Branded Content: Creating Successful Campaigns with Ads that don’t look like Ads

Branded content: Creating successful campaigns with ads that don’t look like ads

Belinda Barker
Source: WARC Exclusive, June 2019
Downloaded from WARC

Examining winning entries into the 2019 World Media Awards for the dos and don’ts of developing a successful content campaign.

  • According World Media Group’s ‘Future of Global Content-led Marketing’ research, for 45% of marketers, more than half of campaigns are now content driven.
  • Audi’s World Media Award-winning e-tron campaign delivered complex technological information in a clear and concise way through podcast media.
  • The growth in editorial-style branded content raises questions around the delineation between editorial and commercial, which publishers must be sensitive to.
  • Branded content ought to appear in the right context, and should serves a clear purpose, whether that is to inform or entertain.The late, great David Ogilvy once said: “The less an advertisement looks like an advertisement, and the more it looks like an editorial, the more readers stop, look and read.”While it is two decades since his death, his words are more resonant today than ever before. It’s a point driven home by James Davies, Account Manager at Thomson Reuters responsible for selling global content marketing. “Give them something that informs them and engages them, something that they truly want,” Davies said.Jeremy Elias, Executive Creative Director of The Atlantic and head of content arm Atlantic Re:think, points out that while advertisers have been investing more into the medium in recent years, the concept of viable, pithy and powerful branded content is nothing new.He cites the creation of Michelin Guides back in the 1900s, books containing an array of information for motorists, including maps, tyre repair instructions and hotel and restaurant listings and reviews. To this day, it’s a brand that is still synonymous with good eating, arguably to the point of a disassociation with tyres.

    For the most part, the roots of branded content are embedded in the advertorial – often clunky attempts to slot in editorial-style content in the pages of a publication. Annie Granatstein, Head of WP BrandStudio at The Washington Post, notes that the term advertorial began to morph into content around five-to-ten years ago.

    “The key ingredient of the evolution is putting the audience (rather than the brand’s offerings) first, which advertisers increasingly realise they have to do to engage people,” she said.

    Content renaissance

    The eruption of digital channels, a growing sophistication among brands and publishers exploiting them, and the realisation that a crude attempt at dressing up an ad as an article just doesn’t cut it, has led to something of a renaissance.

    “I think people are beginning to understand what the value exchange needs to be between brands and consumers,” Elias said. “In the advertorial age, the value exchange was that you got to hear this news about a product – a cleaning product talking about its detergent making your clothes extra white. Today that is no longer a meaningful exchange.

    “What’s a greater exchange is a brand using their perspective on the world, giving consumer access to talent, using their money and resources to bring something of value.” According to World Media Group’s own ‘Future of Global Content-led Marketing’ research, brands are finding increasing value in content marketing. The study found that for 45% of marketers, more than half of campaigns are now content-driven, while 77.8% said that content led campaigns are set to grow.

    For Joel Koch, Managing Partner at PHD Germany, there has been a “paradigm shift”. “Marketers used to advertise from a product perspective but that can easily lead to branded messages that no one is really interested in and that don’t resonate with customers,” he said.

    “But a new perspective is winning over: We can see how customer-centricity drives the impact of campaigns. And to do so, advertisers need stories and genuine content as that is what customers want instead of superficial brand messages that often enough don’t really matter to them.”

    Award-winning content marketing

    Accordingly, the World Media Awards 2019 featured a number of winners that excelled in attempting to bridge the gap between compelling, nuanced and balanced content and marketing communications. Among the winners was Audi’s and PHD’s e-tron campaign, which scooped the Automotive Grand Prix. It delivered complex technological information in a clear and concise way. At its heart was a podcast, promoted by advertising activity, featuring experts and promoted via podcast streaming services. It attained the number one spot in Apple’s Tech Podcasts.

    “The e-tron podcast marked a milestone in German automotive advertising,” explained Koch, whose agency was behind the work. “It was one of the first marketing instruments that did not include the famous four rings, the claim ‘Vorsprung durch Technik’ or any other brand insignia. It was driven by the genuine desire to create content on e-mobility that is compelling to technology enthusiasts.”

    Elsewhere, Incredible India (Ministry of Tourism) teamed up with CNBC and won the Travel & Tourism Grand Prix. Its campaign aimed to promote India to affluent travellers, using storytelling, sending photojournalists to source stories from across the country, producing cinematic films about Kerala, and running ad testing to formulate headlines for specific audience types. The video gained more than three million views within three weeks of launch.

    Meanwhile, Financial Services category runner-up Barclays Corporate Banking produced a podcast to connect with a time-poor C-suite audience, which gained four million impressions. The campaign was overseen by Davies at Reuters, who said that the client was happy to give the publisher a high degree of autonomy. “They gave us the creative freedom to create six themes around which to build the campaign,” he commented.

    “It used to be that it was very clear that a brand was leading a piece and paying for it, but now brands realise that in order to inform, engage and entertain the reader they have to allow the expert publisher to lead and advise on what the narrative should be,” he says. “If the brand is involved too much, then the audience sees through it.”

    Integrity vs message

    But won’t content always be associated with what is ultimately a sales pitch, however thinly veiled? Elias believes not. Atlantic Re:fresh recently worked on a campaign for Land Rover’s Range Rover that saw film score composer Hans Zimmer employed to create a piece of bespoke music.
    “One of the many good things that The Atlantic brings to the table, especially working with high-level talent, is that it’s a bit different from when an ad agency might approach talent,” Elias said. “By our nature we’re a journalistic institution. The story has to have a certain level of integrity and quality to it.”

Koch agrees. “More and more brands are realising that contemporary advertising needs content that has a value in and of itself,” he said. “If content cannot stand for itself, then why should consumers bother to spend their time on it?”

Credible partnership

The World Media Group’s research found that 71.5% of media agencies, media owners and advertisers reckoned that clients are looking for a credible editorial environment when selecting a media partner, with 65% opting for quality of audience engagement and 63.3% for audience profile.

Ergo: engaging audiences in a credible environment is a no-brainer. Yet outmoded attitudes can still prevail. “Some brands certainly take content as just another form of messaging,” Koch said. “But those are the brands that won’t succeed with their content.”

Editorial integrity

The issue of credibility and authenticity is not just a consideration for advertisers, but for publishers too. The growth in editorial-style branded content inevitably raises questions around the delineation between editorial and commercial.

“There needs to be division between the two,” Elias insisted. “You can look at The Atlantic as an example, there’s a true separation between the editorial and business side. We’ll talk to people on both sides and understand what editorial wants to write about. Ultimately we want advertisers to underwrite that, but we’ll never get close to blurring the lines of what editorial is writing about.”

For Granatstein, content needs to be clearly labelled. “The Washington Post takes labelling very seriously and provided clear labelling before FCC [the Federal Communications Commission in the US] guidelines were issued a few years ago,” she said.
“Media companies can create engaging, native content and safeguard their newsroom’s impartiality if they ensure that it’s different journalistic talent creating the branded content versus the newsroom content, which is the case at The Washington Post.”

Koch is equally adamant that true editorial “needs impartiality and balance”. But he added: “Since the days of medieval patronage, the arts and content have never been entirely impartial or balanced. I strongly believe that brands need to allow content to flow in order to be most compelling. If they do so, it doesn’t matter if content is sponsored or not.”

The future of branded content

For Reuters’ Davies, the outlook for branded content is rosy. “It’ll become an even richer experience and the boundaries will become blurred even more,” he said. “To the point that – apart from the fact it is clearly signposted – the audience won’t realise that it’s from a brand.”

But for The Atlantic’s Elias, the future holds a “reckoning of sorts”.
“There’s a lot of branded content being produced, a lot of it great, some of it bad and not valuable to the brand funding it,” he commented. “As more and more [publishers] compete to get the dollar, advertisers will get more critical around the sort of work being produced and there will be more rigour around brands trying to prove ROI and understanding the value it brings to the bottom line.”

Elias also highlight the types of organisation creating branded content. While five years ago it was publishers “who set up teams had a monopoly on the space”, the status quo is shifting. “Now that creative agencies are no longer relying retainers of two-to-five years, they are starting to get into branded content space on a project basis,” he said. Expect a future where content is increasingly the domain of agencies, production companies, studios and the consultancies such as Accenture, PwC and Deloitte.
But while a growing encroachment from editorial-led organisations is a given, publishers have a clear advantage. And that boils down to long-term collaboration. Granatstein says WP BrandStudio is experiencing a “deepening of relationships with advertisers, as they renew with us again”.

“This means that we gain a more nuanced understanding of their mission, initiatives and positioning. At the same time we are increasing our ability to understand our audience,” she said, adding that the use of data to inform the creative process is key.

For Elias, a heritage built on trust lies at the heart of continuing, fruitful publisher-client relations. “I think that more and more advertisers realise the value of partners with established credibility, especially as trust becomes more important. In terms of The Atlantic’s position, we can bring a level of credibility that traditional ad agencies can’t.”

Content marketing dos and don’ts

Produce something tangible
Branded content should result in tangible content that serves some purpose, whether that’s to inform or entertain. “It’s not just plastering media across 250 ad units,” says Elias. “You walk away having learned something and have not just been sold to.” Content is king, context is queen If a piece of content marketing is not in the right context then it can be detrimental to the campaign. “Clients should look at what they are trying to achieve with content, rather than just making videos that go viral,” Davies says. Koch concurs. “It’s all about finding a natural fit between a brand’s true identity and a field of content to explore,” he says. “Best-in-class advertisers will create a natural symbiosis of advertising and content resulting in genuinely intriguing pieces for well-chosen target groups.”

Relinquish control
Brands are understandably obsessive over the minutiae of their messaging, but if they are to use branded content successfully then they must relinquish a degree of control. “The risks are the marketer and brand having too much control or say in how the flow of content goes,” Davies says. “They should trust the expert and publishers to provide insight and angle given that they know what works for their audience. “By all means they should feed in, but too much and they’ll lose their audience because it will sound too much like a puff piece.”

And lastly, don’t overcomplicate
According to Davies, simplicity is key. “If you can’t sum up an idea in a tweet then you’ve already lost the battle. Know what you’re doing and be clear on that.”

About the author
Belinda Barker Director, World Media Group
The World Media Group is a strategic alliance of the world’s leading publications which incorporates The Atlantic, Bloomberg Media Group, The Economist, Forbes, Fortune, National Geographic, Reuters, The New York Times, Time, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and associate members: Moat, Smartology and The Smithsonian. Its aim is to promote award-winning journalism and the role of international media.

https://www.warc.com/content/article/warc-exclusive/branded_content_creating_successful_campaigns_with_ads_that_dont_look_like_ads/126934

Masterclass in Storytelling 16th May 2019

A fantastic, insightful event hosted by The World Media Group last week – our Masterclass in Storytelling.  An expert panel presented winning case studies from our recent 2019 World Media Awards – these included campaigns from Audi, Deutsche Bank and Formula 1.

Panel from l to r: Sarah Thomas, Accenture; Katie Cook, Wavemaker; Christoph Woermann, Deutsche Bank; Adam Nunn, PHD Media and Alex Delamain, The Economist.  The panel was chaired by Johanna Krantz from Thomson Reuters.

Audio Internet stuck in 1996 – WARC newsletter April 2019

Audio internet stuck in 1996
News, 24 April 2019
TOPICS
PODCASTS, STREAMING & ON DEMAND

The amount of audio-friendly internet content is growing rapidly but the accompanying ecosystem remains embryonic, according to a Google executive, and brands have plenty of scope for experimentation.

Brenda Salinas, who works on Google’s news partnerships, even puts a precise date on where its evolution has reached. “As far as the audio internet, this is where we are: we are in 1996.”

That choice of date relates to the first incarnation of The Washington Post’s website, which was the future then but which looks archaic now.

“[The audio internet] is a very nascent technology and we think it has a bunch of potential, but there are a lot of unanswered questions,” she told the recent World Media Group Briefing on ‘The Impact of Voice & Sound.

“Even the most creative among us are still not sure which way this is going to go,” she added. (For more, read WARC’s report: Patience required with an audio internet ecosystem ‘stuck in the 90s’.)

What, for example, does the audio equivalent of a link sound like? asked Nate Lanxon, Technology Editor at Bloomberg.

He pointed out that podcast listeners – as well as advertisers – must rely on descriptions written by other people to ascertain if content suits their needs.

And he likened this to the wild west days in the 90s, when coders could manipulate early search engines Infoseek and AltaVista with a deceptive use of metatags.

“It was so easy to manipulate [and] that is kind of how we are with podcasts right now. Nobody is analysing the content or doing sentiment analysis on that podcast. We’re still super-reliant on old manual ways of discovering,” he said.

Sourced from WARC

 

World Media Awards 2019 – Grand Prix Shortlist

The World Media Group had some really innovative entries for their recent World Media Awards. Take a look at this video to see all those entries who were shortlisted for the Grand Prix award.

Patience required with an Audio Internet

Patience required with an audio internet ecosystem ‘stuck in the 90s’

Alex Brownsell
Source: Event Reports, The Impact of Voice & Sound, March 2019
Downloaded from WARC

Executives from Google, The New York Times, Mindshare and HSBC discuss how audio advertising is likely to develop in the coming years.

The audio internet remains “nascent” and should be approached by brands in a spirit of experimentation, much like the written web in the 1990s. Voice brand interactions offer double the emotional engagement to those situations where a consumer has typed the brand name. Faced with “brand decay”, advertisers like HSBC are investing in “sound identities” to help them “cut across” to distracted customers. Publishers are in the midst of a podcast “gold rush”, but, ultimately, the digital platforms are likely to “seize control” of the podcast ad market.

The World Wide Web has come a long way since the early days of dodgy dial-up connections and rudimentary search engines. It was a point that Brenda Salinas, a Google executive, was at pains to make when she offered a demonstration of The Washington Post’s impossibly archaic website as it had looked at its inception in 1996.

Speaking at the World Media Group Briefing on ‘The Impact of Voice & Sound’ (London, March 2019), Salinas – who works on news partnerships for Google – emphasised that the industry is at a similarly embryonic stage of development when it comes to audio and voice.

“As far as the audio internet, this is where we are: we are in 1996. It is a very nascent technology and we think it has a bunch of potential, but there are a lot of unanswered questions. Even the most creative among us are still not sure which way this is going to go,” said Salinas.

Whether it be voice-activated devices powered by machine learning AI or journalistic podcasts, marketers are increasingly excited by the potential to establish a sonic connection with consumers. As event chair Clancy Childs, chief product and technology officer at Dow Jones Professional Information, commented, the “amount of audio-friendly content is multiplying minute by minute”. For full article please CLICK HERE

About the author
Alex Brownsell
Senior Editor – Media,
WARC alex.brownsell@warc.com

DEEP STATE Outfoxes the Competition to Win the Top Prize at the 2019 World Media Awards

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

FOX Networks Group Wins the Grand Prix for its DEEP STATE Pan-European Marketing Campaign

London, Friday 5th April 2019:The winners of the 2019 World Media Awards were announced last night at an exclusive VIP event held at The Ham Yard Hotel in London with brands such as Amgen, Audi, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Formula 1, Incredible India, Samsung and Siemens receiving accolades for their entries. Hosted by the World Media Group*, the World Media Awards, now in their fourthyear, are the only global awards to recognise brands, agencies and media partners who, together, create the most effective cross platform, cross border, content-driven advertising campaigns.

The biggest winner on the night was FOX Networks Group, whose pan-European campaign for the espionage thriller series DEEP STATE, picked up the World Media Awards Grand Prix, as well as winning the World Media Award for the Media and Entertainment category. The winning campaign succeeded in heightening awareness for the ‘Deep State’ concept and igniting interest and conversation with its target audience even before creative material from the series was available. Following a global strategy with local activations, the campaign delivered an uplift in new audiences of nearly 40 percent.

The judges also praised Audi,winner of the Automotive category,for its innovative ‘Bring the e-tron to the Digital Airwaves’ campaign, which brilliantly exploited the podcast as a content channel, delivering outstanding results for the business. Formula 1 drove away with the prize for Luxury, Lifestyle & Fashion, and received a Highly Commended in the Media & Entertainment category, for‘Unleashing the World’s Greatest Racing Spectacle on the Planet’, a campaign designed to increase fan engagement by drawing them closer to the drama of F1 and creating active conversations around the brand. Incredible India’s entry,promoting the Indian sub-continent as a world-class tourist destination,took home the Travel & Tourism award fora campaign full of high impact imagery and visual storytelling, which was produced specifically for a mobile-first audience.

“The World Media Awards provide an important benchmark for innovation in international content marketing so we’re delighted to be awarded this year’s Grand Prix for the DEEP STATE marketing campaign,” said Antoine Chapuy, Senior Marketing & PR Manager, Fox Networks Group Europe & Africa.“We were up against an impressive line up of competitors so it’s testament to the hard work of our European and African marketing teams whose collaboration and execution was key to the success of the campaign.”

A panel of 30 senior jurors from leading advertisers, agencies and publishers, headed up by Co-Chairs Stacy Gratz, Global Media Director at Bacardi, Caroline Foster Kenny, CEO EMEA at IPG Mediabrands and Jim Piercy, Creative Director, Customer Studios EMEA/Asia at The Wall Street Journal, were taskedwith selecting the eight category winners and the Grand Prix winner from the many global submissions. This year saw a huge increase in entries from media brands, a reflection of the number of media owners that have established their own brand studios in recent years to create credible content.

Stacy Gratz, WMA judge and Global Media Director at Bacardi,said“We were delighted to receive an impressive array of submissions from all over the world as more and more brands embrace content as a way to tell their stories across multiple channels and borders.FOX Networks Group’s campaign for DEEP STATE is a great example of an innovative pan-market content strategy that has been executed seamlessly at the local market level across several countries. The campaign maximised cross-border collaboration to yield outstanding results overall, and is well-deserving of the Grand Prix award.”

For more information on the World Media Awards and to see the winning entries in full, visit http://sandbox.world-media-group.com/awards/2019-winners.

 The winners of the World Media Awards 2019, along with comments from the judges about the category winners,are as follows:

 

Automotive
Winner – Audi e-tron: Bring the e-tron to the Digital Airwaves
Entered by: PHD GermanyCredits: iTunes, Podigee, Spotify, Soundcloud, Youtube, Deezer, Viertausendhertz

“This campaign showed some great insight around the power of podcasts. There was a clear business challenge and they told a great story of the development of the strategy, the implementation and results – and the business results were fantastic!”

Brand & Media Owner Partnership
Winner – Credit Suisse: The Power of Entrepreneurial Thinking
Entered by: Bloomberg Media Group

Credits: Havas International, Ipsos MORI

“This was a well-considered partnership. The content was audience behaviour led, digging down into the science of the entrepreneur and offers the audience real value. The results speak for themselves!”

Highly commended- Samsung Galaxy Note9: Selling a Phone with Hidden Powers
Entered by:Starcom
Credits: Epic Games, Ninja, SSSniperwolf, Markiplier, Ali-A, Harry Kane, Publicis Sport & Entertainment, R/GA

“This campaign benefitted from an intelligent strategy that highlighted a clear USP, creating exclusivity and virility in a beautifully crafted way.”

Corporate Influencer
Winner – Amgen JAPAC: The Cost of Silence
Entered by: The Economist Group

“In a very tough sector, this campaign delivered its message to the right audience, going above and beyond what you would normally expect.”

Financial Services
Winner – Deutsche Bank: Global Treasury Leaders Programme
Entered by: EI Advisory
Credits: The Economist

“This campaign has created long-term value, building a genuine community around specialist issues. It demonstrated clever targeting, was led by highly focused information and content, and delivered great business results.”

Lifestyle, Luxury &Fashion
Winner – Formula 1: Unleashing the World’s Greatest Racing Spectacle on the Planet
Entered by:Wavemaker Client Solutions London
Credits: Wieden+Kennedy

“This campaign needed to resolve a tough challenge – it was a well-presented entry, demonstrating a great, insight-led strategy and delivering superb business results.”

Media & Entertainment
Winner&Grand Prix Winner –FOX:DEEP STATE Pan-European Marketing Campaign
Entered by: FOX Networks Group
Credits: That Lot Agency

“The DEEP STATE campaign achieved amazing results – delivering an uplift in new audiences to the channel of nearly 40%. The entry incorporated innovative , creative solutions, with real-time, agile and responsive media and content choices..”

Highly Commended –Formula 1: Unleashing the World’s Greatest Racing Spectacle on the Planet
Entered by: Wavemaker Client Solutions London
Credits:Wieden+Kennedy

“This campaign created a turn-around for the brand, with multi-level touchpoints and bespoke strategies for different need-states.”

Technology & Telecommunications
Winner –Siemens: Reimagine the Game
Entered by: The Economist Group
Credits: Signal Noise TVC Group

“We loved the data-led story telling. This campaign had at its root an original idea and created engaging content around it.”

Travel & Tourism
Winner –Incredible India
Entered by: CNBC Catalyst

“This campaign benefitted from compelling content and new formats, leveraging CNBC’s premium traveller research insights to identify new opportunities – it also delivered strong results.”

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The Impact of Voice & Sound: The Audio Web is still in the 90s

The Impact of Voice & Sound : the audio web is still in the 90s

 

The audio internet, whether that’s voice-activated devices powered by machine learning AI or journalistic podcasts, is at an equivalent stage of development as the World Wide Web in the mid-90s.  This was the point that resonated most sonorously with panellists at a World Media Group Briefing this week entitled The Impact of Voice & Sound.

 

It was an assertion starkly illustrated by Brenda Salinas, who works on news partnerships at Google.  Salinas showed the audience an image of The Washington Post‘s homepage in 1996 — primitive and clumsy by today’s design standards.  “I think in terms of the audio internet, this is where we are,” she said. “It’s a very nascent technology but it has a lot of potential.”

 

Salinas’s point was echoed by Nate Lanxon, technology editor at Bloomberg, who talked about how in the mid-90s, meta-tagging helped make online content searchable, but in a very rudimentary way. “That’s where we’re at with podcasts today,” he said.

 

Elevating journalism

But while there was a consensus that audio technology is fledgling, there was also enthusiasm about the opportunities it already provided.  Sebastian Tomich, global head of advertising at The New York Times, explained how award-winning journalism had been augmented by an embrace of audio. The newspaper’s The Daily podcast is often the number two ranking podcast in the world.

 

The publisher has also been experimenting with more unusual ways that audio can complement print journalism. This saw it create an “audiozine”, a sonic magazine that introduced listeners to sounds they would never experience in real life, sending listeners on an audio voyage featuring, among other things, laughing rats.

 

Audio proliferation

Event chair Clancy Childs, chief product and technology officer at Dow Jones Professional Information, explained that the “amount of audio-friendly content is multiplying minute by minute” and asked: what are the implications for publishers and brands?

 

For Jeremy Pounder, futures director at Mindshare, the launch of Amazon Echo in the UK, “represented a quite fundamental break in how people interact with tech”.  “We felt that voice and talking to something with a seemingly human voice speaking back, it was a new type of interaction that we’ve not seen in society before,” he added.

 

Experiments conducted alongside research firm Neuro-Insight saw Mindshare discover that sound outperforms text in terms of “cognitive load” on someone’s brain. “When voice works well, it’s a very streamlined way to achieve a task. With text, there’s more going on, with the brain having to work out what’s the important information it’s looking for.”

 

Ethical barriers

But there are ethical concerns too. “One of the biggest is that voice might reinforce gender stereotypes,” he said.  Such as that older men tend to prefer the AI voice of young women, reflecting an increasingly outmoded, patriarchal attitude. “Do brands want to tap into that or take a more progressive stance and challenge some of those stereotypes?”

 

Sonic branding

The session also looked into how music could play a part in a customer’s experience of a brand.   Hamish Goulding, head of global brand strategy and creative at HSBC, explained how the bank’s journey into creating a sonic brand saw it recruit the talents of musician Jean-Michel Jarre.

 

Jarre produced seven tracks, from a string-led orchestral movement and synth-driven alternative, to a mnemonic jingle. The creation of a sound palette has been applied at HSBC’s physical events, in branches to identify when a cashier is ready, in ads, in content and even as a more palatable form of lift music.

 

“Don’t try to be international, try to be universal,” was Jarre’s advice to HSBC.

 

Growing pains

Yet audio technology is still lacking universal appeal, with some panellists expressing doubts, mostly hinged on its infancy.

 

Bloomberg’s Lanxon questioned the genuine usefulness of voice-activated tech as it stands, arguing it is “reminiscent of telephone message trees, because you still have to wait for polite responses before you can comment”.

 

HSBC’s Goulding had more sobering concerns over security and the intrusiveness of voice-activated devices, calling for greater rigour in voice identification, “so you know which customer is which”.

 

But Mindshare’s Pounder outlined a major challenge for publishers and worries around the sheer might of the tech giants —”the trade-off, the distribution of content to the biggest audience possible and the loss of control”.  “I guess the issue for many publishers is that it’s difficult to get people to come to you directly unless you’re a brand of a certain scale,” he said.

Photo: L-R Clancy Childs, Hamish Goulding, Jeremy Pounder, Nate Lanxon, Brenda Salinas, Sebastian Tomich

More Than Just an Ego Boost: Awards Can Be a Serious Benchmark for the Industry

It’s awards season again and as the headlines from the Golden Globes, Oscars and Brits begin to fade, the spotlight is on an array of awards across the marketing industry. When we founded the World Media Awards, now in its fourth year, I felt there was a genuine need for a platform to celebrate the world’s best content-driven, cross-border advertising campaigns. Of course, the marketing and media industry is full of cynics and I’ve often had to stand my ground when detractors suggest that awards shows are nothing more than an excuse for ego-stroking and back-patting.

Being recognised for your achievements should be celebrated, whatever sector you happen to be in. Winning an award is good for business on a number of levels – it can boost employees’ morale knowing that they’ve contributed to something that has been acknowledged as exemplary work. It can raise awareness for your company, increase credibility and give you that competitive edge. But perhaps most importantly, award shows provide a benchmark to compare the performance of companies within any given industry. They praise the success of innovators, disruptors, those pushing the boundaries – and they deliver a standard for everyone to work towards.

As such, we are delighted that the World Media Awards have been included as one of the recently announced WARC Media 100 Rankings, alongside a number of other high profile award shows, including Adweek Media Plan of the Year, Cannes Lions, D&AD, Festival of Media, I-COM Data Creativity Awards, Internationalist Awards, M&M Awards, MMA Smarties and the WARC Media Awards.

The WARC Media 100 media rankings (the successor to the Gunn Report) are decided upon by a group of senior planners, strategists and media executives and they provide an unbiased standard for commercial creativity and media excellence.Based on the results of what are considered to be the most important advertising competitions around the world, the rankings allow agencies and brands to track and benchmark their performance against their peers in areas of creativity, effectiveness and media.

According to WARC’s David Tiltman, the award shows will be reviewed annually to ensure that the ones analysed for these rankings remain relevant, and reflect the opinion of the industry. So, not only is the WARC Media 100 a valuable tool for agencies and brands, it also keeps us, the award show producers, on our toes. If we’re upholding our end of the bargain and providing a platform that contributes to essential standard setting and measurement within the industry, perhaps even the most cynical marketer will admit that Awards Shows are more than just an ego-boosting jolly.

 

The Adaptation and Reinvention of Journalism

Alex Delamain, President of the World Media Group (WMG) and SVP, Head of Client Sales and Services at The Economist, reports back on the key themes from the WMG ‘Journalism 2020 Breakfast Briefing’ featuring a panel of senior media experts and journalists discussing the future of media and journalism in a world of ‘Fake News’.

‘Fake News’. We all hate the term but the issue is going nowhere as darker forces continue to get paid for creating it for commercial or subversive means. Yet, panellist Tom Standage, Deputy Editor & Head of Digital Strategy at The Economist pointed out that ‘Fake News’ is by no means a new phenomenon.
‘Fake News’ is not a modern day problem.

He believes it goes back to the early days of the printing press when, if you had nothing to print, you would dust off an old pamphlet about a witch trial or terrible disaster, change the names and locations and print it. It was essentially rubbish, but people loved to read these stories and it kept your press busy.
The big change came when the first daily newssheets were set up in the 18th century. The owners realised they had to convince people that they were reliable and trustworthy if they were to get them to buy their paper every day. These fledgling media brands worked hard to build their reputations and credibility. It was the beginning of trusted journalism as we know it today.

The return to ‘Fake News’ has been driven by the internet’s disaggregation of newspapers. Today, the provenance of a story can be impossible to find. You click on a link on social media and get taken to somewhere that looks like a news site to see a story and are unlikely to ever go back there again – so we’re back to the days of the pamphleteers who pumped out content to make money and didn’t care about getting you to return.

Quality journalism is essential for society
Clearly it’s worrying, but the panel agreed that it has led to the big media brands focusing more than ever on quality journalism. Hayley Romer, Chief Revenue Officer and Publisher at The Atlantic, believes that this is not just for commercial reasons but because the sustainability of trusted journalism is paramount to society. For instance, without it people would not have exposure to topics like climate change and so there would be no behaviour change.

Bénédicte Autret, Head of Strategic Relations at Google concurs, explaining that this was why Google is providing publishers with tools. Obviously, as a search engine they rely on good quality information, but also they believe they are part of the same ecosystem and as such have a duty of care to quality journalism.

The importance of education around the value of journalism
Autret also believes that it’s important to show consumers that good journalism comes at a cost. Phillipa Leighton-Jones, Editorial Director Innovation at The Wall Street Journal, commented that the big media brands need to do more than ever to educate the public about what the media does and how to know who to trust. For instance, with an increasing number of state-owned media channels coming into play, such as the Chinese Global Television Network, Russia Today and Al Jazeera, it’s important that consumers understand the context and implications of where their news comes from.

It’s not only important to educate consumers about the media, though, according to Medhi Benchelah, Senior Project Officer, Division of Freedom & Media at UNESCO. He explained how, as part of the UN’s Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists, it is important to train national security forces about how and why they should respect and understand journalists. Yet, for those that worked for previously totalitarian regimes this requires a huge cultural shift as journalists were viewed as the enemy before.
Corporate brands apply journalistic rigour but, for quality media brands, church and state remain sacrosanct.

It was heartening to hear from Kunal Dutta, Chief Editor of Digital Channels at Shell talking about the factual rigour being applied to corporate content too. His team members all have journalistic backgrounds which means they take a journalistic approach to information inside the business. They apply strict checks and balances to all their stories and truth always outweighs marketing messages.
However, the panel agreed that there were still strict guidelines delineating ‘church and state’ (i.e. commercial teams versus news rooms). That said, innovation is leading to more ‘bridge roles’ between the two. Creation of products requires input from both sides of the wall, but new products and closer ties with corporate news rooms will never be at the expense of their brand integrity.

Innovation must align with core brand values
Interestingly, Alex Wood, Europe Editor at Forbes believes students and cub journalists are much more commercially aware right from the start, which he thinks will be a catalyst for innovation. Dutta said that journalists should not just be thinking about how to develop a great story or podcast but look at what innovations they can use to tell a richer story – suggesting that what delivers the news could become just as important as the news itself.

AI (artificial intelligence) was seen as the most exciting innovation at the moment, providing huge opportunities for new products through its ability to delve deeply into information and also its ability to score quality journalism and monitor ‘Fake News’. However, as Standage pointed out, innovation has to be measured with a yardstick that is bigger than revenue alone. It must be in line with core brand values and do what your audience wants you to do.

https://mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2019/02/28/the-adaptation-and-reinvention-of-journalism/

Alex Delamain is President of the World Media Group (WMG) and SVP, Head of Client Sales and Services at The Economist

Photo: From L-R Hayley Romer, Alex Wood, Bénédicte Autret, Kunal Dutta, Phillipa Leighton-Jones, Tom Standage
Photo Credit: Jane Clipston

What do you think your next job will be? If you’re aged over 40 and work in media or advertising then it might be safer to be thinking about your next career, writes Arif Durrani

“Having a diverse, more representative workforce is one of the biggest challenges we face, as we need an industry that will reflect the UK in the future,” says Karen Fraser, director of Credos at the Advertising Association. Speaking at a World Media Group event held at Bloomberg before Christmas, Fraser added that the industry’s need to stay cutting edge, while not over-representing youth, in its advertising or its workforce, is a “growing point of tension, and one we’ve barely begun to address.”

The average age of IPA member agencies is just 33.7 years, and only 7.8% of employees in creative agencies are aged over 50, a figure that shrinks further to just 4.1% in media agencies.
Few sectors skew younger, but among them are the big tech firms, where median ages remain firmly planted in the 20s-30s, including Facebook (28), LinkedIn (29), Google (30) and Amazon (31), according to Statista. Compare this to electricians (51.2), estate agents (48.5), accountants (45.6), architects (45.4), teachers (39), and even those working in bars and restaurants (34.1).

Such young workforces will only seem more out of step as working ages increase. Don’t be misled by news that life expectancy in the UK didn’t rise last year. For all of us living in industrialised countries, the wider longevity trends are clear. We are living longer than ever before.
Over the past 150 years, life expectancy has increased by two to three years each decade. If the rate continues, then most children born in industrialised countries in 2019 can expect to live beyond the age of 100.

At Bloomberg Media we’ve been working with AXA Investment Managers to explore the repercussions of longevity. For most of us, one inescapable impact of living longer will be the need to work for longer.
This requires different jobs to fulfil different stages of our lives, creating more choice around career, family, finances and health. Longer lives are lives with more transitions. If we get it right, then people can live fulfilling lives well beyond retirement age.

Don’t just stick to the knitting
For people in the media and advertising business, second or third careers are common, although not well-documented. Moves into investment, recruitment, retail or hospitality are all commonplace, although just how common nobody knows. As for all the aspirations to “go plural” and land lucrative non-exec roles in later life, such opportunities are limited and fiercely contested. For those wanting to stay in the industry, renewal is the name of the game.

Kathleen Saxton, founder and CEO of head hunters The Lighthouse Company, warns: “There is a tidal wave coming in the next 24 months, where we expect to see lots of roles being made redundant. As an industry we have not been transforming fast enough and we’re seeing this play out in the restructuring and reimaging of media companies and agency networks.

“There will be people in their 40s and 50s looking for the types of roles are no longer in demand. Our advice to everyone working in the sector is to evolve. You have to retrain yourself – preferably whilst still in a job.” Saxton adds: “Be humble enough to be the novice in the room again. Don’t just stick to the knitting. It’s not about age, it’s about energy and curiousness.”

Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott advance the idea of a multi-stage life in their seminal book, The 100-Year Life. The days when the knowledge and skills learned in your teens and 20s were enough to see you through a working lifetime are over. The future of working life, they say, will be one of constant personal development, setting time aside to make fundamental investments in re-learning and re-skilling.

“We believe that people will switch to a multiple-career perspective. Each career stage may be different in terms of the sector involved or the role played, it may differ in terms of motivation, i.e., financial or social purpose, and will differ in terms of a trade-off between finances and leisure,” says Scott.

This extended working life brings a plethora of new opportunities. Education, when it is no longer confined to the early part of our lives, is set for solid growth due to rising demand for all sorts of continued learning opportunities. The global education industry is already valued at over $5 trillion and remains in its infancy in terms of digitalization.

Healthcare is another sector in ascendency. In the U.S., around 10,000 people a day now reach their milestone 65th birthday, at which point personal healthcare spending doubles. Other sectors that stand to benefit from longevity include fitness and beauty, travel, wealth management and entertainment.
Longer lives have also made the grey pound more powerful than ever, with those aged 60+ expected to account for the bulk (55 percent), of all consumption growth throughout the next 10 years, according to analysts at McKinsey Global Institute.

Is it time to be your own boss?
For the greying heads working in media and advertising wondering what their next move should be, perhaps there’s some inspiration in the 2018 Harvard Business Review study that found (despite the well-known stories of young tech entrepreneurs) the average age of entrepreneurs today is 42. And in the most successful, top echelon of startups, the founders had an average age of 45. (https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-successful-startup-founder-is-45)

If you like the idea of starting your own business, at Bloomberg Media Studios we’ve been exploring what drives successful entrepreneurs, in partnership with Credit Suisse and Ipsos MORI. A global study among our audience of Ultra ($50m+) and High Net Worth ($5-$49m) individuals allowed us to dig deep into the motivations of entrepreneurial leaders to unearth a range of defining behaviours and common traits.

We interviewed more than 300 individuals and a quantitative survey was conducted across nine markets. Discourse analysis of the interviews by a team of semiotics experts revealed some universal drivers. Among these traits we found successful entrepreneurial leaders to be much higher on openness, more extrovert, conscientious, emotionally intelligent and persistent.
So, whether it’s a new career, new training or a new startup that appeals, it all comes back to remaining open and engaged, and making the time to develop yourself.

“We do expect 2019 to be a challenging year, but with that will come new opportunities,” says Saxton. “Our advice is for people to break their networks – open yourself up to new experiences and perspectives. It’s definitely a time when it’ll pay to step outside your own comfort zone.”

Arif Durrani is Executive Editor in EMEA at Bloomberg Media Studios

https://mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2019/02/27/what-will-you-do-next