Content marketing disasters – 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 content marketing disasters and O2

When it all goes horribly wrong…

Getting brands to admit when a campaign has gone awry is only slightly easier than making the sun shine through power of thought. So fair play then to this piece, which got in touch with four (ok, three) brand managers to unburden themselves with stories of content marketing that hit the rails.

We won’t spoil the piece. However, the bulk of these mistakes came about as a result of time constraints and going to the wrong source. The stock image story and the hassle of finding pictures is particularly resonant.

My only regret about the piece is that they invited the Content Marketing Institute to take part. The CMI, as is its wont, managed to shoehorn in a “stating the bleeding obvious how-to” rather than an actual story. Message to writer: if you only have three good examples, just use those three. Don’t waste time with padding.

And talking of disasters… O2’s rugby content marketing

Earlier this month, this blog ran a somewhat critical take on O2’s sponsorship of the stand-still-and-pose machine that is the England rugby team.

Principally, the question was what to do when you back the wrong horse and have another two weeks of content marketing and associated activity lined up. In the immediate aftermath of England’s defeat by the Aussies, for O2 this appeared to be something akin to stand still and stare at the headlights.

But all may not be lost, at least not for O2. According to Marketing magazine, the campaign hit all of its major objectives in terms of shares and interaction.

O2’s #weartherose and #makethemgiants activity seems to have hit its target of five million “acts of support”, which included social-media shares as well as offline interactions.

All good then. At least it goes to show that this sort of campaign, ie running videos and articles through the brand platform, can work.

Maybe pick another sport next time…