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I read this and thought it was very much worth spreading…I have a lot of time and respect for Joe Pulizzi and his ideas are valuable. He has kindly allowed me to publish his notes…. |
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A Note from Joe Pulizzi As I'm writing this, Content Marketing World Sydney just wrapped up. Some amazing speakers and attendees from 13 different countries came together to celebrate, and converse about, the content marketing industry. I thought it might be useful to share some insights on what we are seeing in Asia Pacific — and what we can all learn from the direction content marketing seems to be heading in. 1. There is major money moving into content marketing: I had the pleasure of talking with a number of senior executives at large Australian brands throughout the week. Based on these conversations, I can tell you with 100-percent certainty that money is moving from traditional advertising into content marketing. Sure, it's still a blip on the overall marketing radar, but this shift is starting to happen at almost every organization. Another piece of good news? Brands are getting senior-level buy-in for content marketing. The C-level may not fully understand the practice of content marketing yet (most really don't), but they are approving the business cases for content marketing nonetheless, and mountains are starting to move. Brands are leveraging in-house resources or hiring journalists and editors, as well as employing content marketing agencies to get rich-content programs off the ground. 2. The agency arena is getting confusing: SEO agencies have almost all rebranded themselves as content marketers, creating a bit of confusion. It was also quite noticeable that the "traditional" agencies were nearly completely absent from Content Marketing World Sydney. Compare this to what's happening in the States: The majority of big agencies in North America have already signed up for our flagship event, Content Marketing World, which will held be in September. So it's likely that traditional agencies in Asia Pacific are behind the curve. In chatting with a number of marketers that work with agencies in Australia, most traditional advertising and PR agencies are getting called to address the challenge of content marketing, but they are still trying to fit content's unique workflows, processes, and output into their traditional advertising and campaign containers. This has been causing brands a lot of grief — and has them running toward content marketing specialists, looking for salvation. Julie Hamilton, who runs content for BT Financial Group, even went so far as to state in her presentation at CMWorld Sydney, that brands should stay away from traditional agencies when it comes to storytelling programs. 3. Content marketing departments may be making issues worse: Since the practice of content marketing is important to nearly all the typical business silos (PR, corporate communications, social media, etc.), it seems that our departments are (in some cases) further complicating the usual issues of integration within organizations. Todd Wheatland, formerly from Kelly Services and now Head of Strategy at King Content, has stated that more senior-level executives are looking at content marketing like social business…that is, social media is not a department, but rather it runs throughout the organization. We at CMI are seeing this on the horizon for content marketing as well. In Sydney, CMI's chief strategist Robert Rose pitched the idea of having a Content Creation Management (CCM) group that runs above and through all silos to effectively manage the content assets for marketing — you might think of this as a Content Center of Excellence on par with what we would find at Kraft Foods or Coca-Cola. While it's different in every company, the CCM model may be the best option for most brands, and this seems to be playing out in Asia Pacific as we speak. Next week, Robert and I head to Singapore for Content Marketing Asia, where I will report back on any additional insights I come across. Until then, take a look at some of the amazing articles we've run this week on the CMI blog. I'd also like to send a special shout-out to the CMI team, which celebrated its 7-year anniversary on April 2. Here's to another seven orange-filled years. Yours in content,
Joe Pulizzi 
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