5 KEYS TO INTEGRATING CONTENT

5 KEYS TO INTEGRATING CONTENT

Across the last three weeks, we’ve looked in depth at integrated content, why one channel isn’t enough and the brands who are getting it spot on. In this blog, we summarise what we’ve learned, so if you’re a marketer trying to nail integrated campaigns, listen up.

1. Get around
The key to the integrated approach and the secret to gaining traction is simple – be present at multiple touchpoints. The most successful examples we included were on at least three different platforms, most on many more. It makes sense – if you’re all over TV and print but have no mention of your campaign on your website or social, you’ve got a weak link. Which brings us to point two.

2. Wherever you are, be consistent and seamless
Not being consistent is a guaranteed conversion killer. It’s the easiest way to destroy your brand story and it’s proven to leave consumers confused.
There’s also another element to consistency – seamless transition between platforms. This is where Net-A-Porter truly excelled with their move to print. Rather than simply creating a magazine, they took it to the next level, making a shoppable magazine that was completely integrated with the website.

3. Plan excellent executions for each platform
It’s true what they say, prior planning does prevent poor performance. But your content needs to be planned from the outset with the nuances and maximum impact of each platform in mind. In other words, you need to bring it. Everywhere.
There’s no better example than that penguin that took over Christmas. There wasn’t just a tear-jerking advert, there was a tightly executed assault across social, DOOH, print, PR and in-store. Wherever you happened across Monty, the detailed planning was obvious and the execution of content matched to platform was just as good – and the corresponding customer response was immense.

4. Tell a story
Why did five million people compare fictional meerkats? Because Aleksandr Orlov was the protagonist in a super-compelling story. The similarities between Aleksandr the meerkat and your favourite cartoon character was no accident – the campaign was planned as a layered narrative where every platform had its own unique role to play. The storytelling aspect also helps keep people interested and engaged in those downtimes between campaigns – even though people only need car insurance once a year, ComparetheMarket used the meerkat story cleverly to keep themselves front-of-mind all year long.

5. Be genuine on social
Of the brands we have featured over the past three weeks, there was a clear thread of commonality – their social activity was genuine. Rather than pointless broadcasts, these brands had real people responding in real time across social channels. For instance ASOS answer queries in their brand voice round the clock, while ComparetheMeerkat asks for feedback and embeds the response into future iterations of their campaigns.
This engagement is also totally integrated with the other activity – the tone of voice and the content are tightly executed and aligned with content on other media platforms. And it’s this kind of attention to detail that sets the integration superbrands apart.

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Outdoor digital displays are most often used for advertising purposes – but although this is hardly their first alternative purpose (city centre screens frequently broadcast weather information and high profile events) this new screen use is certainly one of the most thought- provoking.

Created by Rebecca Ross, MA Communication Design Course Leader at Central St Martins, the ‘London is Changing’ campaign aims to find out how economic and policy changes are affecting life in the city, as well as migration patterns. The London is Changing website invites Londoners and ex-Londoners to share their stories of moving in or out of the capital. For a week in February, digital displays in London shared the comments with the city.

The simple black and white creative was courtesy of designer Duarte Carrilho da Graça, and Rebecca also partnered with Outdoor Plus to display submitted messages on outdoor digital displays in Aldgate and Holborn.

Using digital display to facilitate conversation

This campaign is social by its nature, but with all the comments created by the community, it’s interesting that digital displays have been used to bring the conversation to a much wider audience. Rebecca said: “I wanted to frame a response to the socio-economic changes in London using this medium to try and facilitate a city-wide conversation about an issue that I think is on everyone’s minds but doesn’t always get studied or reported on in the right ways. I wanted to put it on the street at a large scale in a way that’s normally reserved for one-way corporate conversations.”

Thinking that this campaign could have been run entirely on social media? Actually, the juxtaposition of these bleak messages on a busy cityscape has brought attention that a social campaign alone wouldn’t have achieved. Rebecca admits this was her intention: “The digital technology afforded the opportunity to facilitate a city-wide dialogue and display the voices of individuals impacted at a monumental scale.”

Although there are no stats on the potential reach of the billboards, so far over 3,000 people have actively participated in the study, and over 800 tweets have been sent using the #londonischanging hashtag.

Keeping the conversation going

We’ve talked a lot about the importance of integrated campaigns, so it’s interesting to look at the impact of digital billboards for creating and sustaining interest in this campaign. Although social is often hailed as the future, we firmly believe that a mix of platforms is the key to successfully communicating a high-impact message.

The London is Changing campaign is ongoing for the remainder of 2015, but what’s interesting is that the digital display element has already completed. The adverts ran from 18th to the 25th February and almost immediately after the billboards stopped running, there was a sharp drop-off in social conversation. This analysis of tweets per day from Topsy shows the peak of the conversation during the middle of the billboard promotion, and a decline in interest ever since.


We’ll be keeping an eye on this campaign, and it will be interesting to see if the momentum continues without the impact of digital display.

The Operators Insight