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PACE – The Future of Content

If you’re familiar with Angry Creative, you might know we run a marketing technology event each quarter called PACE. If you’re not, here’s a quick intro…

Hosted by Dave Savage of the Tech-Talks podcast, PACE is a mini ‘Martech’ conference, currently held at Ace Hotel in Shoreditch, London. The format is short and sweet, just over 3 hours of talks, networking and lively debate, finishing off with drinks and panoramic views from the rooftop bar.

This time around we focused on the topic of content, or to be precise ‘The Future of Content’. Our incredible line up included 4 speakers, each from a different industry background, all with the pursuit of quality content in common. With temperatures in London in the high twenties, it was a perfect day to get out of the office and enjoy the talks.

First up, Gina Roughan from Zone Digital. Gina opened the conference with a quick look at the ‘Age of the Customer’, beyond manufacturing, distribution and information, the age of the customer is all about competing in the CX race.

‘89% of companies believe CX is their primary basis for differentiation against the competition’

Later Gina talked about the 3 key areas of CX, namely Data, Technology and Creative, and how they come together to provide structure for personalisation. Gina’s talk also included a model for ‘Opportunities in data inspire and inform creativity’ and an ‘iterative creation process’.

Following Gina, we had a great talk from Dmitry Shishkin at Culture Trip. Interestingly Dmitry quickly touched upon an approach to personas, that we at Angry Creative believe to be true, that is ‘mindsets’ over demographics. Dmitry and his team have come to realise the Culture Trip audience comprises of 4 mindsets, none of which ‘want to be a tourist’. They are all looking to experience their travels in the most authentic way possible, so it’s no surprise the Culture Trip content strategy reflects that thinking.

We prioritise user needs and bring together content and tech to solve them in the most creative and inspiring ways we can.’ 

At the heart of their content is creativity and an understanding of the user journey, from the point of ‘no plans’ to ‘inspiration’ through to creating an agenda and the actual trip. Matched to well chosen channels and touch points, Culture Trip have created an inbound content funnel tailored to their specific audience.

Inbound Marketing funnel

Follow this link for Dmitry’s slides.

Next, Gay Flashman from Formative Content. After a strong argument based around fake news and lack of trust in Government and Media associations, Gay talked about the opportunity to better connect with our audience and develop owned media around topics of personal interest. Gay went on to show how quality content from professional journalists with industry knowledge, has returned amazing results for the World Economic Forum. When challenged from the audience about whether this approach is outdated, Gay was insistent on there being to shortcut to good content, and that agencies like Formative Content will always have a place in our industry.

Last to take the stage, our own David Lockie. As if we weren’t scared enough, David took us through some AI/augmented reality scenarios, that whilst almost inevitable, were enough to make us think twice about how we should control our own content. One mind-blowing statistic stuck out around YouTube’s next video algorithm, being an example of one piece of AI running 25% of all mobile traffic!

One of David’s final slides took us through a content delivery model, showing how WordPress fits amongst other free and proprietary tools, to create a cycle of content creation, distribution and analysis.

Content delivery cycle

Follow this link for David’s slides.

Overall the tone of this months PACE event pointed towards using a structured process that included user data to inspire the creative. Almost every speaker presented a model with a cycle of sorts. The key message being, listen to users, understand their behaviours and give them what they crave; inspiration, empathy and quality content.

Finally, congratulations to Emina Demiri-Watson, Marketing Manager at Advice Cloud, for winning the best tweet on the day, an Echo Dot is on its way!