There's a good (albeit somewhat one-sided) debate over on Scamp's blog about Content Marketing. I have some sympathy with the view that, as Scamp says, 'to be done well, content requires way more thought and investment than it's currently getting'. There is, of-course, a lot of rubbish content out there. Just as there is plenty of rubbish advertising. And I'm sure we'll see more of it. Content for the sake of content is pointless and the worst approaches (as Thom Yorke talks about in the clip above, which was linked to in the comments to Scamp's post) are pretty soulless.
But there are pearls. My own favourite example of a brand that really gets content, and has invested heavily in using it for direct business benefit (and as a retailer, ensuring it is accountable and driving a good return) is ASOS. There is a not insignificant shift that is taking place in how many client organisations are approaching content. Through the course of work I've done for Econsultancy recently in the areas of content strategy, agility and innovation, marketing structures and resourcing, securing board level buy-in to digital investment, and marketing insourcing and oursourcing, I've interviewed dozens of senior client-side marketers. The areas of content and data come up repeatedly as capabilities that are seeing marked changes in approaches to resourcing, partnerships, use of techology, and building competencies. If (as many agencies do) we consider the media world in terms of paid, owned and earned media, then content and data are what sit at the centre. But the dynamic between what capability is developed in-house at client companies and what is outsourced to partners is continually shifting.
It was notable in some of the research conducted for those reports that many clients had invested in recent times in developing greater in-house content capabilities. In the report I just did on marketing insourcing and outsourcing, we did a quant survey as well as interviews and as part of that we asked whether overall, they thought more digital work will be carried out in-house or outsourced. Whilst a healthy number (32%) believed that more work would be outsourced over the next few years, the largest proportion of respondents (45%) anticipated that more would come in-house (leading me to ask whether this is the trend that no-one talks about):
When asked which areas that they are most likely to do more in-house, content related areas such as content marketing, email, and social media stood out.
This doesn't mean that advertising is any less important than it once was, but it does mean that it needs to be understood in the context of a much broader set of tools and approaches that clients are adopting. And adopting rapidly.
