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On our Duval Guillaume Modem seminar last friday, I presented the results of our research on organization structures to accommodate for content marketing and online conversations.

Changes in media consumption require changes in content creation and publishing

Many advertisers and even agencies still rely on campaign bursts: buying a big share of voice for a limited period of time. But in digital communication there is so much competition for attention that an advertiser cannot just buy attention alone. An advertiser must deserve attention. This can be achieved by offering valuable and relevant content to the audience and by deploying it on the right touch points (channels). This doesn’t work in bursts, it is a continuous exercise in gathering content, turning it into relevant stories, adapting the format to the touchpoint in mind, publishing it and maintaining the conversation.

An excellent example of content marketing is the Dutch retail chain Albert Heijn. They publish high quality content on food, wine, household tips and utilities such as shopping aids on paper, web, mobile and social platforms. Another classical example in the FMCG market is Starbucks. Starbucks publishes a lot of content and stories about social responsibility on the web and social media. Content marketing also exists in the B2B market. McKinsey Quarterly for example is an on- and offline business magazine of McKinsey & Company.

Albert Heijn's publishes content on all sorts of digital platforms

Content marketing governance

Many companies realize that they need to think in terms of continuous content creation and publishing, but don’t know how to set up their organization structure and processes (content marketing governance) to accommodate for this change. Little research has been done in this field and Duval Guillaume Modem started with explorative research on this subject.

Our research focussed on a number of aspects related to content marketing governance:

• Hivemindedness: the degree to which content creation and publishing is an individual business as opposed to a company wide effort
• Organization structure: who coordinates the process, ranging from complete freedom to complete control or somewhere in between
• Barriers to content marketing
• The role of the advertising agency

Hivemindedness

Hivemindedness is the degree to which content creation and publishing is an individual business as opposed to a company wide effort. We asked the companies in our survey to rate their hivemindedness:

• Minimal: Mostly an individual initiative with minimal investment and little interest from within the organization.
• Slight: Few people involved with very small investment. Not really a lot of interest from within the company.
• Moderate: Several people involved and reasonable investment. There is some interest from within the company.
• Considerable: A lot of people involved combined with considerable investment. There is a high level of interest within the company.

The results show that there is at least awareness by a small number of people within the organizations. In 40% of the responding companies there is a moderate to considerable degree of hivemindedness.

Organization structure

We asked the companies in our survey to choose between 4 organization models.

• Tire: Complete freedom. Each department, group or individual within the company can create and publish their own content. Channels can also be chosen freely.
• Tower: Complete control. 1 person or team is responsible for online communication. Other departments, groups or individuals are not allowed to publish online content.
• Hub and spoke geared to internal efficiency: Various departments, groups and/or individuals can create and publish their own online content and select the appropriate channels. However, before being published online the content has to pass through one or more central hubs. The hub has both a controlling and a facilitating function. This system is optimized for maximum efficiency in internal operations.
• Hub and spoke geared to external realities: The organization structure is the same a the model above, but the process is slightly different. This system is geared to external realities, that means that the process is adapted depending on the external stakeholders involved. For example different departments or specialists may be involved depending on the content or the target audience.

The blue bars indicate the current organization model while the red bars indicate the desired model. Having an idealistic view on the internet as being a self-regulating haven for freedom of speech, my initial thought was that companies would evolve from towers (complete control) to tires (complete freedom) but the results show that the most immature companies are actually tires and that the most mature companies deploy a hub and spokes model geared to their stakeholders.
This is not only reflected in the fact that 60% of the respondents would like to move towards a hub and spokes model, we also found evidence in the barriers (next paragraph) and in how companies who act as references in content marketing are organized (such as Starbucks, Toyota, Dell): people throughout the organization are stimulated to create content and a small team of content/conversation managers will publish it and respond to reactions.

Barriers

We asked the companies in our survey which of two barriers they faced:

• Fear of losing control over publications issued by various departments
• Lack of understanding and/or interest from top management

We mapped the results on the organization models and found out that the tires (complete freedom) were having the most fear and the hub and spokes the least. The fact that the hub and spokes model is able to deal with its barriers better shows that this model is more mature than the others.

The role of the agency

Finally we asked the companies what tasks they want to give to their advertising agency in the content marketing process.

The respondents were less likely to source content production to their agency. The majority would rather use their agency as a monitoring body for content published by the company and user generated content and even more as a consultant for designing the content management structure, selecting the appropriate channels and selecting the appropriate content.

These results support the vision of Duval Guillaume Modem that digital agencies are evolving from web builders over content producers to creators of platforms that create value in the long term. The agency’s role is to create and deploy content marketing platforms and to hand them over to clients after the start-up stage. While content creation and publishing is performed by the advertiser, the agency’s role is to monitor, measure and improve the platform on a continuous basis.

Summary

• Changing behavior in media consumption requires brands to sell content rather than products or services. Advertisers must become publishers.
• Know why: advertisers must offer valuable and relevant content
• Know how: advertisers must choose the right channels, the right format, the right frequency
• To support this, advertisers need content marketing governance. The most mature organizations have:
  • Involvement from the top to stress the importance and supply the necessary resources
  • Involvement from the bottom to generate content
  • Supporting organization structure: hub and spokes model
  • Supporting processes to engage with the audience: publish + listen

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