In 1983 Theodore Levitt, a professor at the Harvard Business School, published an article titled “The Globalization of Markets.” In it, he advocated a new approach to achieving marketing economies of scale. As new technologies extended the reach of global media distribution, the world was shrinking. As a result, Levitt argued, consumer tastes everywhere were converging, creating global markets and the ability to standardize products and advertising on a previously unimagined scale. Globalization was behind the extensive consolidation of the ad industry. In 1985, no agency on Madison Avenue accounted for more than 2% of global ad spending. Since then, just 5 of giant conglomerates, like WPP or Omnicom, each acquired hundreds of individual agencies, which now account for more than two-thirds of global advertising between them. However, the consolidation resulted in diseconomies of scale. The era of Big Ideas turned out to be slow and expensive. It was wasteful and centered on just a few creative assets that take a long time to produce. This model doesn’t fare well in the age of digital transformation and social media. Growth of advertising is slightly above 1% in the U.S., well below GDP, and shareholder return is under water. In the new multi-platform ecosystem, brands need a lot more content but have less money. For marketers, that means an emphasis on more cost-effective content. Ideas are still very important, but marketing is evolving and it’s not about a single big idea anymore. The new content framework is hyper-targeted and aims for customized and personalized messaging. It incorporates scalable data and analytics and focuses on lifetime value, all the while keeping an eye on the sales funnel and being on the lookout for new and unexpected ways to offer customers an authentic experience. What separates digital content marketing from traditional marketing is its focus on creating experiences that engage customers, rather than “hard-selling” outright. Content marketing is central to digital transformation in that it permeates almost every aspect of the business, from social media to website development and everything else in between. Rather than airing a single big, expensive idea, content marketing is about many, often thousands, of small-scale ideas. These are real-time, always-on campaigns and reflect the context of the channel they’re being distributed on. Content is continually A/B tested and adjusted and constantly optimized against all of the different channels. As marketers are attempting to take back control of first-party data and curb expenses and they are in-housing more work. While the significance of the Big Idea, integrated with digital content, is undeniable, clients reject the price tag and complexity associated with it. The hottest “next big things” on Madison Avenue right now are global digital content creators like Stink Studios and MediaMonks (which was acquire by Sir Martin Sorrell’s new venture, S4 Capital, for $350 million last year). These creative technologists specialize in digital and integrated advertising assets, create movies, websites, design, games, experiences and strategy. They are fast and cheap, with a flat structure that minimizes their overhead, and the work is stunning. MediaMonks was founded in 2001 by Wesley ter Haar as a digital design boutique in Holland and has since cemented its place at the top of the global advertising creative community, creating digital experiences for brands in 12 offices across the globe with a staff of 1000. Their list of clients includes Adidas, Amazon, GE, Google, Hyundai, JAB, Johnson & Johnson, Netflix, 3G and Weber. Stink Studios, founded by music journalist Mark Pytlic, is smaller – 150 people in 7 international offices. It won the first ever Cannes Lions Film Grand Prix for a piece of interactive work for Philips ‘Carousel’ within months of their opening in 2009. Since then, it has built up a client list that includes Google, Adidas, Alibaba, Ray-Ban, and WeTransfer, among many others. As marketers are becoming more ambitious about creating content for more technologically sophisticated channels, their need to ramp up skills, hire the right resources, budget effectively, and plan for the future will become more complex. The next logical step for digital content creators is to consider a platform distribution strategy. This will help clients save money, accelerate execution time, improve insights and reduce complexity. These distribution platforms will provide better data and qualified links, improve testing capacity, short-cut outreach efforts, increase creativity and agency performance overall. Madison Avenue has stopped adapting. It mastered early technologies like radio and TV, but it failed in the digital ecosystem, sticking instead to a dated model. Technology is changing everything. From creation to distribution to consumption, tech is forcing brands to rethink how they use content, and the legacy agencies are losing that battle to technologically driven, faster, cheaper and yet uncompromisingly creative digital content agencies.
Creation of experiences that engage customers is what separates digital content marketing from traditional marketing. The key to creating a successful experience for your customer base lies in the creation and execution of an engaging experience. almost every aspect of the business and is key to digital transformation. Global digital content creators such as Stink Studios and MediaMonks are the “next big things” in the industry. They specialise in digital and integrated advertising assets and create a stunning content in a range of formats quickly and cheaply.