We have been creating and producing content before it was the new cool in advertising. A lot of us grew up in radio, TV, film and on the stand-up stage... so it’s been a natural evolution of 3rdspace to select and work with natural born storytellers. Even our Head of Business has a degree in drama.

A lot of the work has been created and directed by Gary Eck, a guy who I spotted doing stand-up 20 years ago in Canberra and gave him a gig writing for my breakfast show. Gary and I reconnected in the early days of 3rdspace, when he was writing and co-directing Happy Feet 2 with George Miller.

We got him involved in a few briefs and what blew me away was his ability to spot a true human insight and build an idea off it that would fit with our content strategy.

My gut tells me it’s because people like Gary and our other writer/directors don’t take a brief and then Google what everyone else has done within the category for inspiration. They think about it as if they were the customer of the brand and tap into their observations of life.

If you think about stand-up comedy, it’s observational, raw and the humour comes from people seeing a bit of themselves in the story… that’s successful content.

Rob Logan started his career in radio which took him to head of content and marketing at 2dayFM for a decade, before moving to TV and then founding 3rdspace – The Content Company

Recently I got into a bit of a debate on LinkedIn with a very experienced strategist about how purpose was a cop out for brands.

The debate went like a little like this:

We see purpose as why a brand exists, and indeed how it adds value to people’s lives, but it doesn’t mean that purpose or the supporting content strategy needs to be all about a cause.

Disney has been built on a purpose of “making people happy.” The team at Boost Juice, whom we worked with for years in the early days of 3rdspace (now they are so good at content they do it all in house), are another business who just ‘get it’ with their purpose: “To make you feel just that little bit better.”

That’s why we always start with the brand purpose, as how brands can align their content with not only the values of consumers, but how consumers love to live their lives.

If you have a fun brand, your purpose should drive to a goal such as making you feel just that little bit better through every interaction with the brand, including your content.

We’ve built a strategic process and framework that has worked time and time again to elevate brand scores quickly and most importantly, provoke involvement and action from consumers… it’s what we call a content mission, which we’d be very happy to share with anyone who is interested.

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Rob Logan is founder and head of content @ 3rdspace – The Content Company

It often feels as though in many categories, brands tend to serve up the same content as their competitors and then wonder why the content doesn’t cut through.

When we set out to define a content mission for our clients we spend time looking at the competitive set and sometimes even ask the client to name the brands behind the content….it’s rare that they will pick them correctly.

To cut through, content needs to have the consumer at the heart and be built around strong insights and brand truths, but also there are always opportunities to disrupt what the pack is doing and cut through with hero content campaigns that don’t look like or take the same narrative as your competitors.

It also seems that the higher the price point the less risk adverse brands are:

Jewellery – great looking model or celebrity with a piece from the brand.

Cars – highlight the car in aspirational location or escaping with the family, beautiful exterior shots, internal shots showing the instrumentation and cut to the driver and or family enjoying the experience.

 That’s why we love this new piece of work from The Wieden+Kennedy team in Tokyo, who decided to leave the car clichés in the bin with their latest campaign for Audi Japan. Instead of they opted for an approach that tunes into emotion and headspace – leaving shots of the A7 Sportback and A8 till the final seconds of the two spots.

And of course, travel:

Panoramic destination shot, authentic experiences and people slightly more aspirational than me enjoying the experience.

Even when it is a must from the client to have some of these attributes, we relish the opportunity to make the content more relatable and not same same.

Recently with Avalon Cruises in a campaign that included TV and a range of content we flipped the thinking to tell the story n the insight that kids don’t believe that their parents could ever be up for having a good time…

We extended the story with personalised film and content to travel agents, asking the agents to help the kids with their homework, and even sent them lunch boxes to make the kids lunch.

 The result was Avalon got noticed above and beyond the pack, travel agents engaged in there hundreds through the microsite and a closed Facebook page and sales went up by over 25% year on year.

 Yes, we got the obligatory experiences in there, but by looking for a strong insight and telling the story from a fresh perspective, cost effectively gave the brand higher impact.

I’m not saying marketing in Australia is backward, but sometimes I wish brands would think about content differently.

It’s getting better, but when we first started 3rdspace, content was the poor toothless cousin kept in the back shed until the strategy had been dressed up and brought out on display and the ad campaign with its 80% multiple in media had enjoyed all the attention.

A good content strategy aligns very tightly to the brand architecture/DNA from purpose to attributes, values and tone of voice,

A good content strategy has a 1-3 year mission to engage and involve consumers to interact with the brand and take action, including sharing their details with it and purchasing.

A good content strategy aligns to the brand purpose and takes into account all the brand is doing from the inside out, through to partnerships, sponsorships and promotions.

A good content strategy is a 3 year view that has evolving story arcs that should evolve with the market place, how consumers see the brand and the culture/country it lives in.

So why not get onto the content strategy as soon as the business has defined the brand architecture?

It will allow you to:

• Start thinking about the stories you want to tell
• Develop hero content led campaigns that can be tested for engagement, and if resonating strongly refined and taken into traditional media channels.

So get your content out of the back shed and onto centre stage, where it will do your business a world of good.

Rob Logan is the founder and head of content at 3rdspace