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Pepsi Mondelez Content Marketing

Three obstacles brands must overcome to become content publishers

By Darren Woolley, founder and global CEO

July 18, 2016 | 5 min read

The fact that both Pepsico and Mondelez are developing content marketing strategies is not unexpected. Many major advertisers are facing the need to explore alternative strategies in the face of fragmented audiences in traditional media and ongoing concerns around digital advertising fraud and viewability.

pepsi content marketing

Content marketing is not a new strategy, in fact content is as old as advertising itself. It is just now technology and the internet have made it easier and more cost effective for brands and businesses to become publishers in their own right. This is a strategy that has previously been successfully and widely embraced by B2B marketers, as content can inform the purchase decision from consideration through to purchase.

But the B2C marketers have often been challenged in making content marketing work for them. Now companies like Pepsico and Mondelez are not only banking on content to overcome the issues they have with digital and traditional media for engaging an audience, but are looking to have the content become self-funding or even profit-making for the company.

But there are three key challenges we believe they need to address to do this and they are challenges facing most content marketers.

1. Aligning their content strategy to the business

For most businesses, and especially manufacturing businesses like Pepsico and Mondelez, they are in the business of making, distributing and selling products and their marketing investment is to support and drive this process. The transition of the marketing strategy from one that primarily focused on paid media for engaging audience to one that focused more on owned and earned media through content can be a significant philosophical shift for the business.

If the business is becoming a publisher for the purpose of generating owned media engagement with the relevant target audiences to sell the product to then it is an evolution of the marketing function. The investment in the marketing is to drive revenue and profits in the core manufacturing, profits and brands.

But what happens if the purpose of the content marketing strategy is actually to more broadly create owned media that attracts an audience so that it can be then capitalised to generate profits in its own right? Then the marketing function has become a business within a business and the question that will arise for the CEO and the board will be what business are we in? Is it the core manufacturing and sales business or is it the media publishing business or both?

2. Obtaining long-term commitments to funding

Unlike traditional paid media marketing campaigns, content marketing is a much longer-term process. There is a significant investment required in resources in the case of Pepsico building and funding its in-house Creator group and a primary investment in marketing dollars for Mondelez which is planning to partner with content creators externally.

In a consumer goods world where many are moving to a 'zero based budgeting' model for marketing, the return on that investment may not be seen within the 12 months of the budget period and a longer-term view of the return must be taken. The strategy also often requires engagement with stakeholders across the enterprise, especially sales and customer facing functions, who may have traditionally perceived the marketing function operate autonomously or at least without their direct input and engagement.

Even today, most sales focused organisations are impatient to wait for marketing to impact on sales over the longer term and still look to the paid media campaign to spike sales, rather then wait on a longer-term strategy of building their own audience through content and owned media.

3. Proving efficacy of the content strategy

For all content marketers, proving efficacy or direct return on investment is a challenge. It is especially complicated in organisations where both outbound paid media and inbound content strategies sit side by side as attribution becomes increasingly complex. Perhaps this is why B2B marketers find this less troublesome as often the organisation will embrace a total inbound strategy where all attribution is given to the content strategy.

But what happens if the measure of the content strategy is simply the ability to capitalise on the owned and earned media value? Then the profit centre becomes the marketing strategy and the purpose of the strategy could be simply to raise revenue and profit in its own right without supporting on contributing to sales, revenue and profit from the core business.

Would this content strategy still be considered a success if it became self-funding or profitable and sales and profit in the core manufacturing business fell through lack of effective marketing?

Don’t get me wrong, content marketing can be a very effective strategy for building business. But marketing is about creating and adding value to the core business. If that core business is not media publishing then is building and capitalising on value of an audience by selling to third parties still marketing? Or is this a separate business within a business?

Darren Woolley is founder and global CEO of TrinityP3

Pepsi Mondelez Content Marketing

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