Content marketing: Flare for connecting

WHAT IT MEANS: Flexibility and reaching right audience at the right time. Demand  for high quality video growing.

BBDO has become one of the first major SA advertising networks to launch a self-standing content-marketing agency.

The new entity, Flare, is headed by Tara Dales, who has worked at National Geographic and digital news firm BuzzF eed. She says content is the "new digital", but it has many forms and shapes, and categorising it under a single umbrella called "content" can be misleading.

"It should be seen as first and foremost good storytelling, which seeks to entertain, educate and inform consumers in the oversaturated, highly competitive global world of digital."

That view is shared by Damon Boyd of ApexMedia, who says brands entering the space have to undergo a mind-set change. "But it’s not as simple as it sounds. Many agencies don’t get the process right because they can’t get their heads around editorial thinking to systemise content production that aligns to media and audience needs."

Dales says there is a misconception that content is fast and cheap, and requires less craft than an above-the-line campaign. It’s a challenge to match brand content to audience.

Notes Boyd: "Some brands want general penetration, others only want to connect with people who are important to the business of the brand. Analytics and research software help us sub-categorise social strata, separate into affinities and subdivide those into levels of brand and topic awareness an audience wants and needs."

Dales cautions there is no clean start, middle or end to a brand’s content journey, as there is no guarantee if the consumer’s interaction with the brand will be a tweet, a TV ad, a website, a Facebook advert or content on YouTube. "The beauty about content lies in its flexibility and its ability to reach people at the right moment. Content, therefore, is strongly shaped by context and timing."

Measurement of content success seems trickier. "You can assign a raft of direct key performance indicators, such as click-throughs, shareability, sentiment and video view retention. All of these are useful but negligible unless you also drive reach," she says. Scale and true engagement are the magic formula we should be aspiring to."

Says Boyd: "Most brands want to see sales. A holistic approach usually takes bigger investment, whereas a step-by-step approach sometimes helps a brand build systemised momentum. Either way, we usually recommend a linear approach: brand awareness will generate leads, we nurture those leads and build loyalty."

Flare operates in 12 BBDO offices worldwide. Though production technology is getting cheaper, which allows for quick scalable production, audience demand for better-quality video is growing, and the push for more quality video over print has resulted in increased complexity for brands, agencies and agency partners in managing a campaign’s production and budgets.