Marketing Australia – February-March 2019

marketingmag.com.au

58 INTERVIEW

How did you fi nd the pivot to
a content landscape suddenly
fl ooded with social media
platforms?
It’s funny, clients really struggle with
change. Usually clients control this
very, very small part of the pie, so
when things start to change, there
are all these human dynamics that
come into play.
One of my earliest memories
of coming from non-marketing into
marketing was how brands were
trying to fi gure out Twitter from
a compliance perspective. They
were literally sending spreadsheets
around to the legal team, to the PR
team, the marketing team, the brand
team – all for 140 characters. Just
logically from a resource perspective
it really made no sense – but that
still exists today.
Even if you think about how
executives used to pick a TV
commercial: the agency would
come in and show three slots, then
on their gut [the executives] would
pick the one that best resonated
with them. That process doesn’t
translate into digital because you’ve
got hundreds of pieces of content,
so it’s a completely different format.
But it’s a good thing because it

creates a huge opportunity for new

companies. Whenever there’s a

change, there’s tension, and that’s

just open space for companies like

Flashstock to start and thrive.

We launched in 2014 with a

couple of employees and a few

clients, bootstrapped. 2016 was

our banner year. We grew from 15

people to 80 people. It started to

become a little more mainstream

to have different ways to create

content. Brands were a little more

open to going outside of the agency

domain. In 2017 I met with the

Shutterstock team. All our stuff

was custom, all Shutterstock’s stuff

was pre-shot stock, so it became

this interesting opportunity and

Shutterstock said, ‘Hey, do you

want to come join us?’ and we

decided to do so.

Was it a natural transition from

Flashstock to Shutterstock

Custom?

It was pretty straightforward.

[The transition] was a little hard

for our clients because the

people who are heavy users of

stock are usually the practitioners,

whereas the people who understand

the value proposition of cheaper,

faster, better content are usually a

little more senior in the organisation

• so it wasn’t a direct synergy
  towards the stakeholders. It was a
  bit of a challenge.

Why is consistency so important

in branded content?

First of all, if you’re seeing

inconsistent messaging, from a

recall perspective it becomes

really challenging. If you’re a

consumer it’s just hard to follow

and because of that friction you’re

going to have less impact. Whereas,

if you have a consistent look and

feel and a consistent message, that

makes sense in terms of the value

that you bring to the market; it’s

easier for consumers to understand

and comprehend.

Regardless of whether it’s

Instagram, a website or print

collateral – it just makes it easier

to have an impact and create that

incremental value from a marketer’s

perspective.

The challenge is: when you’re

going from a few pieces of content

on a few channels to many on

many channels, there are just

more stakeholders involved. In that

case, consistency becomes hard to

enable across your organisation. If

you’re working with 15 creators and

multiple agencies, you really have to

invest quite a lot of time.

Are there elements of branding

that you fi nd are interchangeable

and augmentable and elements

of content that are not – that

have to remain consistent no

matter what?

It’s up to the brand. I see it as

quite different. Depending on the

background of the stakeholder, the

type of brand, it can really go either

way. We’ve had relationships with

clients in the FMCG space where

they are so regimented on every

single pixel and if it deviates from

that, forget it.

Change of leadership, same

brand, same budget, completely

reversed, complete and utter

fl exibility. I think people are realising

that performance is ultimately

the driver. Whenever you add

more constraints it drives up the

complexity and the cost.

MARKETING 2019

You see

it a lot with

fi nancial services

companies; they

say, ‘We want to be

aspirational.’ What

does that mean

from a campaign

perspective?