carla Buzasi, Editor-in-Chief of AOL Europe and Huffington Post UK, Mark Challinor, Director of Mobile, Telegraph Media Group and Myf Ryan, General Manager of Marketing for Westfield UK, as well as a return appearance by technologist/journalist Ben Hammersley and Ogilvy Vice Chairman Rory Sutherland. For more information visit www.ilovecontent.co.uk/summit.
Content marketing has been a hot topic this month with London's Evening Standard doing a full page on why brands want to be content creators, to which Julia also provided comment. In the age of the internet brands are increasingly turning to content publishing to cultivate brand loyalty she explained; from the rise in convergence with online brands using offline media to the desire for brands to become their own content creators. The ES article illustrates the trend with three very different print publications:Google's Think Quarterly; Boden's A Thousand Little Things (produced by Sunday); and new luxury fashion and art title Baku which is produced by Condé Nast. Behind each of these three titles is a London customer publishing company that has been appointment to create high-quality content to be given away to its target audience. So why are brands choosing print over online? Cost and effectiveness when it comes to raising brand awareness are named as to factors, but also it is considered a good investment than "wooing customers" during tough times. But most importantly customer publishing is on the rise as it fits into the growing trend for brands to create their own content and become media owners in their own right.
This month's biggest win came from Progressive Customer Publishing (PCP)which acquired a new luxury publishing contract with Yachting Partners International (YPI), one of the world's leading super-yacht brokerage houses. The magazine, 360° Magazine, will reach a global audience of 10,000 high net worth individuals who are collectively worth over £30bn. The publication will blend super-yacht market insight, broad economic trends and analysis with leading industry interviews and high-end luxury lifestyle features.
UK supermarket chain Sainsbury's launched a new cookbook full of winter warmers ahead of the colder months. Working with strategic content agencySeven, the Classics Recipe Collection brings together 100 of Britain's favourite dishes in one 196-page volume. Available in stores for £5 it is filled with easy-to-follow recipes for any occasion.
Global content agency Story Worldwide on the other hand created a series of films for Westfield ahead of the launch of Westfield Stratford City this month. Uncovering East London, the films celebrate the rich diversity of East London and the people who live and work there, featuring interviews with local characters.
News from award-winning agency August Media's HQ this month announced that the company is producing an exciting customer magazine for Ocado, the only dedicated online supermarket in the UK. The quarterly publication aims to challenge all supermarket magazine conventions, steering away from traditional recipe-based content and instead embracing the philosophy that customers choose to live differently by choosing Ocado.
Also breaking into new territory is Standard Life magazine - the global magazine for employees of Standard Life - which has been relaunched byWhite Light Media. The team has transformed the existing printed publication into a monthly Flash-based digital magazine.
Meanwhile, special-interest media group Future partnered with Microsoft and UM London to create an interactive edition of Xbox 360: The Official Xbox Magazine. The 77th issue of the publication went on sale in early September and offered innovative, unrivalled access to this year's biggest blockbuster game, Gears of War 3.
New hires this month over at River Group, Axon Publishing and Bladonmore:River Group welcomed Jacquie Duckworth as Commercial Director, having previously worked at IPC Media, Future, Emap and Bauer before setting up her own consultancy; Axon Publishing appointed Ellen McGonigal, previously a Board Director with the company, as Managing Director; and Bladonmorebolstered its senior teams with the appointment of Sharon May as Client Services Director in London and Ahmad Hammoud as Senior Consultant in Abu Dhabi.
The arrival of autumn also means that the awards season is coming closer, and as a result several customer publishing agencies announced their nominations this month. The River Group were pleased to announce that two of its editors have been nominated for BSME awards this year; Charlie Norton as Editor of Healthy for Men, the bi-monthly magazine for Holland & Barrett and Julia Shaw as Editor of Fancy, a bi-monthly food and lifestyle title sold in Julian Graves' stores.
Creative content agency Seven also received a nomination for the BSME awards with its Art Director Simon Campbell being shortlisted for BSME Business Art Director of the Year, selected for his work on CIMA's Financial Management magazine. Seven's iPad magazine PROJECT - which it publishes in collaboration with Virgin Digital Publishing - has also been shortlisted for App of the Year in the PPA Data & Digital Publishing Awards 2011.
Meanwhile, Global Action Plan's Greenprint brochure - brought to life by John Brown to support the ‘Greenprint to 2020' initiative - has been shortlisted for an IVCA Clarion Award. John Brown worked with illustrator Sophie Stephens to create a series of creative illustrations and an interactive application. Another John Brown client, Great Ormond Street Hospital, has also mean shortlisted for its ‘All About Me' campaign.
What do today's consumers want for digital? This was a question Seven pondered over the summer; Mike Burgess, Digital Development Director believed that online retailers have vast amounts of data about their consumers that they rarely put to use and that using editorial and social recommendations is the first step to properly tailoring a site to the user and help them to navigate to the product that is right for them. Head of Digital, Dave Castell, on the other hand pointed out that "content is no longer just copy" and that video of moving image are integral to telling any brand story, building on the idea of the brand becoming a broadcaster. Seven also looked at the latest trends in customer publishing which they believe to include, among other things, engagement rather than interruption across channels and platforms; ensuring the content is suitable for the various channels (both off- and online); socially curated magazines; and content becoming the hub of the company or brand. Read more here.
The public's trust in British media has been shattered after revelations this summer of how they gather their news stories, and new research by YouGov for The River Group has found that when it comes to different types of media 33% of people think newspapers are untrustworthy with only 28% finding them very of fairly trustworthy. Adrian Odds, business development director for River Group also noted that people are looking for authenticity which he believed has been responsible for the relatively high score for branded magazines, with 25% of those asked agreeing that free magazines by brands are trustworthy compared to that of 22% for consumer publications.
With the emergence of social commerce, River Group's Natasha Jackson provided a comment piece on why one stop shopping is not the answer. Jackson noted that with the emergence of social commerce, especially F-Commerce, her love affair with the social network is at risk and believes this type of shopping is a bad idea. And she's not the only one with this view she noted. New Media Age's Gina Lovett previously said that "while a growing number of brands have all ventured into ‘Facebook shopping' there's little concrete evidence emerging on its effectiveness." Lovett went on to quote finding by Havas Media from June 2011 that showed 89% of people have never bought anything off Facebook and 44% are not interested in doing so. With this Jackson concluded that it is important to remember that every medium and channel has a different role to play in consumers' lives making it crucial to get the brand outreach correct and not undertake a one-size-fits-all strategy. What are your views?
In other social media news a new survey showed that young consumers are increasingly favouring brands with active social pages. In fact nearly one quarter of so-called millennials check branded Facebook pages at least once every day, compared to 17% of those between 35 and 74.
Facebook announced a radical overhaul of some of its features and a revamp of user profiles this month through which it aims to get users sharing and discovering more content, but as PaidContent queried, can Facebook's social discovery set content alight?
Finally, if you're wonder what the most loved digital brands are, the ‘Brand Love 25' study has found that ASOS, Very.co.uk and Play.com rank highest in the digital sphere.
