The 25th World Advertising Forum in Washington, D.C. ran alongside the World News Congress. Fred Hurkmans, commercial and marketing director at NewsMaster, Belgium, and Zohar Dayan, co-founder and CEO of Wibbitz, US, took the stage to talk about efforts to improve the impact of advertising, reports Jessica Martinez.
Hurkmans discussed whether it is possible to integrate marketing content and media branding, while Dayan described how his company automatically creates short videos from texts, and how that creates advertising opportunities. Moderator was Alexis Johann, managing director, Styria digital one, Austria.
Tips on building great content
Hurkmans asserted that generating quality content and focusing on media branding may have its challenges, but it is possible. A few things need to happen first, he said.
“Stop hard selling. Stop shouting to the world that you are the best and strongest, and stop putting your logo on everything that moves,” said Hurkmans.
Instead, he suggested that building brands and aiming for customer service satisfaction is the way to go. He also noted that great content is generated when clients are placed “in the middle of the game,” while emphasising that marketers should not underestimate their audience.
“The brand is the most important asset, but to have great content, you should show authenticity,” said Hurkmans. “It’s the only way to get personality of your brand and integrity.”
In most companies, copy writers are usually supposed to write content, but, Hurkmans says, neither they or community managers should be in charge of what gets written.
“Great content cannot be improvised. You need journalistic excellence,” said Hurkmans. “You need an editor in chief and journalists for their expertise and in-depth analysis.”
Challenges in implementing content strategies within media brands
Hurkmans has dealt with several challenges during his time as commercial and marketing director. One challenge is assuring that content marketers and editorial teams at a news brand work together so they do not cross boundaries.
Another challenge is when sales teams deal with shifting budgets, especially in the age of native advertising. In addition, he said a major challenge is how advertising agencies react when faced to “fuel content they don’t possess.” The solution is to build bridges with media planning and advertising agencies and to plug content activity into their business.
Generating video automatically
Wibbitz turns text stories into video for publishers through an automatic process that takes 5 to 10 seconds per text.
Publishers drop one line of code on their site and Wibbitz takes care of the rest. Each publisher then gets an embed code and credentials to log-in to the Wibbitz control room, giving them editorial control of the video if they want.
“Everybody wants more video inventory today, and you can monetise it more efficiently,” said Dayan. “By 2017, the digital video advertising market is expected to be 15 percent of ad spending online, which is a 43.5 percent year-over-year growth.”
Jessica Martinez is communications project co-ordinator at the Newspaper Association of America. This post was first published by WAN-IFRA.
IMAGE: James Neiss
