DAY 4
MORNING
The Last Event.
The final ever session of Content Fest 2013 was a great success and an absolutely wonderful ending to a great week! We had a talk from four very experienced content experts; Rebecca Denton from Rockabox, Ross Brown from Accelerated Intelligence, James Brown- the founder of Sabotage Times Magazine and Nick Price, the Head of Content (content King!) at Havas Media UK. A very qualified and wise bunch!
James was a bit of a talker, so we learnt a lot about what him and the team do at Sabotage Times. Described by James as a ‘traditional mag, but online’, the publication has been successful in reaching a total of 800,000 unique visitors per month- and here’s the awesome part- they have done this without ANY advertising whatsoever! They rely on peer-to-peer distribution only, where their loyal fans are perpetually generating great content on their own. The loyal following create so much buzz around the ST that all new visitors are coming due to word of mouth recommendations or social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Their contributors are from all walks of life and can be any age, gender or background, as long as their writing is good!
Rebecca kept it rather more brief. She has worked for 14 years in the industry and just like founder Torie Chilcott, comes from a background in television. She described Rockabox as a video delivery system that includes a huge amount of interactivity for the user, promoting interesting and proactive content that can be taken into the future of media and branding. We had a session earlier in the week- see DAY 2 for details!
Ross Brown from Accelerated Intelligence Publishing has previously worked on magazines such as Project Magazine, Time Out Dubai and Shortlist Magazine, as well as being the editor-in-chief of Britain’s favourite lad’s mag, FHM. He has also had experience in the digital spheres at Virgin Digital Publishing. AI is a global agency that comprises of some of the most respected editors, writers, art directors, stylists, web- designers and photographers in the media today. As an example, they have just celebrated 40 years of working with the James Bond franchise. In simple terms, AI convert publications into iPad mags but they do provide both content and print. According to Ross, everything begins with a good content strategy!
Nick Price from Havas Media UK works with brands such as Sky, Nationwide and East Coast Trains for which they have designed and produced content in the form of mini series’, YouTube videos and other digital products that would usually screen on TV. Thu future is the internet and specifically, social networking platforms! Havas Media UK bring brands together- for example, they bring a magazine together with a potential client. Both have their own identity, so it’s up to Havas Media UK to see if they gel and can work together with a shared identity. Most importantly, however, is the fact that they work to produce CREDIBLE content- which means they have to prove themselves!
Thanks so much to everyone who has been following the blog this week, and not to mention all the great people that made Content Fest possible, including Ariel King and Sabrina Francis!
See you next year!
Camilla Burchill