Why News Generation is Integral to a Successful Marketing Mix
By Jack Peat
One of the biggest comms challenges facing brands today is the need to stay relevant in a media environment that is constantly evolving and increasingly saturated.
Today, new product launches, major announcements and business developments have an uphill battle to obtain precious column inches and widespread coverage online. Up against a busy news schedule and fierce competition many face the very real threat of brand equity dissipating, and in an age where earned media coverage has multi-disciplinary applications that has far-reaching consequences.
News Generation
News generation is a creative way to keep your brand name on the news agenda and in the public eye. It is a growing element of the PR market that has become a daily staple for newspapers and online publications, and it should be considered an essential part of a successful marketing mix.
Its value to brands is two-dimensional. On the one hand news gen projects can be rolled out at regular intervals as a way of ensuring that your brand remains relevant and is being consistently talked about. Campaigns can be designed to fit the seasons, tie with events or simply jump on the back of the news agenda, making it a versatile and expedient tool.
It also works seamlessly across platforms. Using news generation you can craft your ideas into multi-platform news stories in the form of news content, video and visuals as well as radio and broadcast campaigns that are highly relevant and shareable on social media. Done well it can be a one-stop-shop for page-lead headlines, engaging multimedia and viral content.
But if you need convincing beyond that, consider this. Research has shown adding news generation to your campaign boosts ROI by three times on average and makes other media in your campaign work harder. It is one of the most evergreen pieces of collateral in the marketer’s toolkit, and it will always be at your behest.
So how do you incorporate news gen into your strategy?
Well, the first thing is to do is to make provisions for it. Unlike launches or key sales periods it can be difficult to plan for auxiliary PR and marketing activity, but given what we know about the crucial down-periods it is essential that it gets factored into budgets from the start, then when dry spells invariably do show up you are prepared to tackle it head-on.
News generations also requires a much more extensive ideation process. You are essentially dreaming up news stories, so you should factor in the time it takes to work up fresh angles that both accentuate your key brand messages and support a strong news hook. It can be a good idea to get in specialists at this point to help develop your brief and bring it to life. At 72Point we brainstorm for free in order to help our clients come up with strong campaign ideas that will gain widespread media coverage.
Which leads us to the final consideration – Distribution. It is likely that news gen projects will appeal to journalists outside of your core sector and so you should consider the time it takes to research and draw up a strong media list. If the campaign has a strong news hook then working alongside a press agency could be worth pricing in, as they will offer a direct inroad into the media market.
So rather than drop from consumer conscience this year, consider news generation in your marketing mix. To find out more, visit our Keynote Theatre address at The Marketing Show North 2019
Instagram Algorithms - How To Make An Impact
We've all been there - liked one single picture of a cute dog on Instagram and now your whole feed is covered in animal videos, pet memes and celebrity pets who somehow have more followers than the population of Iceland. Now you're looking at these posts and warming to their little furry faces, and end up making the biggest mistake - another like. That's it, now you won't ever be able to get away - who needs to see photos of your friends on their fancy holidays and eating from posh restaurants with tiny portion sizes anyway?
Rest assured, you're not the only one being roped into this. All rise to the wake of the NEW (and ever-changing, so bear with me) Instagram algorithm, and how it really works.
Let's be honest, the new algorithm sucks. Staying present even in your own social group's feeds seems almost impossible, but the fact is, if you are a business then you’re in luck, because as long as you work with the algorithm and not against it, you will inevitably see massive success at very little cost.
Sub head
Just to make clear - If you do take anything from this article, let it be this - even if you have the same following as another user, the posts you will see on your feed will most definitely be different, as the algorithm takes into consideration the amount of interaction with other posts, hence creating an individual feed for each user. Therefore, if you want to move away from viewing certain pages, simply don't interact with them!
Let's go back two years, when social media itself was a lot easier and apparently working too well for our liking. Businesses didn't have to worry about optimising their content for their viewers as Instagram's feeds appeared in chronological order, which meant as long as you posted regularly, you could pretty much get away with it.
Nowadays, it's a whole different story. Did you use the right combination of hashtags? But did you ensure there’s not too many as to clutter the post? Is the image itself attractive and not overly branded? Is the caption strong and witty enough? I could go on.
Ok now you’re panicking. But don’t. I’m about to give you a whole new lease on your social media life.
5 TOP tips on making an impact
- ENGAGE with more Instagram stories
The influence of Instagram on buyer and consumer behaviour is massive, and continues to increase. According to Delmondo, a social media analytics platform, 75% of consumer decisions are influenced by Instagram itself. This means there is huge potential, but if you really want to get up there - ENGAGE in other similar content! Join an instagram pod, post on a celebrity photo, comment on related stories - and most importantly make sure your competition isn’t doing it better.
2) Hashtag sparingly and intuitively
There’s nothing worse than seeing a brilliant image with a quirky caption followed by a sea of hashtags; some so irrelevant to the image of the new office that #foodie is included? How did we get to this? It isn’t just about randomly throwing together a few words and hoping for the best. By including more unrelated words you are actually decreasing the worth of your image, meaning that same image of your business’s swanky new office now can be found on a food search, making it look so unprofessional.
3) PLAN the layout of you Instagram page
One of the most important things to remember is no matter how well you engage with other Instagram accounts, if the content you are posting on behalf of the business is not visually appealing, your post will be disregarded.
The same rules applies when marketing for the business. Showing your brand’s uniqueness, your Instagram account should be just the same; conveying your brand’s message with a clever display of imagery with not too much 'branded' information to avert the reader’s attention. By sticking with a theme, such as a certain layout or strong colour running through your posts, you will inevitably allow the images to be instantly recognisable and hence related to your business.
4) Find the perfect timing
It may not seem important, but the time that you actually post an image on Instagram can also affect the amount of interaction and impact it has, even if the previous tip was followed. Posting at a time when your target audience are most active is key. It's all well and good to create a platform for interaction on your business account's behalf by engaging with content ready to post an image, but if it's 3am on a Wednesday night and the majority of your audience are asleep you probably won’t get a lot of interaction with it.
Luckily Sprout Social created a heatmap of the time of day and day of the week where you are most likely to get the most interaction with an Instagram post - hence it might be good to invest in an app which helps organise and plan your posts in order to get maximum outcome.
5) Get PERSONAL
It may be simple business initiative to make sure social media pages look professional and orderly, just as you would like your audience to view the business. However, by constantly posting business content of glossed up and styled product images you can easily lose the authenticity of the very same product or service you are trying to promote. Instead, try for a more relaxed approach and give readers an ‘insight’ into the very life of the office, and any behind the scenes information which can easily create a buzz around the topic if marketed effectively, meaning more people are likely to engage with the content.
How Iceland turned a £500k marketing fail into a significant social media win
Turning a Marketing Fail Into a Win
Last week Iceland were hit with a festive marketing set back that would throw shivers down the spine of every CMO in the country. After shelling out half a million pounds on a glossy Christmas ad Clearcast ruled that they would not be allowed to show it on television because it breached political rules in the official code of practice, and just like that, the rug had been pulled from under their feet.
The context behind the ruling was thus. Iceland had used an animated film produced alongside Greenpeace to create a campaign about the use of palm oil in common supermarket products, which is responsible for vast swathes of deforestation across the world. The high street chain had announced earlier this year that it would become the first supermarket to remove palm oil from all its own brand products, and with a sprinkle of Christmas good will, they had hoped to build some positive brand sentiment ahead of one of the busiest shopping periods of the year.
But regardless of how well-intentioned their motives appeared to be, they hadn’t foreseen that the political message behind their ad might put the stoppers on it going out altogether. With a significant sum of money already on the line they were left hoping for a Miracle on 34th Street to save their bacon before the big day, and it was delivered, courtesy of a marketing channel powered by the people; social media.
As soon as Clearcast made their announcement, Iceland went on the attack by launching the taboo commercial on their social channels. “This is the advert they don’t want you to see”, was the undertone, and just like that people across the world had been galvanised by a campaign that had shunned the norm in every sense of the word in a bid to be brave and bold in support of a worthy cause.
Within days it had become a viral sensation. Three million people headed to YouTube to watch the ad, while 12 million people watched the video on their Facebook channel and Twitter posts garnered hundreds of thousands of retweets and likes. The Guardian’s Media Editor Jim Waterson congratulated the supermarket on producing the “most successful banned advert in years”, as celebrities such as James Cordon, Ricky Gervais and Bill Bailey all threw their weight behind getting the message out.
After spending £500,000 to make the (initially) doomed advert, yesterday a petition launched on Change.org to get the ad reinstated reached 500,000 signatures, and it has arguably performed better thanks to the initial snub than it would have done without it. Of course there will be claims that they knew it would turn out that way all along, but even so, it goes to show that being bold in today’s market and backing ideas you are confident in is a sure fire way to win people over, regardless of what the authorities think.
How to combat an “intensely annoying trend” in consumer PR
Journalists have sparked a social media revolt this week over the growing PR trend of asking for hyperlinks in news copy.
With the worlds of SEO and PR increasingly intersecting the media are now frequently targeted as a means of fulfilling important search KPIs.
If “single-use” is the word of the year for 2018, “would you mind adding a link in that” will surely be coined the PR term that has become the most ubiquitous in offices across the country.
But although it is often perceived as being an “intensely annoying trend” by journalists, it really needn’t be if media relations bods were doing their jobs correctly.
Adding value
Links in PR content should be a value-add addition and not something we should just expect to get on top of a citation.
As The Times’ correspondent Deirdre Hipwell wrote in her Twitter rant, it should be enough that the company is mentioned “without trying to wangle free advertising too”. But if the link went through to additional content that is complementary to the story, then it becomes an entirely different proposition altogether.
A recent PR Moment seminar on SEO in the PR market offered some useful insights on how that might be achieved. One campaign by Stavely Head used an intriguing visualisation of data to get journalists to link through, and another provided a tool that complemented the story as a means of obtaining extra SEO juice.
Utilising content
And I could go on.
Visualisations of survey data, quizzes, interactive infographics and data sets all offer viable reasons for journalists to add links into their copy because they add value and complement the story, rather than abuse it as an ill-fated sales ploy.
Very few journalists these days will be happy to simply link to a dot com from a citation, so these offer the ‘something else’ that spin a simple PR win into the double whammy PR and SEO gain that we all so crave.
And if the link isn’t forthcoming then remember that a citation still carries significant Google juice on a relevant or high-authority site, as do no-follow links, so you should also consider whether it is worth pestering journalists and potentially jeopardising future projects when you can count the mere mention as a big bonus.
For further advice on the matter, read our five tips for securing follow links here.
How To Avoid a Halloween Horror Show
Halloween has hit hysterical heights of marketing, PR and comms activity in recent decades, with most businesses or organisations dedicating massive budgets to campaigns with mixed results. An increasingly saturated landscape means brands are vying for a finite amount of media space, which makes the need to be inventive and imaginative more important than ever.
We look at how you can maximise your exposure in a period of frenetic PR activity, cut-through the noise and make people stop, think and engage with your brand. Here are our top tips to avoid a Halloween Horror Show:
1) Interaction
Halloween is all about communities. Children spend the evening getting into the spirit with costumes and face paint, and then knocking on the doors of their neighbours seeking out tasty treats. Parents and adults often get together for Halloween themed drinks and parties within their local communities/work circles, and so we should be looking at building on that interactive feel in our comms. Content that requires people to get involved (such as quizzes, animations and online surveys) is far more likely to be shared both online and verbally during the Halloween season. Interactive content also gives the public a conversation starter or party-game during the Halloween period, maximising the reach of the campaign.
2) Coverage, Coverage, Coverage
Clever creative is ultimately the key to a cracking campaign, but creativity is nothing if no one sees the content. In a season with so much creative scope, ensuring a press release stands out from the crowd, and isn’t dismissed in a matter of seconds by a harried news editor is often a question of timing. Understanding the news agenda at that time, cleverly written toplines and knowing what the publisher wants during the Halloween period all go a long way to maximising the exposure of a campaign. And if you need a cheat, we’re always on hand to help.
Our 40-year heritage as part of the SWNS Media Group and our ability to produce content with mainstream media appeal coupled with our confidence in our creative work is backed up by a solid guarantee of coverage, and vast experience in media relations that will help ensure your campaign travels far and wide
3) Visual Content
Halloween is a season that is bursting with visual content. Commercial, digital, print and retail landscapes are dominated by content and items produced with spooky themes in mind.
The opportunity presented to brands is to create a campaign that focuses on Halloween visuals, allowing them to tap into the agenda and enhance how engaging their project will be. Infographics, animations, videos and puzzles are all great ways to capitalise on national buzz and ensure that a piece of content gets clicks, views and plays. Make sure that all your visual assets are striking, colorful and on-brand.
4) SEO – What Google Wants
An overwhelming 90% of users click on the first 3 results in Google and only 6% click on paid search results. This means that businesses who make a conscious effort to position themselves as thought-leaders and have the nause to craft content that suits Google’s guidelines are at a massive advantage when it comes to generating web-traffic. Here are five top tips on how you can optimise content so it gets seen in search:
- Utilise keywords. A keyword strategy is key to any piece of content for optimisation. Make sure that you identify key search terms that the content can attack, and include them in valuable places such as the title, headings and subheadings and introductory sentence.
- Reference quality sites within the copy by linking to them. Not only is it good etiquette but they may also notice and link back to your content, showing google that it is a well respected piece.
- Use social media to broaden the reach of your campaign, with cleverly timed and/or targeted posts.
- Build pages and embed assets on your site. This will allow you to generate a traffic funnel of users/potential customers to your site. Not only does Google’s algorithm favour sites with many relevant pages, it will also add value to your site, giving people a reason to visit your page.
- Optimise your images for SEO, by making them relevant to the content, choosing a good file name, adding a caption to the image (for easy scanning), and reducing the file size if possible.
5) Shareability
Social content is a primary driver of traffic to websites. Roughly 3.2 billion social media users globally in 2018 means more consumers are engaging with content on social media than ever before. In fact, it has become the one-stop-shop for users to also share content with friends. This means, to maximise exposure on social platforms, the shareability of the content has to be the primary focus. The way to create shareable content is to tell a story and provide a feed for your audience of what they want to see – so, there’s no better time to create an experience that’s both haunting and brilliant than at Halloween.
Our breakthrough package incorporates social media optimised content, and detailed targeting, to ensure your message gets put in front of the people most likely to engage with it.
The opportunity presented to well-known brands at Halloween is to think outside the box and maximise exposure.
Here at 72Point, we specialise in cutting through the blur of competition to deliver high-quality coverage, even at periods of frenetic PR activity. Our unique relationship with publishers perfectly positions us to provide engaging content-driven solutions to your PR requirements that are newsworthy and most importantly, news-ready.
Last year’s Halloween saw us land 597 pieces of coverage across 38 projects – showcasing how we are able to use popular festivals/events to help brands springboard into the spotlight and connect with more diverse and wider audiences. Campaigns varied from news generation projects, visual assets/video projects, radio and PR surveys. Our versatility in working with brands is unrivalled, and our experience vast.
Avoid a Halloween Howler this year, come to 72Point to ensure your brand’s key messaging travels far and wide this Halloween season.
Snapchat and Infographics
By Evelina Peterson
A demand for visual news bites on social media apps such as Snapchat is giving infographics a new lease of life.
Graphic visualisations of research and insights came to the fore on the back of the online news boom, giving editors a dynamic piece of content that is appealing to internet audiences.
But now they have found new avenues thanks to various social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter and, most recently, Snapchat.
Thanks to the new ‘Discover’ channels, graphic statistics and news content have taken on a more important role as publishers strive to reach a more millennial audience.
As a platform that is more intimate and absorbing than other social networks, infographics have found a more natural fit on Snapchat’s easily-to-consume news channels, and it’s an area that is playing into the hands of PR firms.
Chocolate gets snapped
A recent 72Point story distributed on behalf VoucherCodes garnered significant traction after it was picked up by The Sun’s discovery channel on Snapchat.
With a reported 150 million daily-active users on the channel it demonstrated tremendous value for money for the client, driving users to a wide spread of online coverage.
Senior Designer Matt Harvey from 72Point, emphasises the success of infographics, saying: “Content marketers are well aware of the value of visuals like infographics as they increase engagement that connect your audience to your brand.”
“To maximise engagement and their value it is important to tailor infographics for the platform they are published on and supply in formats that are easy for editors to use.
“For example supplying infographics as one image but also design it so it can be split into sections, providing options and maximising the chance of pickup.”
“It is also important to strike a balance between creating content that is engaging but also uses a visual style that ties the content to the brand”
Why Infographics?
One of the most powerful aspects of an infographic is the way that colour can be used to help suggest which emotion should be felt by the reader, therefore making the content seem more personal and connecting the individual to the information being processed.
This can be deemed particularly important as readers don’t want to be ‘sold’ to but expect the brands they associate with to enhance their experience with useful resources, which is exactly where infographics come in to play.
At 72Point we always aim to target our infographics to specific audiences to make the graphic as captivating as possible in order to catch the eye of other audiences.
Research by MIT, which conducted an extensive study on the way the human brain processes visual information, revealed that poorly designed infographics are useless to the brain, no matter how interesting they are.
As users demand more special interest content that is in bitesize format and easily digestible the need to keep up with methods of presenting ideas will increasingly become mission-critical.
Get in touch to see how we can help you today, and to follow 72Point’s new Snapchat channel, please see @ThisIs72Point.
GDPR inbox avalanche
Sun Consumer Writer Jane Hamilton on why the avalanche of GDPR emails is nothing compared to a journalists' average day...
BURIED under an avalanche of GDPR emails? How many do you reckon you’ve received? 100? 250? More than 500? Well that’s fewer than an average morning’s in-box worth for a national news journalist.
The forthcoming data-rules change has unleashed a deluge of emails on ordinary Brits causing ‘in-box rage’ and mass deletions - but this is something us journalists deal with every single day.
While the emailed press release remains a useful tool in the PR armoury, public relations firms are always stunned - and a little shocked - when I reveal just how many we journalists actually receive.
As a national hack writing on issues covering consumer to careers and parenting to property, my ‘beat’ sees from 400 to over 1,000 releases drop in relentlessly each day. And on a ‘calendar occasion’ such as Black Friday or a Bank Holiday, this escalates to an out of control level, topping the 2,000 mark.
When you consider an eight-hour working day contains just 480 minutes, you don’t have to be a maths whiz to work out there’s no time to read them all.
And don’t get me started on follow-up calls - I really don’t need 1,000 of those a day.
Instead - and in common with almost every other journalist I know - we skim, select ones from our key contacts, or seek out the top-line tales which look like they will work.
It hasn’t always been this way. Even five years ago, in-boxes were manageable; we had time to spend with key contacts and agencies, and were able to spend more time crafting exclusives.
But staff cutbacks and the demand for rolling online content means every journo now needs to pen more stories in less time. And interestingly, fewer hacks has meant more PRs - and more releases - as ex-wordsmiths swap careers and head to the darkside.
Recent figures revealed since 2013, the number of PRs has risen by 50 per cent, while the number of journalists has fallen by nine per cent. This trend will only continue, so how can we manage it so it works for both sides?
Firstly, however grumpy a journo is, most of us do need - and even rely - on PRs. A good PR who understands your readers and your ‘patch’ is a very valued contact. Aim to be that PR who we will answer the phone to.
Secondly, a release has got to be what the publication wants - not what the client wants. It has to be a ‘new news’ story to entertain and inform a readership or viewer.
Thirdly, If the client wants it a certain way and won’t bend, remember YOU are the expert. If the client could do it himself, he would and save paying you. He can’t, so work on him until he takes your advice. Client won’t budge? Then he needs an advert, not PR.
Fourthly, craft it like a news story. Help me out and give me the ‘who, what, why, where and when’ it the top paragraph. Don’t give me the client’s company mission statement.
Finally, you may have the best release in the world, but if it gets missed, it won’t get in. With in-boxes clogged, sadly it does happen. Targeting and delivery is everything, so aim to build a relationship with your key journos so we open whatever you send. Or use a purpose-built delivery agency like 72Point who guarantee to get your story under the nose of news editors.
I hope this has helped and I’m happy to chat further with you if you’d like to talk more. Just put in the email subject line that it’s an important one for me to read!
Trust, Transparency and Traditional Media
Why these are the top takeaways for brands right now
Although the advent of digital news was supposed to – and to some extent has – heralded an end to the finite number of pages that once restricted the profession, it has also given birth to new challenges as brands go in search of meaningful metrics in a landscape where the demand for column inches has seldom been so great.
Last month a new readership measurement standard for the news publishing industry was launched to give a single, “de-duplicated” view across all platforms to publishers and advertisers.
Compared to the NRS, which is a print-focused survey with digital figures taken in addition, Pamco offers a breakdown by platform across print, phone (mobile), tablet and desktop, giving a “total brand reach” that is more robust than the measurements used to date which are subject to generous interpretation and easily corrupted by cookies and bots.
As NMA chairman David Dinsmore said, the measurement keeps news brands in “top position when it comes to transparency” in an age when the measurement of some media is “highly questionable”.
The results of the survey will make for daunting reading for some, because at their heart they show a renewed reliance from consumers on traditional publishers. The Sun was revealed to be the most read news brand in the UK, followed by the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror, all of which boast more than 25 million monthly readers.
It means that an increasing number of brands will consider the success of a campaign based on its ability to make a splash in the national press, but with a tsunami of content blocking the way a splash can easily become a drip if due care isn’t taken, which can be a hard pill to swallow after countless hours of creative work and client liaisons.
Which is why we include national media exposure as a guarantee with all our packages at 72Point. Thanks to our heritage as part of the SWNS Media Group and our ability to work content so that it has mainstream media appeal we have an unrivalled money-back pledge on our projects, which is underpinned by our confidence in our creative.
We are compelled by design to put integrity at the heart of everything we do, as our content is used by the vast majority of national publications, making up for a significant percentage of “front of the book” stories. We don’t publish overtly branded stories and have to pass rigorous controls carried out by news editors to get the story filed, and the media trust us as a result.
But we would be nothing if it was not for the ingenuity of the team to deliver content that works across publications and across channels. 72Point is made up of top flight media experts and PR professionals who make up an enviable hub of creativity. We have former print news editors, a current online news editor and a range of ex-media talent that ensures we deliver projects that are stitched up from both sides, with the best creative being delivered with unrivalled access to the media.
It’s a combination that couldn’t be more apt in today’s media environment. According to this year’s State of the Media survey by Cision, which polled 1,355 journalists from across six countries on their perceptions of the media and communications industries, journalists rely on public relations partners now more than ever, with the traditional press release being the most trusted piece of content.
In an age where budgets are thin and brands are increasingly being relied on to fund content generation, the results are hardly surprising. Out of all the issues the industry is facing, 28 per cent of the journalists surveyed said staffing and resources were the biggest challenges in the industry over the last 12 months.
But before we start popping the champagne corks it is worth considering what this actually means for the PR industry. For a start, this isn’t a call to start bombarding hacks with every piece of ill-conceived content you can get your hands on. It doesn’t mean we should pick up the phone every two minutes and busy the already chaotic desks with more queries. Rather, we should pick out the warnings in this report to unveil where we can really make a difference, and at the top of the list for journalists is sending stories with a “clearly stated news hook” and content that’s “accurate, newsworthy and can be used to enhance their coverage”.
As a result of renewed scrutiny of the sea of content that surrounds us - successful PR needs a more robust benchmark. The smoke and mirrors of digital reach is no longer giving brands the ROI they need. Trusted content in trusted media outlets is what's important now as brands demand more transparency with their campaigns. This is our USP, and it is why, increasingly, 72Point is been seen as a direct line to the news desk.
The Art of Keeping Things Simple
We all know it - simple is best. It is a cross-industry fact that the most successful businessmen and women, musicians, sports people, journalists, media companies and indeed Meerkat comparison sites all have one thing in common; They focus on doing the simple things well. I myself have had countless debates and full blown arguments with friends on what is the main stumbling block for creatives, and we always agree that it often boils down to an urge to make things unnecessarily complex. And the same can be said for pretty much any profession.
On JOE’s recent podcast interview with Eric Cantona, the iconic former Manchester United footballer said; “Simplicity is the most difficult thing, like in football, the most difficult thing is to score a goal when 11 players touch the ball once and the last one puts the ball in the back of the net, so simple but so difficult.” What he’s implying is that simplicity is difficult to obtain and harder to maintain, but that’s where the creative and productive energy lies, not in over-complicating things to the point of losing their essence but in bringing them back to basics.
Musicians have echoed his thoughts, stating that the biggest hits have come from the simplest of writing processes, rather than almost trying too hard to create an obscure piece of art that, again, will not engage the average listener. Oasis’s Noel Gallagher, speaking to Evening Standard on the smash success of his debut solo album As You Were, had this to say on the matter; “It’s been mega. It’s not curing cancer. but there’s an appetite for a good album. The world moves so f***ing fast and everyone’s trying to reinvent the f***ing wheel. I’m not interested — the wheel’s alright.” It’s a typically honest observation from one of the most recognisable and successful figures in modern British music.
Film is another industry to suffer from over-complexity with more and more producers losing key audiences due to their commitment to creating works of art that are just so convoluted that they only appeal to a finite number of people. Anyone who had the misfortune of watching The Cloverfield Paradox earlier this year will know what I mean.
Unfortunately, in the increasingly tech-dominant media world we live in, the art of keeping things simple can also fall by the wayside amongst a myriad of complex techniques thought up to maximise reach to a target audience. Which is why here at 72Point, we let the content and coverage speak for itself.
Cision’s state of the media report indicates that if there’s one thing PR professionals can do to help journalists do their jobs better it is to ensure that any press releases they do send out have a clearly stated news hook. That was something 45 per cent of respondents said when asked how press releases can be more efficient. Writing conversationally is also important, as 27 per cent indicated that they dislike press releases that feel templated and include jargon. More simple quotes and multimedia elements would help, too.
An effective press release is creative and intriguing but for it to convey a message then it has to be simple enough for people to understand - something that is often forgotten in the PR industry. Toiling over creative briefs for weeks-on-end searching for the most complex idea wastes time and energy and often results in a solution that misses the mark because it’s far too convoluted to engage the general public.
It stands to reason that key messaging of clients could be potentially lost amongst a sea of confusing copy in a press release. At 72Point, our brilliant creative team craft stories with a dedication to simplicity, knowing that it’s what journalists want, and the results speak for themselves, with 5,269 pieces of coverage and 635,297 social shares in 2017 alone. When you know you have a winning formula, why over-complicate it?
Why a strong content base should be part of your marketing strategy
Traditional marketing is becoming less effective by the day. Instead of simply pitching your services and products to potential clients, the way to achieve vital cut-through now is to provide them with truly relevant and useful content that gives them actionable insight.
The Content Marketing Institute’s annual research reveals that the vast majority of marketers are including content marketing as part of their strategy. They state that there are three key benefits for any enterprise that utilises content marketing, which include increased sales, cost savings and better customers who have more loyalty.
These are absolute no-brainers as to why content marketing should be a key aspect of your strategy. At the end of the day, marketing is impossible without quality, engaging content, so if you devise a strong content base to your overarching strategy then all aspects will greatly benefit.
Social Media, SEO, PR, PPC and inbound marketing are just some of the strategies that can be boosted by utilising clever content marketing. Using a diverse range of rich media serves to keep your customers engaged and grabs their attention instantly.
Infographics, videos, embeddable quizzes, animations and images are all methods in which you can provide customers with relevant high-quality content that can improve their loyalty to you and boost your brand exposure.
Here at 72Point, our in-house design team provide a comprehensive content marketing offering.
We worked in collaboration with Freuds on their social campaign for NHS England, putting together a number of assets including several animated GIF’s, static graphics and a short animation. This provided NHS with great content that was posted across their Twitter channels, and by various other health organisations - raising awareness of the services available via NHS111 and delivering the key messaging of their campaign in a creative way.
The team also crafted an animation for The Department of Culture, Media and Sport as part of their ‘free wifi’ campaign, which saw over 1,000 public buildings in cities across the UK transformed into free wifi hotspots, supporting their larger #BuildingBritain campaign. The package included a 45 second animation and a GIF of the final sequence. As well as this, we supported the campaign by providing social media graphics to be used by public organisations, raising awareness of the campaign.
Our infographics are divided into five different pieces, meaning that they can be posted out at different times across different social channels, providing clients with plenty of longevity on their campaigns, whilst our animations are perfectly tailored for social in length and design.
Whether you are looking for a high-quality social project to maximise your brand exposure (take a look at our breakthrough package here), or a clever piece of visual content to embed on your website or post across your social channels, 72Point should be your one-stop shop for all content marketing needs.