Over the last year, I have been asking a diverse group of marketing experts from around the world what they think will be different about branded content in five years’ time and what they think will remain the same. The responses have ranged from 140-character slogans to novel-length epics, which I collated in a report published earlier this year in the Best of Branded Content Marketing: 10th Anniversary Edition e-book (BOBCM), part of a series I conceived and curate in partnership with the BCMA. I shared the key themes from the report at 21st Golden Drum Advertising Festival in Slovenia in October 2015, as well as some of the insights and opinions from my latest research, including: how branded content will be at the heart of every marketing strategy; the new (open and collaborative) agency models emerging; the need for strategy to go beyond the desk and dashboard to find real insight and opportunities; as well as measurement, personalisation, optimisation trends and beyond.

1. A GLIMPSE
INTO THE
FUTURE OF
BRANDED
CONTENT
MARKETING
@juzzie

2. WTF is #brandedcontent

3. It’s complicated

4. Branded content is any content
that can be associated with a
brand in the eye of the beholder

5. Correct but not true if you
want to win some tin!

6. BRANDED CONTENT IS A GENRE?
People not product stories
Winning hearts & minds
Emotionally engaging
Used more upstream
Entertaining
Longer form
Mostly b2c

7. THE REST IS CONTENT MARKETING?
More product USP focused
Editorially informative
aka Brand Publishing
Closer to ZMOT
Linked to SEO
Often B2B
Sales ROI
Useful

8. But is this branded content
and do consumer care?
IS THIS BRANDED CONTENT AND DO CONSUMERS CARE?

9. CONSUMERS DON'T WANT TO MAKE THE
WORLD A BETTER PLACE. THEY WANT
BRANDS TO DO THAT FOR THEM ;)

10. What else is on the horizon?

11. Branded content will be at the
heart of every marketing strategy

12. “The ability of content to draw
people in naturally through
entertaining and emotionally
engaging messaging to develop
deeper relationships with audiences
is why is more clients will adopt
more branded content as part of
their marketing strategies.” "
PJ Pereira
Chief Creative Officer
Pereira & O’Dell

13. Adoption is being driven by digital and
social, more standardized processes,
and high-profile examples – making the
approach less isolated and more
integrated, rather than an afterthought
whereby engagement is simply bolted
onto an above-the-line campaign.
Content-based approaches predicted
to move beyond marketing to become
the communication norm across
the organization.

14. But more risks still need to be taken

16. FROM LONGER FORM TO FULL LENGTH?

17. New agency models will emerge

18. “Brands need to be realistic about competing
with content creators, unless they’re prepared
to risk allocating budget that could result in
failure. The Hollywood system is an example of
a few successes bankrolling a large number of
duds and also-rans.
I’d recommend collaboration, or deviation,
whereby the type of content you create is not
necessarily of interest to conventional content
creators, but is of huge interest to a client or
group of clients.”
Rory Sutherland
Vice Chairman
Ogilvy Group UK

19. MORE AGENCY-FACILITATED BRAND ALLIANCES
There’s an increasing demand for those
that understand editorial and
programming, e.g. publishers and
broadcasters, in order to produce
continuous content rather than campaigns
based simply on ideas with legs.
Contract publishing is evolving, so that the
content creators are become agencies
themselves, e.g. Unilever’s £1 million
sponsorship of The Guardian’s newly
formed branded content Labs.

20. There’s more game-changing
disruption ahead that will continue
to blur the lines between brands,
media owners, agencies and
consumers until there are
no lines any more

21. "The most influential brands are no longer
products or services, but people – living
brands. They have become influential
through digital word of mouth. The
influence a living brand has over their fans
is part of their overall equity. It is their social
equity that can be monetised by making the
brand stronger, by increasing loyalty and
using advocacy to create long-term value."
Andrew Canter
Chief Content Officer
Global Living Brands
+ CEO, BCMA

22. But messages are getting lost
in the over supply of content
and lack of continuity

23. “As every B2B brand turns
to content marketing,
we're about to be hit by a
deluge of... crap”
Doug Kessler
Co-founder
Velocity Partners

24. Distribution being put at
the heart of any strategy, but
there’s a growing skills gap

25. “On one hand there are the ideas, content
and messaging. Then there’s the actual
frameworks and mechanisms for delivering
those, which have swiftly become more
algorithmic, programmatic and predictive in
order to help personalise and optimise
content across multiple platforms. But the
modern landscape is more fractured and
very complex, and doesn’t necessarily favour
the thinking that comes out of more
traditional media and creative organisations.”
Barney Worfolk Smith
Managing Director
Th@t Lot

26. And the creative catalyst that gives
us cars rather than faster horses
is not found in the algorithm

27. Take a leaf out of the philosophies of
Heidegger and Wittgenstein, so “don’t think,
but look” and frame your problems as
phenomena using ethnographic-style
research to find insights in the Thick
Description of people’s experiences, e.g.
needs, fears, hopes, etc.
Because if you assume that your customers
are fully aware of their needs and
intentions, you will continue launching
products that lack interest or excitement.

28. Moving beyond customer-centric to
being customer obsessed and the
integration of Thick and Big Data

29. “Being customer obsessed by digging
deeper and going beyond the desk and
dashboard enables brands to out-innovate
their competitors by offering
more authentic, relevant and personal
customer experiences.
Big data might help you to understand
the ‘where’ and ‘when’, but it’s unlikely to
show you the ‘why’.”
Drew Rayman
Managing Partner
Tenthwave Digital

30. INSIGHT AND INSPIRATION
There’s lots of data that shows
that bakers look at recipes
online, but when we dug
deeper we found that what
they really really want is to
show they care, express their
love and lots of inspiration.

31. SOLUTION AND RESULTS
Pinterest-style responsive website solution with
predictive search provides bakers with inspiration,
and a platform to share their ideas with this UGC
now accounting for over 80% of all content.
Average visit length has jumped 50% with the
digital community tripling in just 20 months to 1.75
million – helping bakers bake more, as well as
resulting in a namecheck for Duncan Hines® in
NASDAQ’s Bull of the Day for investors, and a
number of awards for Tenthwave.

32. The rising new technology stars,
and how market research is
about to get turned on its head

33. People won’t stop shifting to new media
properties and platforms, so we’ll continue
to see new tactics and technologies in
branded content marketing, such as
wearable tech, hyper geo-location,
mnemonic gestures, the ‘Internet of Things’
and the growth in 3D Publishing.
But there are other challenges posed by
the fragmented media landscape, even
before brands start looking at shiny new
things and beyond.

34. “Brands are now faced with a dual
challenge of not only trying to
understand how individual channels or
touchpoints work on a micro level, but
also how they all fit together on a
holistic level to make the whole greater
than the sum of the parts.”
Ian Wright
Joint Managing Director
Tapestry Research

35. “Market research is about to get
turned on its head by the explosion of
more data. The upshot is that we won’t
be aggregating audiences around their
demographics, but will instead be
'valuing individuals based on purchase
probabilities'. This would radically
change how media works, as well as
who should be on the team to deliver
and evaluate it.”
Tim Foley
Managing Director
Pointlogic

36. The only thing that will remain
constant is the desire for good stories

37. “If you believe in story-led marketing, that
changes everything about how you go to
market. Brands are going to have to change
their processes and do something marketers
don’t like to do and don’t do easily. They have
to change the skillsets of the people they
hire. They have to change the timeframes
they work on. They have to change the way
they allocate and think about budgets. They
have to change their definition of creativity.”
Scott Donaton
Chief Content Officer
UM

38. And it will still all be
about relationships

39. “Marketing fundamentals will remain
the same, namely that the relationship
with customers and clients will be built
one person at a time. We can’t be
blinded by the light of bright shiny
objects to ever, ever forget that
relationships are paramount.”
Charlene Li
Co-founder
Altimeter Group

40. Thank You
@juzzie

41. This slidedeck was presented at the 21st
Golden Drum advertising festival in
Slovenia by Justin Kirby, VP, Content
Strategy at Tenthwave Digital. Justin is a
writer, speaker, and strategist who curates
the Best of Branded Content Marketing
(#BOBCM) eBook and event series in
partnership with the Branded Content
Marketing Association (BCMA).
@juzzie