When a calendar year comes to an end, it is a time to reflect on the past 12 months and prepare for the coming 12. As we look back on 2022, here are the 5 articles that resonated the most with our clients and audience.

Studying 2 great examples of content strategy (updated 2022)

As brands publish more and more content, as the number of potential platforms to distribute content multiply, content strategy is actually becoming more and more important for marketing executives. We saw this throughout the year with our clients, as the desire to differentiate, to bring more value to audiences and to tie costs with results (the infamous content ROI) became top-of-mind.

Great examples of branded content hubs

The work we did with multiple clients focused on building and optimizing strong content hubs. The need for distributing content on an owned platform is now essential to build audiences and cohorts as brands have to rely less and less on third-party data.

Private traffic: the future of email marketing in North America?

This subject piqued the curiosity of many people when we discussed an Andreessen Horowitz article that explained how Chinese brands are interacting in novel ways with their customers and audiences through “super-apps” (WeChat and now DoorDash are great examples). This type of interaction where the content experience can be extremely personalized is becoming the norm in Asia and North American brands should keep an eye out for these innovations.

Audience segmentation and content strategy… with blueberries

We mentioned it above, content strategy was at the core of marketing executives’ preoccupations, and audience strategy was never too far. How should a brand approach their audience segmentation? How much segmentation should we have in our content strategy? Those were questions that came up often in discussions with clients and at the agency, and Roger Martin’s article on the subject was spot on in describing the ins and outs of audience segmentation.

Storygathering, Storyshaping, Storytelling – A 3-part process to tell brand stories

Telling great brand stories, this is core to our production team’s daily work. Brands that act with purpose do have an advantage over the competition, and they need to tell this story as consumers are considering a brand’s posture more than ever when making buying decisions. This article outlined the governance process that we put in place with clients so that these stories that need to be told are known, produced and distributed to all.

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Struggling to get performance out of your content? If your content team is living through content chaos on a daily basis, schedule a quick call with us to discuss Content strategy and content operations. We can help you get all your ducks in a row.

As we wrap up the year, looking back at the dozens of articles we published and sent through our newsletter, we can only thank you for engaging with us, hoping that we did bring value to your work and your expertise, and that we can continue to interact in so many great ways in the coming year.

What is on your radar for 2023? Where do you think brand storytelling and content strategy are heading? We would love to spend time discussing these with you, so please do reach out, we are never too far!