Content marketing articles from our agency

You know content has come of age in advertising circles when they pull in Big Guns like Robert Redford (that’s him in the shades) to lead a panel titled ‘Content is King: Discover the Future of Branded Content’ at the Cannes Lions 2011 (the world’s biggest advertising love-in).

The legendary actor was joined by a VP of Yahoo! and a Hollywood producer whose list of credits seemed to include just about every TV show ever created in the last five years, to form part of the Cannes Lions learning programme examining ‘the new ideas and techniques that are shaping how content is created, targeted and consumed’.

Essentially, the panel addressed the massive shift in how people consume and engage with media, acknowledging that content producers and publishers haven’t evolved alongside users. This meant that marketers (you could slot in ‘advertising agencies’ here) were struggling to understand how the new principles of content consumption affect the way we connect with today’s audience.  We say, that’s a pretty serious gap you’ve got going on, agencies.

Another interesting session to pop up at this year’s Cannes Lions (International Festival of Creativity) was: Evolving Content Creators – Innovation In Advertising. This think-fest reflected on the proliferation of media platforms and the advertising industry’s ability to respond.

The team at Curated Content loved this session, because it addressed the exact things we bang on about even in our sleep!

Those exact things included discussion about ‘interactive, visual effects and integrated productions’, examining ‘what is out there, what challenges exist, and how all parties involved in the process can benefit from each other’s knowledge and expertise’.

See? In this Digital Evolution on steroids, we’re all still learning – but it’s really important to share that knowledge – collaboration has never been cooler!

Finally, there was another name on the guest list at Cannes Lions that caught our attention: none other than the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington.  The Huff Po boss lady was joined by her new boss, (did we mention her $315 million pay cheque?)  Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL.

Aside from having the opportunity to hear what kind of wisdom $315 million buys you, this seminar was interesting because of its emphatic warcry that content has reclaimed ‘its rightful seat at the center of the platform’  (We totally dig kickarse proclamations – they’re so grand!) The takeout here is that brands must play a significant role (remember our content before social strategy post?) in improving the experience – ‘the industry must change the online environment as we know it.’

Those two content saviors, Arianna and Tim, went on to discuss the evolving merge of content, creativity, advertising and technology – four of our favourite things.

On the warning front, it was pretty clear what emerged from Cannes Lions 2012 on the topic of content:

You either get it, embrace it and increase your capacity to serve it which enables your clients to meet the new demands of consumers, or; you ignore it and continue to do things the old way– the way it’s always worked before. I mean seriously, do you really think people are going to want to buy stuff online, when they can walk into a store made of bricks and get served by a real person?

Stay tuned people! For all you content lovers out there, the good times are just getting started.