The new demands on creative content in 2018

While we might feel envious initially, we’re usually more grateful for the inspiration above all else.

It gives us cause to push boundaries and test our limits with each different project.

This year has been no different.

As a team, we pride ourselves on our creative approach – developing an intelligent understanding of the client’s target audience.

The way in which consumers engage with online content is changing all the time. It feels like 2018 has already seen something of an evolution in content marketing.

But first, let’s wind the clock back three years...

Creative projects in 2015

This was a landmark year for creative projects at Latitude.

One of our clients, L&C Mortgages set us a challenge. They wanted us to make mortgages interesting to first-time buyers, with a standalone creative piece. The outcome would be one of our most decorated creative campaigns ever – Game of Loans.

Playing on the major fandom element of Game of Thrones - and tying this in with the topic of mortgages – we were able to produce an original piece of content that resonated with an extremely active online audience, hitting all of the KPIs required for the client to get the best possible ROI.

And yes, it did win awards.

Not bad for what some people might call a ‘simple infographic’.

But, would this type of format still be as successful had we done something similar for 2018?

This crossed our minds when we first began working on another creative project for L&C Mortgages this year – an in-depth analysis of the video game housing market.

Creative projects in 2018

There are a number of things that have disrupted the content marketing landscape over the last year.

This has meant that our approach to this type of work needed to change somewhat in order to satisfy the same goals.

Visually Appealing Content

Before the latest L&C project was even a thing – the same question was asked.

How do we make the topic of mortgages interesting enough to generate links and social engagements, while still relating to the first-time buyer audience?

Applying the same principles, in terms of building an understanding of the client’s end user, we soon discovered that there was a crossover between two types of personas – the first-time buyers of today, and the gamers of yesterday.

However, establishing the right audience for this project was just the tip of the iceberg.

The visual standards and complexity of build seems to have risen dramatically since 2015. In order to stand out – we knew that this particular project had to look even better than Game of Loans.

Back then, static pages had more appeal. Today, there needs to be a level of interactivity and value exchange that transcends the ‘just a nice-looking page’ approach.

Mobile-first content

This obviously goes hand-in hand with how the page is built.

When you set out to create an immersive visual landing page environment – it’s easy to get caught up in the complexity.

With the video game property project, we decided to actually build it for mobile first from the outset.

In fact, this was a key criteria point that needed to be met when we first began qualifying different concepts. People are consuming branded content via mobile more than ever.

Why would this be any different?

Data-driven content

If the 2018 BuzzSumo Content Trends Report is anything to go by, content engagement on social platforms has halved since 2015.

Facebook’s algorithm change has made it increasingly more difficult to make the impact you want to make via social.

Therefore, we knew we needed to think even harder about what would make our subject matter compelling enough to interest webmasters and journalists.

The project is all about the various costs of property in the respective video game world, and each world has its own currency. The real news story here though, is that we took this – and created our very own currency conversion data, based on the cost of items in the real world versus the virtual gaming worlds.

Making something that looks cool isn’t enough anymore. You need to have more of an enchanting story to tell – and captivating data can definitely help that along.

Daniel Wright, creative executive, Latitude