'70% of content made today doesn’t drive business results'

Dentsu Singapore’s creative director, Jatinder Sandhu, and head of strategy, Udara Withana took to the stage on day one at Spikes Asia 2018 to deliver ‘four steps to creating purposeful content and why it matters’.

Withana kicked things off by asking whether brands are guilty of feeding the content monster. He explained, “As brands grow, there are different needs for content. Right from impressing investors to showcasing employees and creating content for Mother’s Day and other days. 70 per cent of content made today doesn’t drive business results.”

He followed this with an explanation of how Dentsu Singapore works with brands to create content across the consumer purchase journey before delivering the four key elements to create a winning content strategy.

Hard-sell vs building a brand tribe

Withana claimed that a brand can build a tribe by understanding its audience and finding out what its motivation could be.

Sandhu explained what Dentsu did for Canon with a case study.

“Canon had a problem that people were using their phone cameras instead of purchasing new ones. Handheld cameras were becoming a little obsolete. The insight we worked with was that people follow their passions and not products. The big idea we developed was that we worked on smaller target groups and had personal communication. We focused on fashion for the youth and used Instagram Stories to roll out short videos. We didn’t talk about the product. We spoke about passions of the people.”   

Isolation vs collaboration

Withana explained that he and his team learnt this the long way. “Brands can share certain properties by collaboration. We had to work on a campaign for ‘Land Transport Authority of Singapore’. The whole nation was complaining about it.”

LTA partnered with Canon to showcase pictures of its workers on the job.

Sandhu added, “If a train is late by a minute, people take to social media to complain. The insight was that no one trusts what the government says about LTA. The big idea was a message by real people for the people of Singapore.”

Descriptive vs entertaining

The head of strategy for Dentsu Singapore then explained the power of entertainment. He said, “We always remember things that entertain us. That holds true for digital ads also.”

The case study he shared for this was a campaign the agency created for Subway. “We had to sell real Aussie beef in the land of chicken-rice.”

Sandhu explained how the agency went ahead with the communication. “Singaporeans’ love for authentic flavours wasn’t associated with Subway. We had to dramatise the effect of real Aussie Beef.”

Announcing vs telling a story

The fourth point the duo put forward was about the importance of telling a story. Withana said, “Clients often say that they want to announce a product to the world. But, we need to tell a story instead.”

The case to support this point was what Dentsu conceptualised for CarouPay (a payment app in Singapore).

Sandhu added, “The insight we worked on was about not telling them how technically great it is, but how it will make the life of people better.”