MediaCom: ‘Urgent need’ to connect clients and content

Brands should be investing in talent and content to reach consumers in the digital space, says Nick Cohen, managing partner and UK head of MediaCom Beyond Advertising.

Ahead of the CMA’s International Content Marketing summit on Wednesday, where Cohen will be speaking about the role content plays in strategy, the former multi-platform commissioner and executive producer of the BBC spoke exclusively to Newsline to discuss the current shape of the industry and which brands are keeping up.

“Content has become an increasingly important part of what all brands have to think about,” said Cohen, who joined MediaCom in 2011. “The way we look at media is [about seeing] a more connected series of different channels that all work together and in that world content becomes increasingly important.”

MediaCom became the first media agency to join the CMA last month, which Cohen said was a decision based upon the urgent need to build connections between clients and content as content becomes both an important channel and important form of communication.

In terms of getting content marketing right – an industry which is currently valued at £4 billion – Cohen spoke about brands engaging with talent, including Uncle Ben’s’ partnership with popular chef Jamie Oliver for his Food Tube channel on YouTube – which has almost 500,000 subscribers – in which the former Naked Chef began a search for the next cooking talent to join him online.

“Those sorts of opportunities where talent are going directly to an audience and setting up their own channels in the digital space provide a really interesting way for brands to get involved with people,” explained Cohen, who said that although digital runs through everything that MediaCom does, all forms of media are equally important when it comes to content marketing.

Earlier this year at MediaTel’s annual Video Upfronts event, it was revealed just how powerful the use of talent can be for brands, particularly with video blogging – or ‘vlogging’.

One popular vlogger, known as Zoella, did a Topshop haul and offered viewers the chance to win a £500 Topshop gift voucher, helping to secure a 40% ad click-through rate. The current average banner click-through rate is 0.1%.

However, the CMA’s managing director Clare Hill said that there is more to reaching digital consumers than just talent and content.

“It ultimately comes down to the essential story,” Hill explained. “In specialist content marketing everybody starts with a central story and then it’s a case of which channels to use to populate that story. If YouTube/vlogging works particularly well for that audience then so be it, but it really boils down to narrative.”

Hill said that this is often where a lot of brands go wrong and that they need to “reverse engineer” the way in which they look at traditional campaign planning.

“They’re looking at channels and saying to themselves that they need a viral video and not actually asking who it is they’re trying to reach and what it is they’re trying to do,” she said.

The biggest challenge that brands face as they move forward, says Hill, will be realising that they need to invest heavily upfront in the design and creation of campaigns before they think about where they’re spending the money for promotion.

“Brands will need to invest much more in their own original content […] I think we’ll see an increase in long-form content, such as the new Sainsbury’s ad, which shows how well-established brands are now able to rely on producing their own content.”