December 12, 2019
Belinda – What particular challenges are there in the Financial Services sector?
Christoph – The Financial Services Sector is rapidly changing due to many new market entrants from the financial technology side including the BigTech firms. As such, margins are under pressure and marketing spend is significantly under scrutiny. At the same time, financial services companies need to constantly demonstrate their evolving value proposition as well as their important role in the new environment which calls for very targeted and differentiated marketing activities.
Belinda – And what would you consider to be an essential component of a successful campaign in that sector?
Christoph – A successful marketing campaign in the financial service sector will show how added value was created for a distinct target group with identifiable benefits in addition to the commercial success of the campaign for the financial service company.
Belinda – What’s the biggest change you’ve seen in content marketing since the awards began five years ago?
Christoph – The digital channel explosion makes it increasingly harder for marketers to be everywhere where their clients are whilst managing limited staff- and budget resources.
Belinda – What do you think will be the biggest trend in content marketing in 2020?
Christoph – In B2B marketing, I see a growing trend for short digestible fact and insights- based information nuggets in form of podcasts, authentic videos (not studio produced) and short articles, all of which can be promoted easily through social sharing.
Belinda – Which new innovation do you think has the potential to have the greatest impact on the consumption of content marketing?
Christoph – Not necessarily new, but programmatic advertising helps drive contextual attention to matching content. Banner ads are dead – long live contextual banner ads.
Belinda – How can brands use content marketing to align themselves with particular values or topical issues?
Christoph – Successful content marketing is closest modelled to an in-person human interaction by being genuine, original, relevant, helpful and naturally aligned to the persona of a brand and its values. Trying to own topics that are in fashion but do not fit the brand persona dilute credibility of content marketing.
Belinda – Can you sum up the holy-grail of content-marketing in one sentence?
Christoph – Give more than you ask for in return
Belinda – What’s the key difference between targeting a domestic audience and an international one?
Christoph – The complexity grows exponentially and with it your need for partners who understand multi-market requirements.
Belinda – How can you measure the success of your partnerships during an international campaign?
Christoph – By agreeing key metrics and frequently holding whistle stops in order to adjust as necessary
Belinda – Why is benchmarking and celebrating great international advertising strategies essential for the success of the industry as a whole?
Christoph – The most important lessons for improving your own marketing are not learnt whilst sitting in the office but by engaging in a continued industry dialogue. Awards play an important role in showcasing industry best practise against defined criteria and judged by practitioners.
Belinda – What is your top tip for creating a winning entry?
Christoph – Mark Twain said: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead”. The same principle applies to good pitches as it is incredibly hard to condense vast amounts of facts and information into a short summary. However, it is worth doing this because it distils the very essence of the “Why is this pitch special” for the judges who read loads of entries. Data and facts speak volumes.
Christoph is a member of our Jury for the 2020 World Media Awards. To find out more about the awards and the criteria to enter, visit our How To Enter page.