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- This month in content #2 – November 2024
This month in content #2 – November 2024
A cake-fuelled distraction newsletter by Grist, a lesson in how to do subject matter content right by Relato, and more content examples to keep your ideas and inspiration flowing.
Tabitha Whiting
November 27, 2024
The content examples I've bookmarked for future inspiration this month are:
Grist’s election cake newsletter
Relato’s expert-fueled blog on failed content strategies
Ogilvyland by Serious People
Pinterest x Thingtesting gift guides
Pure adventure storytelling with Patagonia’s ambassadors
Octopus Energy leveraging social media for product development
Plus, if you’re keen for examples of subject matter expert driven content, head to the end of the newsletter for 10 great examples.
Grist is a nonprofit media outlet that exists to tell stories of climate solutions and a just future.
I’m a big fan of theirs and subscribe to several of their newsletters, including ‘Looking forward’ which is a beacon of positive news stories on climate solutions which hits my inbox every week.
This month, of course, included (a very tough) US election week.
Grist recognised that their climate-caring readers would likely be having a stressful week in the run up to the election.
So, instead of their regular format of climate news sharing, that week’s newsletter instead just shared a recipe in partnership with Caroline Saunders, for a bourbon-laced fruit cake.
It still had meaning and purpose (as with every piece of content Grist puts out).
The recipe was inspired by the centuries-old ‘election cakes’ in the US – which would have been made by women to serve to voters (at the time, white men only) on their way to vote, and were used as a way for women to try and win votes for the candidates and issued they supported.
Plus, the cake is climate action too, as Caroline points out in the recipe copy:
“The olive oil-based cake is also vegan, which makes each successive slice you inhale a tiny, defiant act for the climate, no matter what climate policies get written (or don’t) in the next presidential term.”
More than anything, it was an offer for a distraction in a week full of anxiety-induced waiting for results – a week where distractions turned out to be very much needed.
It’s always difficult to hit the right tone with business-as-usual content or marketing when there are major events happening externally, but Grist got this one bang on.
Relato’s expert-fueled blog on failed content strategies
There’s a ton of content out there today, and that’s only growing as AI makes it easier to churn out articles.
Much of it is bland – 5 brands covering the same topic in the same way in a game of leap-frog to try and reach position 1 for the target keyword at play.
Creating content that is led by expert input and viewpoints is one hugely effective way to cut through that noise and ensure that your content is truly valuable for the target audience.
And Relato hit the nail on the head with subject matter expert content this month, with a blog titled ‘Why content strategies fail’, authored by Rosanna Campbell.
It’s particularly strong because it’s a topic that feels vulnerable – everyone feels the pain of failure or a project not quite having the intended impact, but we’re more likely to bury that failed project and never talk about it again.
The blog is self-aware about tapping into a vulnerable space, opening like this:
“I didn’t think I’d be able to write this article.
I mean, come on. Getting B2B content leaders to open up about how they f*cked up? And not in a small, tactical way—but about the strategy behind the tactics?
Yeah…I was pretty sure nobody would talk to me about that. And then I’d fail spectacularly in my attempt to write an article about failure. How meta.”
It’s a great intro.
The blog then goes on to share experiences of content strategy failure and the lessons learnt from that failure, from Ryan Baum 🌱, Tommy Walker, Mary Scott Manning, Halah Flynn, M.S., Katie Norris, Penny Warnock ✨, and Ben Goodey.
These are 7 big shot names in the content marketing world, trusted content experts who you want to hear from. Their input adds authority and expertise to the article, instantly 10x-ing the value of the piece.
Ogilvyland by Serious People
If you didn’t see Ogilvyland this month, then you must be living under a rock (or maybe just existing in an online bubble that’s very different to my own).
Ogilvyland is a campaign by Serious People, calling out mammoth advertising agency Ogilvy for their ad work for oil and gas giants which only adds fuel to the vast profits those giants are able to make from the fossil fuel fire.
Serious People created a landing page (ogilvyland.com) promoting a fossil fuel funfair, with rides like ‘rising river rapids’ and ‘net zero slow-llercoaster’.
They then sent invites to some of Ogilvy’s biggest (non oil and gas) clients – aiming to bring awareness to those clients of the climate impact of Ogilvy, which could harm their own sustainability plans and credentials as a key supplier of theirs.
In an interview with ADWEEK, Serious People founder Oli Frost explained: “Our internal goal is do some reputational damage to Ogilvy” through “a celebration of the brave, warm world that Ogilvy’s clients are building.”
From where I’m sitting, it certainly seems like they’ve achieved that goal.
Ogilvyland has been all over my LinkedIn this month, receiving praise left, right, and centre for the creativity used to highlight the role of ad agencies in the success of the oil and gas sector – it’s certainly brought attention to the topic, and put pressure on Ogilvy.
The whole campaign was sparked by another of my favourite projects: Clean Creatives. Clean Creatives is a movement of advertisers and PR professionals committed to cutting ties with fossil fuel clients.
Each year they release the ‘F-list’, a list of the agencies who have profited through working with fossil fuel clients in the previous year.
Ogilvy is always on that list, and this year took first place for the agency with the most fossil fuel contracts in 2023-24, tied with McCann too.
In that same Adweek article, executive director of Clean Creatives, Duncan Meisel said:
“We’ve seen people use the F-List in all kinds of ways—as a screen in procurement, an informational tool for students, and more—but Ogilvyland is probably my favorite so far. Sometimes you just need to laugh at the absurdity of working for so many polluters while the world is overheating.”
I think that’s exactly why I love this campaign so much.
The whole thing feels like a big ‘fuck you’ to the system that allows fossil fuel companies to continue to rake in ridiculous amounts of profits from running the planet, and people with it, into the ground.
It sends a message that the creative world won’t stand by and let that happen without making noise about it, and that’s a message I’m well on board with.
Pinterest x Thingtesting gift guides
In the run up to the festive season, gift guides become a very common type of content in the B2B ecommerce world.
To stand out, you have to produce something pretty special.
And I reckon Thingtesting have cracked it.
Their gift guides are ‘oddly specific’.
Instead of the stereotypical ‘gifts for dads’ full of whisky and gardening equipment, and ‘gifts for sisters’ full of heart necklaces and bath bombs, Thingtesting has curated gift guides based on personas – the ‘fashionable foodie friend’, the ‘friend who won’t compromise on design and function’, the ‘gifts for someone who just had a baby’, and my personal favourite (because it’s me all over) ‘the cat-obsessed friend’.
The gift suggestions themselves are quality items, often from independent brands, that have been thoroughly tested and reviewed by the Thingtesting community.
The gift guides are also in collaboration with Pinterest, so every guide has a Pinterest board for users to browse more images and ideas.
I’m a big fan of a content collaboration to expand reach and value, and this is a great example.
For Thingtesting, it’s a great way to share their guides and products further by partnering with a big name social media platform. For Pinterest collaborating with a mission-focused company like Thingtesting that has a great reputation with its users, can only ever be beneficial for Pinterest’s own brand. It’s win-win.
Pure adventure storytelling with Patagonia’s ambassadors
Like with Relato, Patagonia makes great use of the power of human voices in brand content.
Patagonia has a whole host of ambassadors around the globe. Climbers, runners, surfers, etc, who use Patagonia gear for their adventures, increasing brand exposure and credibility.
Their ambassadors also share their adventures in written form for the Patagonia blog. I say blog, but they call it ‘stories’ and it truly is a treasure trove of stories about adventure and environmental activism – first person experiences that aren’t trying to sell you Patagonia in any shape or form.
I saw their most recent ambassador blog through their November newsletter.
It’s titled ‘beauty and the beast’ and is authored by Luka Krajnc, a mountainer based in Slovenia who is known for first ascents in rock climbing i.e. finding new routes that have never been climbed before.
The blog is a first person account of his recent project to set a new route on the north wall of the Rjavina mountain in Slovenia’s Julian Alps – one of the steepest walls in the mountain range, full of overhangs that make climbing tricky.
It tells the story of finding a viable path up the rock face over eighteen visits, weaving in a few childhood stories along the way, until the route is finally completed:
“We decided to name our route Lepotica in zver (Beauty and the Beast) which came from the feelings that arose in us while looking at the project from different sides. A beautiful experience that went beyond climbing, and a true beast from the amount of effort that was put into it.”
Every Patagonia blog is a great example of storytelling and filled with beautiful photography.
It’s a good reminder of the strength of using human stories to connect with an audience and build a brand.
Listen 👏 to 👏 your 👏 customers.
Not only is it the best way to understand their needs, but they also have some great ideas that can turn into valuable product features or marketing campaigns.
Octopus Energy had a great example of this this month – a customer made a suggestion on Twitter that, if they could, they’d love to donate excess energy generated through their solar panels to others struggling with energy bills.
The Octopus Energy team turned that into an option that Octopus export customers can now sign up to.
And they shared it on LinkedIn in the perfect way – a simple screenshot of Stuart’s original idea, with a post that acknowledges the relationship at play:
“Our customers have great ideas. Being close to them is how the coolest projects are born.”
It’s a great post for brand building.
It’s a meaningful project and it shows that Octopus Energy are listening to customers and responding to their feedback and ideas, positioning them as an energy provider that actually cares about people (and planet) in a sea of evil oil and gas companies.
It also subtly shares the message that people who have solar panels and use Octopus Energy will often have more solar energy than they need – which is enticing in a time of ridiculously high energy bills.
10 examples of subject matter expert content done right
Incorporating subject matter experts into content is a great way to ensure high-quality content that will actually hold valuable insights for your target audience. It's a sure-fire way to stand out from the crowd in the age of bland, undifferentiated content drafted by AI tools.
If you aren't sure how best to harness experts, take a look at these 10 examples of brands getting subject matter expert content right – from Lattice to Clay to Sylvera, and more.
That's it for this month – see you next time! 👋 ✨