Day one of Content Marketing World was a great mix of catching up with old friends, making new ones and of course, great content. On the BtoB track I sat in on a session including speakers with two different presentations from SAS and Intel. Since they were so different, I split them into 2 posts. This is part two of that session.
Speaker: Pam Didner @pdidner Global Integrated Marketing Manager, Intel
Presentation: Intel Inside Out: How to Globalize Your Editorial Planning
Pam’s presentation covered her journey over the past year and a half to “try” and globalize Intel’s editorial planning.
Intel’s 2011 Marketing Objectives and Strategy:
– Objective: Increase Intel’s brand relevance
– The Hero (Product): Intel Core Processors (i3, i5, i7)
– Audience: IT Managers
– Communications Strategy: Signal business advantages, Stimulate interests, Engage with IT.
The challenge is engagement, because Intel is an ingredient brand. Consumers cannot touch or feel their product directly, so how is Intel supposed to engage? Intel promotes with new product launches but afterwards, their promotion machine “goes dark” – no engagement.
Social and Search are rewriting the rules of audience engagement.
A Scalable Editorial Planning Process
The Holy Grail: Tight collaboration between HQ (Corporate Marketing) and the Geo (Geo is how Intel defines areas of business in other parts of the world)
1. Prioritize countries and topics (HQ w/geo feedback)
2. Finalize editorial timeline (HQ)
3. Create Geo editorial collatoral (HQ + Geo)
4a. Create topics marketing kit (HQ)
4b. Craft engagement plan (Geo)
5. Share engagement results (Geo)
6. Refine Editorial Planning, Marketing Kit (HQ w/geo feedback)
Once you develop a list of topics, you can consolidate, especially at a higher level.
Global Editorial Calendar:
Planned topics, Product launches
Geos should have the discretion at to which topics they want to focus on.
Real-time marketing is great, but planning is also very important. At Intel, the Global Editorial Calendar is established 6 months in advance.
Who owns content, Headquarters or Geographies? The answer is, “it depends”. For a small company, it might make more sense for the Geo to control content. For a big company like Intel, HQ needs to drive content, but with Geo collaboration.
Topic Maketing Kit
– What’s the Intel story? What does Intel have to say about the topic? (Legal approved)
Geos can take that story, copy and paste as they need to.
– Messaging and positioning: Long and short form, sound bites
– Search terms – what are the search phrases relevant and popular to the topic?
– A list of content pieces – Case studies, webinar, social media conversation guide
The kit is pretty comprehensive for the Geo it’s created for.
HQ creates the top level content but the Geos are responsible for localizing and marketing execution.
Topic Marketing Kit is the Hub, surrounded by engagement tactics: Search Optimization, Targeted Ads, Public Realtions, Landing Pages, Local Marketing, Direct Marketing, Co-Marketing
Key Learnings from Intel:
– There’s a long lead time necessary for producing a Topic Marketing Kit (12-14 weeks). Three topics is ideal.
– Get up and personal with all Geos. There need to be clear roles and responsibilities between HQ and the Geos
– Content is King and creative is the Queen. That means storytelling with simple creative that is headline driven. If you use people shots, understand you’ll need to customize for the region. Try to create compelling content that does not require a lot of customization.
The Geo’s job is to create an implementation plan and to execute, measure results.
Challenges:
– Getting Geos to customize content is difficult.
– How do you scale an editorial board to 5 geos? For U.S. the editorial board is working, but getting it to scale globally is not – yet.
– The marketing kit takes 12-14 weeks, so good luck with “real-time” marketing. When PR monitors social media and reaches out in certain situations, that’s real time marketing. But for marketing to monitor for opportunities and to react in a global fashion, it’s a lot more difficult.
These were some great Global or International Content Marketing insights from Pam. I think this is a huge area of growth as content marketing becomes a bigger part of mainstream online marketing in international markets.
Pam showed her quick wit and sense of humor when the projector showed double images, her reaction was that this was a 3D presentation and that we should have brought our 3D glasses. 🙂 Great job Pam!
