OPINION: Creating relevant digital content that matters

The biggest area of opportunity today is the combination of digital technology and content, the connection between what is actually relevant and meaningful for consumers and how a brand becomes a part of that.

For me, it’s about people. Putting the consumer at the heart of your business or proposition and making them the hero of the story. I think businesses should ask themselves how they can give consumers more control, how they can help customers share and connect online and how they can help consumers create more to express themselves through their brand.

I think some of our better known content owners need to seriously re-think the business they’re in. It really is pointless to try and fight the fact that that consumers now search, discover and create content through social platforms. It pays to embrace this shift, understand that this is how content works and figure out new ways to profit from it. A lot of commercial success and underlying innovation online has been based on trust and reciprocity.

Earlier on in my career we just did the content whereas now everything is media. What we are all trying to work out now is how to build that emotional connection with a brand. Today, you have to relate to people as people, not just a category.

There is a vast array of amazing digital technologists and content creators out there whom are helping our industry by building incredible and unique experiences that work extremely well in the digital world. It is crucial for our industry to invest in business models that provide a marketplace where those content people can get together with brands.

A good example of new models illustrating how a brand can be influential is Pampers and their aim to build unique and customised content around its customers’ baby care needs, providing hints, tips and professional advice that go beyond function and use to help families manage their daily lives.

Questions to ask are:

• Do you help me?
• Do you allow me to do things that I could not do before?
• Do you make my life more interesting, more manageable?

One of the greatest challenges and opportunities is that consumers can pretty much engage anytime and anywhere on any manner of platforms, across multiple cultures and geographies.
How do you decide what is important to a consumer, when to connect and where to allocate marketing resources?

It is essential to understand in real time where the consumer is during their journey or throughout their day. What are they actually doing? What is being searched? What are people engaging with online or via their mobile devices? Also, what is important to them? Why is it important to them? When they get out of bed in the morning, what do they care about?

It is only then, we can develop digital content and marketing initiatives that matter, content that is relevant. Using the web or social spaces we can influence behaviour at key stages throughout their journey. 

It is that connection between what really matters in real time that helps us to help brands allocate the appropriate resources, efficiently, effectively and profitably.