Is Your Corporate Culture Conducive to Content Success?

What makes a company’s culture conducive to creating the passion-driven and participative content experiences today’s consumers crave? And what should content marketing leaders do to enable their teams to serve as agents of necessary change and creative innovation? Structure content teams for agility and collaboration In her Content Marketing World presentation, Kathy Klotz-Guest asserted that every culture (and team) can foster greater content creativity by thinking like an agile, collaborative startup. In a conversation with Marketing Week, M&S Marketing Director Nathan Ansell said the shift to an expertise-driven service model has made the brand better able to collaborate across teams, respond to customer needs on the fly, and ensure contextual relevance across its marketing channels. Read: M&S is Transforming its Marketing Team into Specialists Rather Than Generalists Keep team members empowered and focused A recent Forbes article explores the potential benefits of replacing the standard, top-down managerial structure most organizations have with an experimental, holacracy-like alternative called corporate liberation. Read: Give Your Team the Freedom to Do the Work They Think Matters Most Strengthen your marketing team’s growth potential Incorporating ongoing career education and training into your corporate culture can also help your teams improve the content experiences they create. A recent Adweek article points out that when learning and growth become part and parcel to an organization’s culture, teams are better equipped to adapt and respond to shifting consumer needs. Eager to learn more about how to create innovation connections with your audience? Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute Author: Jodi Harris Jodi Harris is the Director of Editorial Content & Curation at Content Marketing Institute. As a content strategy consultant, Jodi helps businesses evaluate their content needs and resources; build infrastructure and operations; and create compelling stories to be delivered across multiple media channels and platforms.

Author: Jodi Harris / Source: Content Marketing Institute

One of the most pervasive themes at this year’s Content Marketing World was the need for big changes in our industry. Digital marketing is always evolving, so it’s no surprise the 3,700 marketers in attendance would want to focus on the latest adjustments they should be making to their content strategies and tactics.

But one change featured prominently had little to do with upgrading to new techniques, sophisticated tools and technologies, or measuring and monetizing content’s impact. Rather, the dominant through line was the need to shift the marketing mindset to create a culture that promotes more innovative, responsive, and meaningful consumer connections.

Meet the new cultural imperative

Why is it critical for companies to rethink – and, perhaps, reconstruct – their cultural identities at this stage of the content marketing game? Well, for one thing, customers demand it.

For example, as consumers grow more empowered to discuss and support the causes that matter to them, they’re holding brands accountable for doing the same. Consider the passionate response to Nike’s latest Just Do It ad featuring Colin Kaepernick. No matter which side of the #TakeAKnee debate you take, chances are the campaign affected your perception of the Nike brand – and, perhaps, your willingness to purchase its products.

Was it a risky move? Sure. There are risks every time a brand takes a stance on a highly politicized cultural issue. But, for the record, the company’s decision to “walk the walk” by aligning its marketing message with its brand purpose seems to have paid off so far: Sales are up, and Nike’s stock valuation is, too.

Structure content teams for agility and collaboration

In her Content Marketing World presentation, Kathy Klotz-Guest asserted that every culture (and team) can foster greater content creativity by thinking like an agile, collaborative startup. What might that entail?

For U.K. retail brand Marks & Spencer it meant restructuring its marketing team to take a specialist rather than a generalist approach to all functional areas of the business. In a conversation with Marketing Week, M&S Marketing Director Nathan Ansell said the shift to an expertise-driven service model has made the brand better able to collaborate across teams, respond to customer needs on the fly, and ensure contextual relevance across its marketing channels. “There’s lots of test-and-learn activity, responding to what’s going on in and outside of the environment and how things change. So, it’s a much more agile and dynamic way of running marketing than we have done in the past,” Nathan explained.

Read: M&S is Transforming its Marketing Team into Specialists Rather Than Generalists