This summer, I took my auntie to a horticultural show, specifically to see the show gardens. There were plants, shrubs and trees from all over the world, stunningly arranged to convey different themes and ideas. They had all been assembled in a matter of days to great effect. Many of them won prizes and industry accolades.
The vast majority of the flora at these shows is grown for a specific garden and is carefully cultivated to be at its best at a certain date. This means the designers usually sell off the gardens’ contents to punters at the end of the show, rather than create a very expensive compost heap somewhere near the city ring road.
We picked up some beauties, but as they sat on our patio waiting for an available planting space, one of them started to look decidedly peaky. A glorious Helenium, which had been a major focal point of one of the winning show gardens, began to droop, with its leaves and flowers flopping dramatically.
Standing in a bucket of rainwater overnight revived it, but this was a short-term solution. As we removed the Helenium from its pot to plant out in the garden, we realised the problem immediately.
The roots were poorly formed, to the extent that they were not able to sustain the plant. Despite looking fantastic on top, and performing well in the show garden, it was unable to do “its job” outside a controlled environment.
Over the next few days, when it rained, the Helenium looked radiant, but under the sunshine it wilted and faded. It was on the compost heap by mid-July.
What a shame for the plant, what a waste of money for us and what a missed opportunity for a better overall outcome.
With proper roots, the plant may have become the centrepiece of our garden, from which insects, birds and all manner of other ecological wonder could have benefitted.
The roots would also have helped the rest of the garden’s ecosystem pull together and weather the storms, droughts and other extreme events visited upon it every year.
Instead, it looked fantastic for a few days, only to be useless beyond that one specific event.
Believe it or not, when we approach content, it helps to have this type of episode in mind. As an agency, with a wide spectrum of clients, we see the huge amount of time, effort and resource that goes into a report, article series, or survey to deliver one specific objective. This objective has usually been selected through many internal conversations or from the desire to seize on a particular zeitgeist or theme.
However, once published, the content is often then destined for the compost heap of a webpage or one-off client newsletter without considering how it might be developed, expanded upon, or used in future.
In many cases, the hours of interviews, data collection and analysis, not to mention the cost of compliance, legal and production to get it published, is forgotten, while the “designers” move on to the next crowd-wowing “garden”.
As content is not transactional – something I’ll cover in the next issue of Financial Promoter – the piece or campaign can then sit and wilt, without ever making a real impact other than to the marketing budget.
Usually, we see this happen when the idea for a piece of content is conceived without mapping it across broader campaigns, messaging or key themes. Although some pieces may have one specific objective, it’s rare that financial services projects don’t all knit together nicely.
With a bit of thought and strategic planning, pretty much all content can be part of a broad and deep marketing and sales push.
From the shortest article through to a vast and varied survey; a two-minute video snippet to a 3,000-word white paper, it all should be designed and created with the aim of being planted and thriving within the broader ecosystem of a campaign or company strategy.
Content must be anchored to your beliefs, mission, overall values and objectives, along with the one specific cause it is destined to shine a light upon.
Spending a bit of time developing the idea, its connection and place within your wider marketing landscape should equip your content with the proper roots it needs to offer the long-lasting and consistent impact you want.
Elizabeth Pfeuti is Chief Client Officer of Rhotic Media.