Costa brings out Buzzfeed video

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 Costa’s BuzzFeed campaign, GE and the abuse of the English language by marketing professionals

Costa’s BuzzFeed-produced content marketing campaign

Last month, we covered Costa’s tie-in with BuzzFeed to create a series of videos showcasing things that make Britons happy. Costa said it was hoping to gain over one million views with the first film. Well it looks like that aim will be achieved, because after only 24 hours it has well over 500,000 views.

‘Little Things That Make People in Britain Happy’ is around three-and-a-half minutes long and features two men and two women talking to each other about what makes them smile. The set is minimal and the only Costa branding is on the coffee cups, until the end.

The film is notable for being BuzzFeed’s first attempt at branded video content in the UK. And there was no input from Costa’s advertising agency, a decision that helped the end result according to BuzzFeed.

Content marketing and abused adjectives

A favourite refrain on this blog is that content marketing should be approached as journalism. And by that it means conveying your ideas using sentences that are grammatically correct.

If you agree you might like this piece from FirstWord director Adrian Michaels.

He looks at the current trend for copywriters to misuse adjectives in the hunt for a catchy tagline. An example is Mastercard’s ’40 Days of Crazy’ for the Rugby World Cup.

Yes, marketing needs to be fun and it helps to break the rules occasionally. But only in exceptional circumstances. Trying to convey a concept through poor language is the equivalent of using question marks in headlines. It’s lazy.

GE Healthcare content marketing

Everyone knows GE has been breaking new ground in terms of content marketing. We probably write about it once a week. This article looks at GE’s healthcare division – which appears to lag behind the rest of the company, in this aspect at least.

It is worth noting that healthcare marketing demands a more specialised approach than the other industrialised GE subsidiaries.

This interview is with GE Healthcare global head of marketing Stephanie Meyer.

She suggests there will be a big push on content marketing next year.

She says: “It’s really about looking at consumers’ behavior and engaging in different ways. My marketers now have fabulous tools, but they don’t have experience as content strategists. So for 2016, I need to work on making sure our marketers understand the difference between creating content and selling something.”