Content marketing and keeping it simple – Content24

Welcome to Content24. Why is it different? Because it’s a digest of the stories that have made an impact over the past 24 hours, and not just a platform for recycled content marketing. Today we’re looking at Skoda, Honda and BT Skoda launches agency search

Skoda’s content agency search

Advertising industry ‘bible’ Campaign has this story about Skoda running an agency pitch for its global content strategy – to include content, social media and CRM.

It is clear that in some situations marketing has yet to move away from the idea that brand agencies look after and run each strand of the strategy. Is that a good plan? Our view has always been that if content marketing is journalism, you want a journalist looking at content. Advertising agencies have many qualities, but journalism is not one of them.

This is probably reiterated by yesterday’s comments from BuzzFeed about the benefits of being liberated from advertising agency interference and working directly with client.

BT in the Telegraph

We thought it might be interesting to look at this piece of content. It is a straightforward piece of BT native advertising talking about the power of networking. The Telegraph has made it clear at the bottom that it is a sponsored piece and there are advertising banners on either side.

What is interesting is the subject. It is about meeting people, swapping business cards, shaking hands and so on.

The reason why we are flagging it is because it was sent over by some wellmeaning person who did not realise that BT was behind it. Now, that is probably a good thing for BT. However, the connection between subject and client was so tenuous that it was probably hard to figure that out anyway.

It is all very well using content marketing for a soft sell, but sometimes there needs to be a product in there… if that’s what you want to promote.

Honda works out people just want to see cars

That brings us on to the next story. It is an interesting anecdote about Honda and its attempts to be creative in generating interest on its Instagram account. The social agency tasked with providing content tried to show lots of imaginative and interesting images from events and sponsorships. Yet in the end it found out that what followers really wanted to see and share was product. In others words, cars.

Sometimes things don’t need to be that complicated.