Who should be creating your content?

“Anybody can paint, very few should exhibit.” – Simon Daglish

This is one of the great quotes from a recent panel wrap-up on content creation and who should be responsible for it. Simon Daglish, Group Commercial Sales Director at ITV, explained how content seems to very easy to create, but not everyone can do it very well.

The panel asked the infamous question: who should be producing content?

Brands themselves? The creative agency? A content agency?

The response from panellists was pretty unanimous: brands need to work with content specialists if they are to see tangible results and a high-quality strategy in audience building.

Content is not the asset brands need, audience is what they need and a proper content strategy does just that.

The problem is that too often, a creative agency will work in short campaign bursts that will create a short-lived, unengaged audience. This has no value in the long run and does not serve the client.

We are at a place in the industry where we were some time ago with digital marketing. At first, creative agencies thought they could do it and they built internal digital departments. In the end, the experts won and we now have very large digital agencies that have integrated themselves in the marketing ecosystem. This is what is happening with content.

I was in a meeting with partners of a very large advertising agency last week and this is exactly in line with what they were saying: they try to do content internally, but in the end they are not specialists. They have a hard time with the creative process and with the measurement and reporting of how it performed.

This article, published over at Mediatel, is a great read if you want to know about the current state of agency thinking behind content marketing, content production and branded content.