DAY 3
MORNING
Outbrain
It’s Distribution Day here at Arena and time is flying by! Day 3 of ContentFest was kickstarted at 10 o’clock with Rachel Barber from the brands and agencies team at Outbrain, who focus on three main work principles: attract, enquire and engage. She started by showing us some work that Outbrain have done for Colgate- a simple webpage – and asked us to guess how many pieces of content there were on it. The closest guess was an outlandish 400… but Rachel surprised us with the information that it was actually a whopping 700 all crammed into one frame! The secret to Outbrain’s distribution success lies within their strategy to NOT push products, but to provide general day-to-day life tips, in RELATION to the products.
Next, Rachel walked us through the ‘Outbrain’s Handy Guide to Content Distribution’, which they had designed specifically for Arena and Content Fest! This included a very handy 5 Step Guide to a Foolproof Strategy:
o 1- Planning and Defining
o 2- Strategy and Ideas
o 3- Execution and Content Creation
o 4- Distribution and Amplification = Engagement
o 5- Measurement
Ultimately, we came up with a few ideas during a brainstorm for a hypothetical pitch for a new smartphone entering the market and came to the conclusion that social media platforms are a perfect way to provide lots of content that doesn’t directly push the product. An example of this could be an online mini-series. Alternatively, using personal platforms such a blogs is a great way to raise awareness!
In terms of the creation and distribution balance, it’s important that it lies around the 50/50 mark as usually, the importance of distribution is way overlooked. You can create absolutely amazing content, but if no one is seeing it then no one is sharing it and it will all be for nothing. Outbrain concentrate on a ‘search, social, discover’ policy which puts links for brands in front of new audiences through way of sharing- this allows algorithms to pick the content up.
All in all, Outbrain are replicating online what people do when they read the Sunday paper: they skin through and pick and choose what to read as is suits them- not everyone reads from cover to cover!
LUNCHTIME
eBuzzing
Today’s roadshow begun with a chat with the lovely French lads Arnaud Champetier and Quentin Le Pape from eBuzzing. Launched four years ago with merely 3 people on board as Beead and WeSpread, they have blossomed into a 250-strong, global group that operates at a very high technical level. Their plat de résistance is their range of 6 online animated advertising ‘tabs’- alternatives to banners, buzzwords and hyperlinks- that brands can buy and then use all over the web, and their clients include the likes of Kopparberg, Swiftcover, Domino’s and Leapfrog.
There is a common design between the variety of tabs in that they have a non-IAB format and a unique and very attractive feature is that clients are only charged cost per engagement. A countdown if the user hovers over the tab will open the content with video and animation after 5 seconds, but it doesn’t open a new window. The user remains on the same page that they were visiting originally.
As a result of their innovation, they direct 10% of webtraffic that visit the sites with that feature their tabs to the client sites!
Even more remarkable is that they can do multiple tabs on one web-page, such as one either side of the page in place of banner adverts. This is usually the case with fashion brands that have both a men and women’s range that they want to promote. As a result, the brand in question can monitor which is getting more web-traffic and which is overall more popular with online users.
AdMaxim
Next up were Tristan and Lee from AdMaxim, who specialise in content for mobiles and tablets only- and their reasoning behind it was flawless! According to a survey that they did, we are at least in indirect contact with our mobiles 80% of the day, whether it be at the office during work or when we’re at home lounging in front of the TV. 80% of the time, we are using our mobile devices for something.
AdMaxim’s clients through Arena include blinkbox, Domino’s and ESPN. They serve as a marketing platform for mobile and tablet to design and build rich media and interactive content and adverts. These are touchpoints for the consumer, whether they are websites, apps or games. Furthermore, AdMaxim can rather helpfully measure how much they engage with content! In their opinion, the content for mobile and tablet can actually be more innovative than on other mediums as they are, as mentioned, the central devices for pretty much everyone globally. According to Tristan, a lot of agencies shy away from focusing solely on mobile as they don’t quite understand the potential it has and that current content is rarely put on mobiles in the ‘right’ way.
Very generously of them, they designed an official Arena Media UK Content Fest game for mobile, in which two tickets to LOVEBOX festival in London can be won!
Collective
Lastly I chatted to the boys from Collective, a brand focused platform that has had a 4 year relationship with us here at Arena Media! They provide video on demand in large display formats and double MPVs- expandable rich media units. Their job is to ‘place content in premium environments’. Like eBuzzing, the operate a pay per use for collective products, which increases the user interaction as well as he dwell time on the content that they are working with. An example of this is their advert for Tesco Bank which resided on the Tesco site, but it instead looked like a game and was interactive. Ultimately, they take static content and transform it to make it more engaging across all formats.
What sets Collective apart is their distribution (theme of the day!) as they work with premium high street brands- ‘the cream of the crop’- including the IPC group, meaning they have access to Marie Claire, NME and Nuts- just to name a few! According to them, the environment of the content is just as important as the content itself. Hear hear!
AFTERNOON
Google/YouTube
Last session of the day was hosted by the lovely Tess from Google, who provided us with a totally different type of workshop- the most interactive one yet! We were treated to a YouTube workshop in 45 minutes that usually take two hours and in Tess’ words, it was a ‘whistle-stop tour of the YouTube basics’- essentially stuff that us folks in digital media agencies should be pros at!
The session begun with a brief tour around some various YouTube channels that made use of the cool features provided by the upload tool, and we mainly focused on the inclusion of annotations. To see a fun example of this, check out Jamie Oliver’s Food Tube channel and watch the introductory video! According to Tess, the interactivity of a video can pull in many more viewers as you can include hyperlinks and URLS that you can click onto, straight from inside the video. Neat! During the second half of the session, all of us were paired up, given a laptop and a camera, a ‘how-to’ task and a temporary YouTube account and were told that we had the grand totally of 15 minutes to record a how-to video in one take with the camera, upload it to YouTube at the add annotations. Olya and I were given ‘how to tie a tie’ as our task and off we went and recorded a 1 minute, ad-lib tutorial, on how NOT to tie a tie… not the brief I know but we did our best! All teams then rushed back, uploaded and we were all watched each others creations. Honestly, having compiled them in 15 minutes alone, we managed to learn and achieve such a lot in a short space of time! Thanks Tess for coming in and helping us out! (And for giving us cool prizes like the lego USB sticks…). A great end to Day 3 of Content Fest.
