Why isn't our content working?

A client was lamenting recently that their content wasn’t delivering the kind of results they had hoped for. If anything, it had disappeared into the social media ether without so much as a whimper.

'What did we do wrong?', they asked.

So, we took a look. And it was a really well produced piece of content – slick, well-crafted and with a clear narrative. If it was a story in a newspaper or an article slipped into the news, you’d probably pay attention for the duration.

We went back to check what the original brief said and, hey-presto, all the boxes were ticked. Apart from one…

In the creative process, someone had failed to spot a classic mistake.

The objectives and measures included the line that the audience needed to ‘know this information’.

And that – as most of you know already – isn’t really an objective at all.

For those who didn’t know, let me explain.

If you’re in a hotel room, on the back of the door you’ll likely find a map of your nearest fire exit. On the surface, you might think that’s information you need to know. And it is, but the objective isn’t you knowing where the fire escape is. The objective is helping you escape quickly in the event of a fire. The hotel’s real objective is to keep you alive. And with this as the objective, you don't just get a notice on your door. You also get obvious 'Fire Exit' signs, emergency lighting, a policy that keeps corridors clear... I could go on.

Arriving at the real objective of any campaign is sometimes hard.

And the best way to arrive there is, very boringly, to keep asking questions until we arrive at what we really want our audience to do with the information.

It reminded me of a project we worked on a few years back to help a FTSE100 company create an employee roadshow to share the company’s strategy. But why on earth would Sally in packing and Ali in delivery need to know about the corporate strategy? What would we want them to know for? What would we expect them to do with that knowledge? ‘To be better engaged’ was the supposed objective – but how does knowing the company wants to 'improve its P/E ratio and expand into new markets' help Sally and Ali? What they want to know is ‘what do you want me to do about it?’ And the answer, of course, is nothing. We want you to keep doing your jobs to the best of your respective abilities, enjoy the work and help us improve as a company. And that’s a different brief/project altogether…

The common flaw?

We’ve convinced ourselves that communication is a ‘telling and knowing’ exercise. It isn’t. As we remind clients relentlessly, we’re in the causation business. If we’re communicating, it’s to cause something to happen or maybe even to stop it happening. We’re aiming to change perceptions, to create actions and reactions.

This is something that was drummed into me at my first agency, where the goal was normally to create a sale through the art of skilful creative persuasion. That art of persuading encouraged us to review all the causes for the current state of affairs before we could begin to create a compelling campaign with a measurable outcome.

Today, that kind of content is rare, because all too often no-one has stopped to ask ‘why’ frequently enough. Most likely they felt embarrassed to do so, because they assumed (like our client) everyone knew what a good outcome looked like.

Good content – like good advertising – isn’t about production values, or reach, or any of the immeasurable factors like ‘engagement’. Good content makes someone feel or do something for the creator. Why the audience might be moved to act, is the brief that good content creators and agencies – like ours – thrive on.

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