Welcome to our content marketing special
There is one theme that unites this summer’s key events for marketers – the World Cup, Cannes Lions, Marketing Week Live and our Marketing Week Engage Awards. That theme is content and this issue of Marketing Week is themed as our content special.
The most-acclaimed World Cup ad this year, The Game Before The Game, from Beats By Dre, is the perfect example of brands using content effectively. The execution is less a standard advert and more like a genuinely entertaining and tense mini movie.
The five minute long tale tells the story of the psychological and physical preparation of the globally famous players such as Neymar before they step onto the pitch set to a rousing soundtrack (played on Beats headphones, of course).
Content marketing, which is now estimated to be a £4bn industry by the Content Marketing Association, also defines the programme at next week’s Cannes Lions festival.
Creators from different artistic fields – film director Spike Jonze, the producers of The Lego Movie, Aaron Sorking, creator of the West Wing – are being lined up to tell marketers how to create compelling content experiences. You can find our roundup of what marketers should watch out for at Cannes Lions here.
Marketing Week is also getting involved in helping brands create great content. We’ve teamed up with Mindshare and the founder of Buzzfeed, Jonah Peretti, to moderate a session about creating content that is compelling and shareable, which you can watch live here on Monday 16 June at 4pm (3pm UK time).
We grilled Peretti on what marketers should learn from how the brand operates for this week’s Essential Read. Its “listicle” style is extensively copied and it has spawned a raft of social imitators – Upworthy and Distractify to name a few. With 130 million engaged users each month, Buzzfeed has the kind of reach for which many global brands would kill.
Doing content marketing properly though, is no easy feat. We talk to Waitrose and Domino’s about how best to measure the success of your content marketing. Improving the measurability is brands’ biggest concern when it comes to content marketing, according to a recent CIM study.
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We’ve also turned to the companies creating content marketing for brands and asked them to supply their secrets about how to create really compelling experiences. You can see our supplement featuring 10 content marketing essays, brought to you by our expert sponsors on page X.
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And finally, the best content for me is always delivered face to face, from one human being to another. I very much hope to meet as many of you as possible over the next two weeks, whether at Cannes Lions or at Marketing Week Live on 25 and 26 June at Olympia. Good conversations can often lead to great content.
