Brands are having to “fundamentally re-think” their marketing strategy with the influx of digital and 2015 is set to be “pivotal” year in content marketing, according to Emotive CEO and founder Simon Joyce.
While he would say that, as he runs a content marketing agency Emotive, it is true that the interest in content marketing from brands can be seen in recent moves on both publishing and agency sides.
In addition to the launch of Emotive, which is part owned by APN News and Media and is part of its bid to get some skin in the game, Fairfax this week opened its content marketing agency Made.
While APN has a 51% equity stake in Emotive, Joyce emphasises that the business is completely independent, but is able to leverage from APN's assets when necessary for a client. The newly launched agency also has Bohemia's Brett Dawson as a non-executive director on it board.
APN-owned Australian Radio Network (ARN) CEO Ciaran Davis told AdNews the ability of Emotive to be “channel agnostic” is important.
“It is positioning itself as an independent agency because we do realise that there is times when it might be TV led, it might be digital led, it may be whatever else led,” Davis said. “But having access to our teams [at APN] and the strategic thinkers in every department actually adds a long way to emotive as well.”
Its also important from a demand perspective. Joyce believes after years of discussions, 2015 will be a “pivotal” year for content marketing.
“I think you'll start to see more and more brands really invest in having content agencies as part of their suite of agencies support partners,” Joyce said.
“Brands are having to fundamental re-think their marketing strategy, they're having to ornamentally rethink the structure of their teams and the function of their teams as they start to embrace this role of being a publisher.”
“With all of the discussion around content marketing it is still very much an emerging market.”
Joyce said the reason he founded the company was that while a lot of brands were diving into content marketing, many were struggling to find the right audience. He said Emotive not only uses data to ensure it is hitting the right audience, but also focuses content on the four basic emotions that all other emotions are built on: happiness, sadness, fear and anger.
The other reason that Joyce sees clients looking towards content marketing agencies is that many create content for contents sake, rather than part of a strategy.
“In the early days content marketing was just a little world unto its own; you just sort of create your content, put it out there and hope it finds an audience,” Joyce said. “There is a big missing element which is the ability to write a content strategy and the ability to write what the audience wants.”
“You can't just do a little bit here and a little bit here. The art of publishing is that it is always on.”
Emotive's foundation client will be ARN's iHeartRadio platform. The news follows the announced of APN's 2014 full year results which saw ARN's business revenue grow by 18% year on year to $180.9million and EBITDA grew 14% to $66.5m.
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.