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Masterclass: How to create an award-winning content campaign

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Masterclass: How to create an award-winning content campaign

This year’s masterclass in storytelling brought together a panel of representatives from the BBC, De Beers and National Geographic to provide insight into what goes into making an award-winning content campaign. Each panellist presented their case study, followed by a Q&A session with the audience.

Journey To Ithaca

Alex Beard, a content strategist at BBC Storyworks, began by presenting Hyundai’s ‘Journey To Ithaca’, the winner of this year’s WMA for Social Good. Hyundai approached the BBC to help them publicise their sponsorship of Healthy Seas, an initiative which focuses on cleaning up abandoned ghost gear from the world’s oceans. The goal was to promote the NGO’s work, while showcasing the repurposing of plastic waste in their new Ioniq5 EV.

Okavango Eternal

Chris O’Neill, Senior Manager, Global Brand Partnerships, National Geographic and Letitia Weeks, Brand Manager, Sustainability, De Beers Group presented ‘Okavango Eternal’, winner of the WMA Brand and Media Partnership category. Since 2015, the National Geographic Okavango Wilderness Project has been working to help secure permanent, sustainable protection for the Okavango Basin. In 2021, De Beers joined the National Geographic Society, providing support and funding to expand and accelerate the work already underway.

The session was chaired by Rachael Adams, Senior Manager, Commercial Content, Reuters, who grilled the panellists about their respective campaigns, and took questions from the live audience. Here are their top three pieces of advice for creating an award-winning content marketing campaign:

  1. Authenticity – what gives you the right to tell your story?

For both campaigns, it was essential to tell the stories in a way that was authentic and true to each brand’s values. As part of the motor industry, which is not generally known for its sustainability or social good credentials, Hyundai were keen to change the narrative. They wanted to reinforce their commitment to driving change at an industrial level and to create a circular economy.

Instead of making the story about the Hyundai brand, their sponsorship of the Healthy Seas initiative allowed them to tell a genuine story of sustainability. Focusing on the ocean clean-up around the island of Ithaca, the story was one of redemption. From environmental disaster to actionable solutions, ending with visible progress and a message of positivity. In order to tell this story authentically, the brand presence had to be minimal. Nonetheless, the connection to Hyundai – ghost nets cleaned up from the ocean and broken down into the material that goes into their cars – was powerful.

De Beers and National Geographic are partnering to help address one of the most critical conservation challenges in Africa: protecting the near-pristine source waters of the Okavango Delta. Located in northern Botswana, the Okavango Delta is one of Africa’s richest places for biodiversity and home to the world’s largest remaining elephant population as well as lions, cheetahs, wild dogs, and hundreds of species of birds.

National Geographic has been joined by De Beers — which has worked with the people of Botswana for over 50 years including through their commitment to Building Forever on education, healthcare, livelihoods, and wildlife conservation — to help secure protection for the Okavango Delta’s headwaters.

It is through these shared commitments, and Nat Geo’s mission to illuminate and protect the wonders of our world, that both organisations have been able to connect authentically with global audiences to tell the tale of this incredible programme.

Top tip: “Ask yourself and your clients: do you have the authority to tell your story? Are there others who you can approach to better tell the story for you?” – Alex Beard, Content Strategist, BBC Storyworks

  1. Trust – choose a partner that reinforces your credibility.

The right partner will encourage the client to tell the story in the best possible way. The client must trust the media partner to tell it effectively, even if that means their own brand is not centre stage. The brand gains credibility from the target audience’s existing trust in the media partner.

Partnering with BBC to produce ‘Journey to Ithaca’, Hyundai benefited from the corporation’s high editorial standard, which requires all claims to be substantiated and demonstrated with the same rigour in commercial productions as in its news and editorial arms. The film was also the BBC’s first piece of short-form content to receive an Albert for sustainably production, adding authority to Hyundai’s desire to change the narrative around sustainability.

According to De Beers’ Letitia Weeks, trust goes both ways. She said having an 18-month preparation period before the start of the Okavango project gave them “the time to prove to National Geographic that we are serious about what we are saying and to build that trust.”

Together, both organisations have been able to leverage collective resources to scale efforts for long-term sustainable protection, working in close collaboration with National Geographic Explorers and hand-in-hand with communities throughout the Okavango.

That, paired with National Geographic’s cast of storytellers, multi-content platforms and vast archive of content, provided a robust framework to explain what the end goal was and demonstrate how they were going to get there together.

Top tip: “Get other voices in a piece, as it’s very much about telling both sides of the story and being balanced. Present it in an editorial or a newsy kind of way, so that it’s of interest to your audience.” – Rachael Adams, Senior Manager, Commercial Content, Reuters

  1. Proof – demonstrate the actual impact of your project

In response to an audience question about greenwashing, the panel discussed the importance of moving away from pledges and promises. Instead, our experts recommended using proof points to demonstrate that a project is more than just a marketing tactic. The Hyundai film was built on factual, quantitative truth that was very tangible to its audience. The National Geographic De Beers project is a five-year partnership, that requires deep engagement with its audience over the longer-term, only possible by showing genuine impact.

The panel were keen to point out that the lessons learned from their case studies apply to both B2C and B2B campaigns in every industry, and not just for big budget creative campaigns. They agreed the key is to find your authentic voice and work out what you have the authority to say. You can then engage your audience by showcasing proof points in a wide variety of compelling ways. Whether that’s an interactive timeline of your company’s history or vox pops of people who add interest to your story, if you are leading with something you have a genuine right to have a stance on, there will be an interesting story to tell.

Top tip: “Audiences can see through corporate narrative. What are you doing and what are those proof points that audiences can quite clearly see when they’re engaging with that content?” – Chris O’Neill, Senior Manager, Global Brand Partnerships, National Geographic

To find out more about why trust and authenticity must be at the heart of any content campaign, head to the World Media Group’s Creative Vault. You can read the full case studies for ‘Journey To Ithaca’, and ‘Okavango Eternal’ along with all our other award-winning entries.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Experts Share Top Tips for Creating an Award-Winning Campaign

Yesterday, members of the World Media Awards judging panel and the creators of this year’s Grand Prix winning entry for Sonos came together for our Awards Masterclass to discuss what it takes to create an award-winning content campaign. Here are 10 top tips from our expert panel to ensure your content campaign rises above the fray and makes its mark on the judges.

1. Outline your challenge with laser focus

“Make sure the challenge is absolutely precisely outline before leading on to the creative solution and the media partner or channel choice. Clearly articulate the challenge, because that lays the foundation of everything that follows.” –  Christoph Woermann, CMO, Corporate Bank, Deutsche Bank.

According to Christoph, two entries that demonstrated this perfectly were Volkswagen: For the Many,Not the Few – The ID.3, winner of the Automobile category, and Levi’s: What Does Performance Mean to You, winner of the Luxury, Lifestyle & Fashion category.

2. Deliver your pitch with passion

“Make us believe it’s a winner from the minute you start speaking. First, tell us what the challenge was and how you solved it. Secondly, talk about the power of media and message, and how the entire campaign becomes an interesting experience for the consumer. Thirdly, prove it’s a credible solution with relevant KPIs. Lastly, tell us why it mattered. Why would a consumer genuinely enjoy experiencing what you’ve created?” – Kate Ivory, Group Managing Partner, Head of Strategy, OMD EMEA

Kate described Tourism Australia’s pitch for ‘From Country. To Company’ as one that was delivered with passion and power, creating a story that was really compelling to listen to.

Brooke Steinberg Global Planning Director, Vizeum, who is part of the award-winning Sonos pitch team agreed:

“Have fun. You’re showcasing work that you’re proud of, so express that, whether it’s verbally, in written form or in a video.Find ways to showcase your passion and the great times you’ve experienced working on the project.” 

3. Put the judges in your shoes

“It’s all about storytelling,” said Jamie Credland, SVP, Client Strategy & Marketing, The Economist. “And to tell a good story, you need to take us on a journey of here’s this insurmountable challenge, this difficult, terrible adversity you’re facing, and the smart ideas and hard work you came up with to overcome it.”

Jamie gave the example of Astana International Finance Centre’s winning entry for ‘My Kazakhstan’, which starts by asking, “What do you know about doing business in Kazakhstan?” immediately putting the judges into the shoes of the agency and the media owners who were working on this huge challenge.

4. Less is more

All the judges agreed that the Sonos team, represented by Brooke Steinberg, Global Planning Director at Vizeum and Gabriella Manzini, Global Account Director, Vizeum, had absolutely nailed their three-minute video pitch for Sonos’s ‘Brilliant Sound at the Intersections of Culture and Cool campaign. Gabriella’s advice:

“Be concise; you can’t tell the whole story. You can’t talk about every single execution. So really draw out the key steps that helped you to tackle the challenge – the insight, the execution. And the results really have to reflect what the challenge was.”

Christoph Woermann’s advice is to strip away anything you don’t need. “Always think, less is often more. Less text, less variety, less goals to achieve. Less is more. Focus, and you will be a winner.”

5. Brand, agency and media partner relationship must be seamless

Our experts were impressed by the completely seamless, integrated team of brand, agency and media partners on the Sonos campaign .According to Johan Jervoe, Chief Marketing Office, UBS, that doesn’t happen overnight. Creating a well-oiled content marketing machines takes time:

“It takes for your own brand team to understand what works, where you get content, who the expert is. It takes time to understand what the insights are and how that translates into aesthetics. And then measurement – finding the right media partner, the right channels and the right format on those channels.”

Jamila Saidi, Head of e-Commerce Marketing, DIT UK Gov, cited another seamless example in Samsung’s campaign “TV is Making History Again’:

“A combination of three things really made the award stand out above and beyond the others: the brand synergies with CNN and astronaut Scott Kelly; the integration of the message, the messenger and the channel delivering it; and the timing – the 15th anniversary of the moon landings.

6. Use audience insights to solve human problems

According to Jamie Credland, the human element of audience insight is often overlooked. “When it comes to an audience insight, these are people with business problems, personal problems, family problems, all kinds of challenges in their lives. And the best campaigns were the ones that tried to bring that challenge to life.”

He gave the example of Tech Mahindra’s winning Corporate Influencer campaign, ‘In the Future’ which talked about the number of people who believe analytics is absolutely key to their business, yet only 10% felt their company currently did it. “That talks to a certain anxiety among senior executives – treating the audience like human beings is really, really important.”

Kate Ivory agreed that Tech Mahindra had cleverly used the insights to develop a real solution, an efficiency index that allows executives to test the organisation’s performance against industry leaders. “They identified a problem, and they created a tool that was of genuine value back to the consumer. That’s the power of insights – to genuinely develop solutions.”

7. Be authentic.

Jamila Saidi reiterated the important of being authentic:“People see through the fluff, when you’re doing something for the sake of it or when you’re jumping on the bandwagon.”

It ties in with having your pulse on your customer base and really understanding your audience. She used Electronic Arts’ FIFA20 ‘Play Wrong’campaign, winner of the Media & Entertainment, category as an example”

“They did a fantastic job with their segmentation, really tapping into their audiences to understand them (it was a very different audience than they’re used to), which made everything so much more authentic, locally relevant and really believable. This made the storytelling even more compelling.”

8. Remember, judges are people too!

An important tip from Jamie Credland: ‘Tactically, when you’re writing your entry, remember, judges are people too and they respond to stories in the same way that your consumers do. So,get the judges emotionally engaged with your entry, and you’ll go a long way.”

9. Be prepared to throw it all away

Kate Ivory’s advice to ensure you’ve created an award-winning campaign:

“When you’ve gone through the process of creating your campaign, you’re about to hit go on buying the media, creating the content, just step back. Put yourself in your consumer’s shoes, the person that’s going to experience every element of this, and ask yourself, if you’re them, is it of any value? And if it isn’t, be prepared to put it in the bin and start again, because there’s too much clutter out there.”

 When the judges are going through the award entries, it’s the ones that offer real value that float to the top.

10. Be brave

As winner of this year’s Content and Leadership Award, it’s fitting Johan Jervoe gets the last word on how to create exemplary content-driven campaigns. Johan’s advice: “Be brave!”

VIEW WEBINAR

Key Take Outs: Rebooting your brand/business in the post Covid-19 world

Rebooting your brand / business in the post Covid-19 world

As businesses plan for life after Covid-19, a crisis with no precedent, how do they approach a world challenged by economic recovery? That was the topic posed to a panel of four industry experts today in the World Media Group’s third webinar, hosted by Damian Douglas, Managing Director EMEA, Time.

Douglas framed the conversation by looking at where we are in the news cycle and the financial markets. While both suggest we are in recovery mode, the situation is still fragile. The crises of recent memory (the dot.com bubble 2001, the financial crisis 2008) were economic in origin, and neither led to mortality or unemployment on such a significant scale, which adds another layer of complexity. When previous playbooks and recovery strategies can only be indicative, how can businesses build or rebuild brand equity through a period of huge disruption?

Douglas began by asking Louisa Loran, Vice President at Maersk responsible for the company’s brand communications strategy, how the logistics firm, which is instrumental to the global supply chain, had handled the Covid-19 crisis.

Strong customer focus

Loran explained that when she joined Maersk, her challenge was to understand how an asset-driven company could become more customer focused as part of its digital transformation. The decision to become customer-centric proved its worth, firstly a few years ago when they had a cyber-attack and now during Covid-19. “It’s the ability to understand your customers and put together value propositions and solutions to match their needs that enables you to be successful,” she said. “So Covid has been business management for us, not crisis management.”

Gordana Buccisano, EVP Global Client Transformation, Havas Group, who works directly with Loran on the Maersk business, agreed. She said her role had not changed through the crisis – she was still focussed on both long-term brand positioning objectives and short-term commercial objectives supporting Maersk’s digital transformation. “Covid or not, what matters is having the agile mindset to be able to adjust,” she said.

Authenticity is still key

Douglas then turned to David Wheldon, Vice President at WFA and the former Chief Communications and Marketing Officer for RBS, to ask what we should be looking for in brand behaviours, and how brands could build consumer preference, particularly against challenging economics. The key is authenticity, Wheldon said, and “a brand, knowing what it is and what it does, and doing it in the right way, with the right tone.”

Referencing Wheldon’s time at RBS, Douglas asked what the sentiment around that brand was when he joined in 2015, following the damage to its reputation in the 2008 financial crisis. Wheldon described RBS as the “least trusted brand in the least trusted sector.” His first job was to take an honest look at what RBS was: “A failed attempt at building a global brand.”

He discovered that the Royal Bank of Scotland brand – what customers who banked there called it – wasn’t as damaged. A brand strategy separating out the consumer facing brands, focusing on its customers and telling them the truth led to the bank’s recovery.

Authenticity and value are an important part of Maersk’s new brand strategy. “In the past, Maersk had a perception of being reliable,” Loran said, but they needed a different strategy to grow the brand. “We landed on being trusted, open and brave,” she said. Instead of saying, “We’ll tell you exactly when the vessel will be there,” it allowed them to say, “You can trust us to find the right solution for you.”

Loran believes that being brave is also about being honest and taking responsibility for what you can solve. “There are certain things we do with the strongest belief that they’re the right things, but we also admit our failures when they happen,” she said.

Consumer confidence on the rise

With consumer confidence playing an essential role in how well brands perform, Douglas asked Phillipa Leighton-Jones, Editor At Large – The Trust – The Wall Street Journal | Barron’s Group, to talk about its consumer confidence reports and what they meant for brand behaviour.

Leighton-Jones described The Wall Street Journal | Barron’s Group as a bellwether of what the C-suite is thinking. “These are the decision-makers who will be shaping the economy of the future in many respects,” Leighton-Jones said. “And when you’ve got marketers who are fighting hard for every dollar of discretionary spending, you need to make sure that they know what kind of environment they’re talking in and what kind of conversations they need to be having.”

So what are the decision makers thinking? According to Leighton-Jones more than half of the1000 respondents surveyed across The Wall Street Journal | Barron’s Group expect the economy to get better in the next three months, a 22 percentage point gain from mid-March. They also anticipate an increase in expenditure on personal goods and travel, she said.

Less twaddle, more focus

With that in mind, Douglas asked Wheldon if it was safe for brands to revert back to type and start entertaining us again after months of being circumspect.

“I think people have had enough of ‘we’re all in this together, with you every step of the way’ type communication,” Wheldon said, adding that some of the brands doing it looked “pretty inauthentic” and there was a lot of “twaddle” around. He praised KFC for really understanding their market. While they were closed, the fast food provider encouraged customers to make their own KFC at home and post their attempts on social media, then responded with “relatively insulting” comments about people’s efforts. It went down well because “they understood their audience, got the tone right, and were sensitive to what was happening,” Wheldon said.

Relieving Customer Pain Points

Returning to The Wall Street Journal | Barron’s Group’s Leighton-Jones, Douglas asked how publishers could capitalise on what has been a period of growth, with increased audiences and engagement. “People are looking for brands to talk to them,” she said. “Not necessarily to sell to them, but to demonstrate some value and leadership. It’s always going to be about putting the customer first, and thinking deeply not about what products or services you want to sell them, but how you can solve their pain points.” Demonstrating what she called “edifying utility”, allowed businesses to tell “brave brand stories that are authentic, and that show your leadership,” she said.

How far to plan ahead

Picking up a theme from audience members, Douglas’s final question was how far should brands plan ahead when everything is changing so frequently.

Based on his conversations with CMOs, Wheldon said, “On the whole, it’s a 30 day rolling plan with the 90 day horizon, and financially that kind of works for most people. Because beyond that, how would you know? So zoom in tight on 30 days, and be flexible and pragmatic.”

Loran said Maersk will continue to operate on many levels, optimising on short-term weekly cycles, evaluating their value proposition communications three months out, and planning ahead much further – three to five or even eight years – for their brand architecture and repositioning. What won’t change, she said, is their brand vision “to connect and simplify our customer supply chain,” which is not an overnight turn.

Be bold and brave

Douglas wrapped up the webinar by revealing the results of an audience member poll asking how optimistic they were that the advertising industry would bounce back before the end of 2020. The results, he said, were fairly evenly split (35% optimistic, 42% pessimistic and 23% unsure), reflecting where we are right now with the ever-changing news cycle.

Finishing on a positive note, he pointed out that brands and businesses had “everything to play for” and this was an opportunity to be brave as we navigate clients and businesses through a period that no-one’s experienced before. “As humans we will make mistakes,” he said, “But ultimately, I think we’ll get judged on motive and generosity.”

Should anyone wish to hear more about the Consumer Confidence study Phillipa Leighton-Jones mentioned, please do get in touch with phillipa.jones@wsj.com

Working with Media in Times of Crisis – Opinion Piece by Denise Turner, Newsworks

Working with media in times of crisis

Insight director Denise Turner writes about how trusted brands should operate in the new media environment. 

Earlier this week I was delighted to take part in a webinar run by the World Media Group, a collective of major global publications.

The webinar, and ten panellists involved, set out to address the question of the role of trusted media in times of crisis.

It goes without saying that we are living in unprecedented times both in the UK and globally. So I was interested to explore the commonalities between the UK and the global stage – and spoiler alert, there are lot of similarities.

For me there are four key themes:

  1. The need for trustworthy content has never been greater. People are turning to published brands, both in the UK and globally, in greater numbers. We’ve seen news brand subscriptions (both print and digital) increase, traffic to news brand websites is up around 50% on average, and people are spending longer with content, and engaging more. We’ve been living in an era of fake news for a while now, but we know from previous Newsworks research, that people are turning more to established published media brands.
  2. This crisis is a timely reminder that we market to people, not machines. All of the brand representatives on the panel talked about the humanity in what we do. This is first and foremost a humanitarian crisis, and as a marketing and publishing community, we need to respond appropriately.
  3. Brands are developing a new language of marketing – that of humility. It’s about getting real, not over-promising and about recognising the role that brands can play, without overdoing it.
  4. This is not the new normal, rather it’s a recalibration, or a reset. Things won’t go back to how they were before, but neither will we in marketing and publishing remain in this short-term situation. As one of the panellists Janet Balis from EY Advisory put it, we need to be already thinking about the future and not get stuck in the now.

Janet’s comment reminded me of something I heard a few years ago. I had the immense privilege of listening to the late Baroness Tessa Jowell speak at a dinner. One thing she said has stuck with me ever since, and I often refer to it, when something is bothering me or I’m facing a particular challenge.

She talked about the importance of a ‘centrifugal moment’. Now I’m not a scientist, but I know that a centrifuge moves very fast and shakes things up somewhat! Baroness Tessa was referring to a particular moment when she almost gave up being an MP, but something happened to turn things around completely.

We are in a centrifugal moment right now. How we react to it, both in the now, but also preparing for the future, will ensure we emerge from this even stronger than before.

Denise Turner, Insight Director, Newsworks 02/04/20

Key Take Outs: Working with Trusted Media in Times of Crisis

Advertising and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Working with Trusted Media in Times of Crisis:

Brand safety is always high on the agenda for advertisers, but what does this mean in the light of COVID-19? That was the question posed to a panel of 11 industry experts yesterday during a webinar hosted by the World Media Group. The panel was chaired by Alex Altman, Global Client President at Wavemaker.

To view the entire webinar please click the link below:

The role of media in a crisis 

Altman’s first question, addressed to Emma Winchurch-Beale, International Sales Director at the Washington Post, was how the newspaper’s editorial team balanced the need to report what’s going on without causing undue anxiety within its audience.

“People are frightened and it’s our job, along with our colleagues in other news organisations, to be the guiding light and help them through this pandemic,” she said, emphasising the newspaper’s role was to offer reassurance by delivering trusted information, as well as practical advice. To that end, they have created a new COVID-19 subsection on the website, and most of the COVID-19 coverage is free, outside of the pay wall.

Denise Turner, Insight Director, Newsworks, the UK body for national newspapers, agreed that people turn to trusted news sources in times of crisis. She said print subscriptions and newspaper home deliveries were on the rise, and traffic to digital outlets was up by 30-50% in the UK. Engagement is also up: “There’s an uplift in not just dwell time, but also comments on articles [and] shares. So people are not just passively absorbing it, they are actively engaging with the content.”

The need for well-researched trust-worthy content

Johanna Mayer-Jones, SVP of Partnerships at The Atlantic, agreed that the significant spikes in traffic and engagement across the board are because “people are hungry and they need information and news that they can trust at the moment.”

Referencing a popular article called ‘How the pandemic will end’ by Ed Yong, she explained the importance of delivering thoughtful, well-researched, scientific-based content exploring the long-term impacts of the virus. “We want to be thinking about conversations that might take place in two or three day’s time or a week’s time and provide a different type of perspective at this moment.”

Altman turned to Damian Douglas, Managing Director EMEA at Time,
to ask how they were adapting to consumer expectation of news brands in light of COVID-19.

“First and foremost, this is a humanitarian crisis,” Douglas said, so publishers will look at it through a more humane lens. The shift in commercial modelling to make COVID-19 coverage free was really important as audiences seek accuracy, truth and insight, he said; media organisations and brands must be seen to be going into the breach and not being overly commercial.

Advice for the C-suite

Altman then turned to Alison Harbert, Head of Client Marketing at Investec
to ask how she was advising clients in the current climate. The silver lining, she said, was that it had made Investec “think about who we are actually trying to help and what are we trying to help them with…what we can do that’s really relevant to them.” She also stressed the importance of moving at the right speed in the ever-changing situation.

When questioned about the legacy changes that will stay with us around homeworking, Harbert said that despite the fact we may run back to the office the moment the doors open, she hopes the time away has proved that this can work. “I think, as a human race, that this is forcing us to do some good stuff that maybe we should have done earlier.”

Altman asked Janet Balis, Global Advisory Leader for Media and Entertainment at EY, what advice she was giving to CMOs navigating the current crisis. Balis emphasised three points. “Strike the right brand voice and tone. And I think it starts with the word empathy… expressing a vulnerability in the face of an invisible force that’s larger than all of us.”

Secondly, she said while we often talk about storytelling, what’s important now is how that manifests itself with customers: “Your brand is only as good as your experience.” Finally, this is the “moment to really lean into very agile messaging and much better teaming collaboration,” she said, enabling brands to successfully change messaging at any given time.

Balis said she was now starting to see companies moving out of the initial triage moment of enterprise resiliency and looking forward – what she described as “the now, the next and beyond.”

Fake news still a threat

Addressing questions from the audience about fake news, Altman asked Stevan Randjelovic, Director of Brand Safety & Digital Risk EMEA, Group M, what he recommended. Randjelovic’s advice was firstly to invest in trusted news outlets. He also recommended human vetting of smaller regional or local publishers; using third party verification companies; and, most importantly, constantly monitoring where campaigns are delivering.

Harriet Kingaby, Co-founder of the Conscious Advertising Network, highlighted the human impact of fake news: “We talk very much about human safety as opposed to brand safety because we see that the decisions that advertisers make actually have impacts in the real world.” She cited a recent Newsworks report showing how advertisers pulling money from hard news outlets in times of crisis can cause real problems and encourage the rise of fake news.

How can brands market responsibly during crisis?

Altman’s next question, for Jack Dyson, Global Head of Content Strategy, SAP Customer Experience, was whether brands can continue to market during this time.

Dyson talked about the importance of going back to your brand values and brand purpose, and examining all of your actions through that lens to ensure you’re dealing with customers in the right way. He stressed the importance of tone, and why ‘It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it’ is absolutely critical now. All advertisers needed to do “a sense check that the right message is coming across to the right people in the right way and to the right audience, but also with the right cadence,” he said.

Time’s Douglas believes we’ll see a permanent change in how brands are looking to engage with audiences. “Pre-COVID, we were talking about a different form of capitalism, which means putting brand values front and centre.” He believes that it is the brands “working with genuine motive,’ and guiding people through the current crisis – such as McLaren developing protective wear or Louis Vuitton creating hand sanitisers – that will be remembered when we come out the other side.

Alex Delamain, President of The World Media Group and SVP Head of Sales & Client Services EMEA, The Economist, wrapped up the webinar with her key takes outs:

  1. It all starts with humanity. As publishers, we have a huge responsibility to be helpful and generous in this time of crisis.
  2. Brands must strike the right tone – empathy and compassion is key.
  3. Brands need to be connected with their customers through partnerships, relationships and ‘companionship’.
  4. Brands need to be much more agile – traditional digital transformation needs to move much faster.
  5. Brand purpose really comes into play now – we have to look at everything through that filter to ensure authenticity.

Closing on a positive note, Delamain reiterated Balis’s point: “We’re in the now, but there’s the next, and beyond. As brands, it’s really important that we start thinking about life after COVID-19 because it will come.”

Belinda Barker
World Media Group Director