Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović
There’s a conference in the Adriatic region different from almost all the others. It’s the POMP Forum – an international content marketing conference organized annually by PM, Poslovni mediji, in Ljubljana.
A random meeting at Weekend Media Festival with Primož Inkret, founder of PM, Poslovni mediji, and Urban Pfeifer, the leader of advanced technology development at the same company, resulted in the discussions before you, that might help you decide to do a last minute registration for POMP. The conference is held on September 27. Find out why you should visit it below.
Media Marketing: What is Content Marketing?
Primož Inkret: Content marketing is a new story everyone is talking about today. But is this really a new story? Because content has always existed. What is new is the philosophy that does not say that Content is against the classic media and that it will replace them. The pieces simply fit in differently, and now they demand a different kind of reaction. Digitalisation has changed access to your potential customers. Now, we have a second phase in which technology is strongly merging with Content. Urban Pfeifer is our head of development of advanced technologies, and now we are building the technology center for our entire group (C3 PM Tech Hub) in Slovenia. At this year’s POMP we will show for the first time how content and technology are united because one cannot do without the other. We simply no longer believe in content that is placed somewhere and just distributed. That’s too little. Our industry has matured, and when that happens, you have a lot of individual content available, so there is a flood of content, so average quality is established. Technology introduces changes in business models, introduces new ways of thinking, new products. Marketing is no longer just a brief on which you will create an idea. Marketing, if we look at it more broadly, is communication from the very creation of products and services, and here the content and technological part are obligatory.
Media Marketing: What does Content marketing mean for advertisers, the clients? Is it a different way of communication, more honest, more true…?
Primož Inkret: Communication is much more honest, because that’s the only way it can be. When we have a lot of media available we wonder if we should use programmatic, Facebook or Instagram and finally realize that the only thing that can set us apart from others is content. Everything else is just an infrastructure that is accessible to everyone, easier and faster than ever before, and the only thing that we use to differentiate ourselves is the content we transmit. We can optimize the lease of media, but content is what makes the difference. You can invest 10 and get 50 or 100, but there is a minimum, and if you don’t invest that minimum, then it is better not to invest anything.
Content creation is a tough job. The amount of information we have to process is increasing, and from the standpoint of the invested time, it means more work than just making a slogan and shooting photos that need to convey a message. Development and technology are also complex processes and both must be strategically designed. If you’re late for something, there’s simply no making up for it, because then you have a process that will not bring you to quality and results. What you’re doing is not in line with the sales process which results in mistakes that are very difficult to fix.
Media Marketing: What is the role of technology in this marriage with content?
Urban Pfeifer: Technology can primarily make it easier and quicker to reach your target group. If you only have content without technology, or technology without content, it doesn’t work. Tech in Content can help you visualize some things, or, if we talk about chatbots or about artificial intelligence, it must have content, otherwise it doesn’t work, it means nothing. Technology allows you to analyze more information faster.
Media Marketing: Is that relationship of content and technology the biggest exclusive that POMP offers this year, or does the program contain some other important things?
Primož Inkret: There will be plenty of talk about trends and other interesting content in the program. From Ireland comes Mikey Mooguire who created the news portal Wunderground for DJ music. He makes fake news, but doesn’t make up things. He imply turns what he hears into news. He was doing that when I met him, but it wasn’t working out, until once he made a fake news about David Guetta, the world famous DJ. Guetta then made a mistake announcing that he would sue him, and all other portals and classic media reported on that. That was what boosted him. From one hundred clicks per day, he reached million plus. He made a business out of it. He still has Wunderground, it has become a trend, everyone knows about it and it is now entertainment, pure content in the flood of negative news. You read, you smile and move on. He is coming to the POMP Forum. It is interesting because what had started with Trump and with fake news now has an example of how fake news can work in communication. Analyst Rebeca Lieb from the US is also coming. She cooperates with all Fortune 500 companies and makes the analyses that she will now present at POMP, to show what successful companies are thinking about and where trends are moving. Michel Libens from Belgium, from one of the largest Content Marketing agencies in the world, is coming to share what practices they use, and to show us some campaigns. After all, they’re a bit ahead of us (or are they). These are good stories that can be used immediately.
Media Marketing: PM, Poslovni mediji are perhaps the leading Content marketing agency in the region. Do you see yourself as such?
Primož Inkret: Yes, I do believe we are leaders. Content marketing is not just content production, that’s the minimum. People usually think that content marketing is just production of content. Many will create some catalogue or a review where they will write content for social networks, or for a portal. This is not the story of Content marketing – Content is an entire philosophy. When you make good content and pack it through the tight technology, that’s the real Content Marketing. We have always being doing things like that.
Media Marketing: Do you have any good example of Content marketing to present to us?
Urban Pfeifer: Content marketing has to solve a problem. That’s all. It’s not enough to write and publish an article, if it wasn’t created based on thorough analysis, and if it’s not a part of a strategy that solves a problem.
Primož Inkret: Advertising agencies always first come to mind to advertisers. The biggest achievement of Content marketing is that these agencies are increasingly doing it, and that we are constantly listening about examples of good advertising practice at all festivals. The latest example from NIKE, and what they did, is an authentic story – there’s no acting, no faking, that’s the kind of Content marketing we do for all of our clients as well. We don’t deal with advertising, we use advertising formats in a different way. Perhaps the best expression of what we do is documentarism. Content marketing doesn’t make up stories, it reveals them. In Slovenia we are doing great projects for Triglav insurance that supports technology and transforms advertising into content. We can work that well only if the client accepts us as a partner. Content marketing cannot work if it will not last for a while. We are collaborating with Skoda Slovenia as well, where we have all the stages of preparation of content and technology for all the sales processes, and it continues even after we reach the buyer.
Media Marketing: What is your biggest problem today? People? Are there young people ready to enter these projects?
Primož Inkret: They are scarce. They are always scarce. There’s a great competition for good staff.
Urban Pfeifer: Today, if you are a good developer, you can work from your room for someone in the US and get a good monthly salary. Suddenly we faced a global market, in which you have to be better than Google or Facebook to attract someone, and that’s not so easy.
Another problem is that the development and agency are two different worlds, processes within development and agencies are totally contradictory and this is a problem. Nobody knows the one right way to put this together. I think we are doing that for the first time now, in a way that it is not disjointed and without forcing of some processes that for example are OK with the agency but aren’t OK for development. That doesn’t work.
Media Marketing: So what would be the short invitation to people to come to the POMP forum?
Primož Inkret: All those who want to go forward, all those who want to have new knowledge, should come to the POMP forum. We gathered people from all over the world. We have toured the conferences, and now we are bringing to Ljubljana all that was best from conferences all over the world, in order to hear the most current trends in a single day. That’s the highest value of the POMP forum. Content marketing doesn’t hide anything, but reveals everything, and that’s its advantage. Everyone who come will hear something new – they will learn and that’s our goal.