Havas Media recently reported that 60% of content created by the world’s leading 1,500 brands is “just clutter,” defined as “poor, irrelevant or fails to deliver.”
This conclusion was part of their annual Meaningful Brands study, which measures outcomes for brands that form “meaningful” connections with consumers. However, Havas found a 71% correlation between brands that create meaningful content and business results.
“The results of the Meaningful Brands global study this year show that most brands are investing in content without thinking through carefully what the expectations and the role of content is for them and their industry.”
As content marketing matures, Mark Schaefer’s “Content Shock” hypothesis is proving itself out: “exponentially increasing volumes of content intersect our limited human capacity to consume it.”
Brands are churning out an increasing amount of content, much of it sticky, mobile optimized, and, yes, snackable. But many brands are falling into what P&G CMO Marc Pritchard describes as “the content crap trap.” We can’t break through the clutter by adding to it.
According to Maria Garrido at Havas Media Group:
“Brands get rose-tinted glasses about entertaining people and think that is all consumers want. What brands need to do is break down their content, take a step back and ask, for their industry, what the role of content is. Whether it is to inspire, educating, help, reward, inform or entertain then rank them and work out what is a ‘must have’, where the opportunities are and what they should not be focusing on at all.”
Here are a few related cartoons I’ve drawn over the last few years:
“Content Marketing Overload” March 2017
“Branded Content” November 2015
“Branded Content” August 2014
