Content Is King #TSOA – Edition 7

Posted by admin on November 6, 2019

In today’s day and age, a human being, on average, will be exposed to five thousand ads per day, in varying formats, from online ads on websites, physical billboards, to native ads and sponsored posts. Being bombarded by ads is now the new norm. It’s not surprising that such abuse by advertisers has created a perception issue for the industry; The vast majority of people simply do not like ads. Even with all the disdain towards ads, there are those ads that clearly stand out enough for us to remember, and recall upon, such as the Nikes’ Just Do It or Cokes’ Share a Coke ad. Some ads just stand out. So what makes a good ad? – The content, which all starts with the idea. In today’s edition of TSOA, we will break down the basics of static ad content. 

What Are We Trying to Solve; The Strategy

All ads start with an objective, which in most cases are part of a larger strategy or just a standalone ad. In today’s article, we are going to use the hypothetical example of “OilCorp”, a large oil and gas company that has an on-going perception issue of being a contributor to climate change, in response, its objective is to change its perception. This objective is now broken down into “content buckets” – content buckets are broad topics that serve the underlying strategic objective. In this example, OilCorp has had a few corporate social responsibility activities it undertakes a couple of times every year, such as purchasing carbon bonds, investing in green-tech and planting one million trees in a year. Using the raw content, OilCorp creates a broad range of buckets such as: “ Fueling the future: Green-Tech”, “Responsible Energy Creation; Carbon-bonds” and “Planting the Seeds of the Future”. From here individual posts are created using the content buckets.

The Meat and Bones; The Content

All content starts with an idea, and when combined with good copy and great design, convey a message very well.  Continuing from our hypothetical example from above, using the “Responsible Energy Creation” content bucket, we now can ideate on a post. The main factors in a post are the post copy, creative copy, post type, and creative ideation.

To keep it simple we will use a static post, with the following post copy ( Post copy is what accompanies a post ): Every Year OilCorp spends 30% of profits in purchasing Carbon bonds to help slow climate change. It would have a Creative Copy ( Creative copy is what is on the post ) that says: Climate Change Matters. Now the creative ideation ( What you would tell the designer ) would depict an image of a healthy planet. The combination of such produces something like the example below : ( I am not a designer and just used canva )

Every type of post usually is utility or emotion-driven, in the following example, you can see that this post leans more to the emotional side of the scale. This is very important to remember when considering your overall objective, narrative, brand positioning and more, to ensure you get the engagement you are looking for, and hopefully reach your strategic objective.

Keep it well rounded: a Holistic approach

Now the above example is a very simplistic approach and highlights the basics of what a content plan looks like. Keeping in mind that content will always be king and it all starts with the copy and design. But even good content can’t help you reach your goals if you plan is not well rounded or, only surface level. Other things to consider for a content plan and calendar are: The brand “feel” – the tonality of the brand, the design guidelines, color schemes, content types, brand positioning, typography and more. Once the content aspect is sorted, you then need to consider how your content will be distributed, or how you will reach your target audience, is it social media, magazines, billboards, or even in-app ads? The key takeaway here is that all good marketing campaigns have great content but are always accompanied by an equally good distribution and engagement plan.

The State Of Advertising is a weekly address that discusses the digital advertising landscape and the problems that lie within it, and how blockchain is helping to solve it. The weekly series is co-authored by Alex Libertas from the Daily Chain, and Reggie from Gath3r.