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Content Creation with Sunny Naresh

Content creation is at the heart of marketing, feeding digital marketing strategies and driving brand awareness. When you break it down, without content, marketing is reduced to empty strategies that don’t go anywhere. Creating engaging content takes skill and experience, it also demands a strong understanding of target audiences and markets. Luckily for Dulux/AkzoNobel, Sunny Naresh is the right man for the job.

From the newsdesks of TODAY newspaper to the well-known stage of the brand that is AkzoNobel, Sunny has come a long way and built himself a strong, enviable career. With a background of sports journalism, social media, and content creation, he has the experience and the passion that all digital marketers need to truly make a difference. Join us for this issue of the Marketing Expert Series as Sunny takes us through his career and the experiences that brought him to where he is today.

Hi, Sunny, welcome to the Marketing Expert Series! Let’s start with some of the basics, can you tell us a bit about yourself? How did you get to where you are now?

I started my career in the newsroom of the TODAY newspaper and was assigned to the digital desk where I was part of the team that handled the website and social media platforms of the newspaper.

After spending four years there I felt it was time to move up the ranks and moved to Lagardere Sports, where I could combine my love for content creation with my love for sports and help our clients expand their digital footprint across Asia.

The move to AkzoNobel was a lateral one as I wanted to break out of the sports industry and gain some experience in the consumer goods sector so people could see me as a digital marketer instead of a sports marketer. I’m still doing what I love when it comes to content creation and the added challenge of being in an unfamiliar and competitive industry really drives me to improve myself and my contributions to the team.

How did you end up in this line of work? Was there something that drew you to it?

I’ve always enjoyed creating content and I’ve enjoyed writing from a very young age. My stories were published frequently in school publications and in university I worked as a freelance writer for sports websites, helped people tidy up their resumes and even wrote wedding speeches to help pay my way through school.

That love for writing helped me land a job in the newsroom and I worked with a great team who helped expand my skill set by teaching me how to shoot and edit video and photos, and how to share all sorts of content on websites and social media.

Those skills helped me evolve from a reporter to a content producer and eventually into a marketer. As I gain more experience I do less writing and editing and more presentation decks and media plans instead but that working knowledge has allowed me to be more understanding to partner agencies and also come up with more realistic production timelines for projects.

Right now you are the Digital Marketing Manager for Dulux/AkzoNobel. Can you tell us a little about your role and what it entails? What’s it like working for such a well-known brand as Digital Marketing Manager?

The focus of my role at AkzoNobel is customer engagement and my scope of work includes managing the social media platforms, overseeing the development of digital content and working with the media planning agency to ensure our campaigns are running smoothly and hitting all the KPIs.

It is a sole contributor role so I work with several agencies to carry out the operational tasks while I work on a more strategic level to chart the next phase of the company’s digital content offering and find out new partners and technologies which we can leverage on.

Working for a well-known brand has its perks and challenges. On the bright side you do have generous budgets to work with and this allows you to go that extra mile to ensure the content produced will work with the target audience. Testing digital content and data analytics are just some of the additional steps we’ve taken to quality-check our work. Bigger companies do tend to be more risk-averse when trying new content ideas but the testing and reports play a big part in the decision and approval process.

On your LinkedIn profile, you mention some of your job aspects in this position. For example, you talk about introducing YouTube optimisation, influencer marketing, centralised social media and brand-led digital media campaigns across eight markets in South East Asia. Is there a campaign or singular moment you are most proud of?

Definitely the roll-out of influencer marketing in AkzoNobel. We introduced this when the Covid-19 lockdowns were first announced around March or April last year and we wanted to maintain a brand presence online despite all our campaigns being put on hold and budgets slashed.

Thankfully it worked out brilliantly for us. We had a minimal budget to work with so we targeted micro-influencers in the home decor space and we were able to reach more people and generate more conversations than competitors despite having fewer pieces of content. The success of this trial led to other markets asking to be included in the programme, which has expanded to five markets now.

What are the biggest challenges you face when marketing to such diverse markets throughout the region?

When it comes to social media everyone has their own opinion on what works best and it can get difficult to convince them that how they use social media personally might not be the same way the rest of the world consumes media. Using data has been one of the most effective ways to get around this problem as it helps us take a more objective and results-driven view towards our social media and content strategy.

Another challenge is maintaining the balance between centralised, regional content and local content on social media. Having a standard content plan shared across several markets is efficient in maintaining brand integrity but there’s no doubt that content that’s created based on local trends is among the best performing content on social media.

We try to maintain an 80-20 ratio between the number of content pieces between regional and local content but the budget split for boosting that content is split 80-20 in favour of local content.

Before Dulux/AkzoNobel, you were the Digital Manager Lagadère Sports, and before that at MediaCorp as a digital producer/reporter. You’ve got a very prestigious CV! Was it difficult to shift gears from one industry to the other?

Not at all! The industries were very different but the skill set needed to succeed in all these roles were the same.

At MediaCorp, being in the digital team exposes you to various industries and you do need to understand the news that’s coming in from the local, business, global, entertainment and sports desks to be able to decide which one gets more prominence online. I also wrote articles on sports and technology for print and that helped me build a little niche for myself to stand out.

The transition to Lagardere was easy for me as I am a huge sports fan so I already understood what the client wanted from Day 1 and could get down to executing the social media strategies that I believed would work best for them.

The job scope at Lagardere Sports and AkzoNobel is very similar and there was an orientation programme to help new staff understand the various products the company sold.

The biggest change was understanding how different an agency operated compared to a multinational company. There were a lot more processes in place at AkzoNobel and several approvals are needed to move forward in projects but that helps ensure everything is within brand guidelines and all bases are covered.

You have many years of experience marketing to the diverse citizens of South East Asia. Have you noticed any significant changes in how we market products over the last decade?

Definitely, people are increasingly making their purchase decision based on emotion so it’s becoming more important for brands to strike up a conversation with the target audience and building the brand reputation instead of just pushing the benefits of your product.

The digital world has also changed the way we market products by providing us so many platforms and formats to use. From memes to carousels to collaborative ads to search engine marketing, there’s a format to suit every specific need a brand would need. The challenge for marketers is to pick what works best for them instead of indulging in the whole buffet laid out for them.

Now, I’d be remiss if I didn’t touch on the elephant in the room, the global pandemic. Clearly, COVID-19 has impacted a lot of companies and industries all around the world in the same way. Have your own marketing strategies for Dulux had to change because of it?

When COVID-19 first struck it led to several of our dealers closing their outlets and like most companies AkzoNobel took a cautious approach and stopped all ongoing marketing campaigns.

But the pandemic resulted in digital marketing becoming the central pillar for further marketing efforts. We started using influencers, we optimised our YouTube channels with the help of 2Stallions and we even developed other services like Dulux Painter Marketplace (which is like an Uber for painters) and AI-powered Preview Service which generates colour proposals for your home in less than 24 hours.

What about for you, personally, when this pandemic is over, what’s next for you?

The first thing I would like to do is take a holiday and travel out of Singapore. My wife and I have drafted our itinerary for a trip to London which includes a flight up to Liverpool to watch my favourite football team play. The only thing that’s missing on that plan is the date when we can actually travel.

On the bright side the additional time at home brought on by Covid-19 has allowed me to finally go ahead with some personal passion projects such as a children’s book series which I hope gets picked up by a publisher.

Any advice you’d give to young and aspiring marketers in the region?

It’s never too early to start. If you’re still in school, try exploring freelance opportunities or internships to understand the industry and how to manage the relationships between agencies and companies.

The second piece of advice is to be brave. New ideas are shot down every day and the most common reason I’ve heard is “we have always done things this way”. Take that as a challenge instead of being discouraged and use that as motivation to build your case to convince your colleagues that your idea will succeed.

Thank you, Sunny! It’s been a pleasure to ‘speak’ with you and learn more about your experiences and insights. How can people connect with you if they’d like to know more about you?

The pleasure is all mine. Look me up on Instagram (@sunnynaresh) or LinkedIn if you’d like to connect or find out more about myself or other personal projects I’m working on.

The Marketing Expert Series features marketing and communications experts from across every industry. Every month, 2Stallions will showcase the stories and expertise of marketing experts from around the world, join us as we explore how marketers navigate the challenges of the regions and industries they work in. If you’d like to be featured in a next issue of the Marketing Expert Series. Please reach out to us via email.

🚀 Elevate Your Marketing Efforts With a Trusted Content Marketing Agency in Singapore. Take advantage of our team’s knowledge and data-based strategy to attract your goal traffic and engagement and amplify your brand position. Get in touch with us now to ignite the brand’s brilliance.

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Content Marketing

What Is Content Marketing & How to Do It Effectively

If there’s one overused cliché in content marketing, it would be “Content is King.” As cliché as it sounds, this phrase speaks the truth because any kind of content (i.e. blog posts, infographics, videos, etc.) can help brands in endless ways.

Words and visuals, in particular, are powerful communication tools. They help to establish your brand identity, build a connection with your audiences, boost awareness of your brand, and generate qualified leads among other benefits.

This is why every company should make content an essential part of its marketing arsenal. Businesses should utilise content marketing to improve awareness, leads, and sales.

If your organisation hasn’t developed a solid content marketing strategy yet, now is the time to jump on the bandwagon.

Keep reading to learn more about content marketing and how to make high-quality content pieces that work for your business.

What Exactly Is Content Marketing

In its simplest definition, content marketing is all about using relevant and valuable content to attract and retain visitors, eventually turning them into paying customers.

It aims to capture the interest of audiences and solve their pain points by creating content that serves these goals.

This blog you’re reading right now is a form of content marketing. That online survey you answered, the email you opened and social media posts you liked is also another form of content marketing.

Other types of content marketing include:

case studies
infographics
webinars
podcasts
videos

Why Content Marketing Works

Content marketing works wonders because of 3 major reasons: it delivers value to audiences, builds trust over time, and attracts the right target audience for your brand.

Think of blog articles as an example. These content pieces are written for a certain group of audiences to address specific needs, pain points, and desires.

When the readers’ problems are addressed and solved through your articles, your blog site establishes an authority. Readers will keep coming back for more, thus allowing your brand to engage better leads and customers.

Still not convinced that content marketing works? Take a look at these content marketing statistics:

Content Marketing Examples to Inspire Your Next Campaign

You now know what content marketing is all about. You are aware on how it can help your marketing efforts. Let’s take a look at some successful examples that can inspire you into action!

Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign

Coca-Cola company personalised its cans with 250 of the most common names and people around the world went crazy in search of a can bearing their name. The campaign was a major success because it appealed to human emotions, inspiring shared moments of happiness among friends and family.

In Australia alone, the soft drink manufacturer sold more than 250 million (that is 10 times of its population size!) bottles and cans within 3 months.

Coca-cola grew sales with share a coke campaign

Superdrug challenges beauty standards with the campaign: “Perceptions of Perfection Across Borders”

Superdrug Online Doctor is a website offering prescription and medical consultation services. The brand asked designers from 18 countries to retouch a woman’s photo according to their country’s beauty standard. The project aimed to better understand potentially, the unrealistic standards of beauty and to see how pressures on women’s bodies vary around the world.

The project turned out to be a success because of the body positivity message it left: there’s no such thing as the perfect body.

These pictures quickly made headlines when they were first published and sparked lots of conversations online which boosted the brand awareness of Superdrug.

BuzzFeeds Tasty facebook page – Building a juggernaut with short video content

BuzzFeed’s instructional cooking arm, Tasty, is one of the biggest publishing brands on Facebook and it’s also the juggernaut behind the success of Buzzfeed’s video marketing.

Tasty successfully captured people’s interests by publishing recipes and other food-related content consistently. The brand also began the unique 60-second video format, making it popular on Facebook feeds.

In September 2016, Tasty’s main Facebook page was the third-biggest video account on Facebook with nearly 1.7 billion video views. Today, Tasty has grown into a multi-stream revenue model with over a 100 million followers, receiving an average of 300,000 views for each of its new video.

How to Create Content That Works for Your Brand

Remember, content is an essential piece of information. All the information presented in it can help you succeed at persuading and entertaining your readers. With that in mind, it is important to create a content marketing strategy that focuses on producing quality content.

There are 4 qualities to a great piece of content:

1. It Should Be ReadABLE

First things first, your content should be readable. It should be easy on the eyes.This means it should meet the following readability factors: font size, text and background colour, white space, and more.

You can’t expect your target audience to stay on your website if your content is written in tiny fonts. Troublesome colour combinations can also result in headaches, which can tune your readers out in the first few minutes of their site visit.

Also, white space should be your friend. Make sure the column width, vertical spaces between lines, and space around the images aren’t too tight for easier reading.

For content to be readable, it should also be easy to understand. Audience’s attention span keeps shortening over the years. That’s why you should convey your message simply to avoid alienating readers in the first few minutes or seconds.

Secondly, follow the KISS principle. Keep it short and simple. Steer clear of complex words and jargons to get your message across. It’s also ideal to reduce the length of your sentences.

While there’s no definitive rule on the ideal length of a paragraph, a great way to paragraph would be around ideas. Split your paragraphs into sections to make chunks of information easy to read.

2. It Should Be ShareABLE

The best content gets more eyeballs not only because it’s readable but also because it’s shareable. Oftentimes, content shareability depends on one significant factor: the topic itself.

If you want to get your content shared, come up with content ideas that resonate well with varied audience types. You can begin your topic research by looking into the following: emotions, trend, and identity.

Creating content that elicits emotions such as excitement, joy and awe can your make brand or campaign viral. Strike these positive chords to connect with your audiences emotionally and eventually attract more likes, clicks, or shares.

Finding trending topics and building upon them is another sure-fire way to make content shareable. Provide your target audience with content that speaks to their interests and this may help inspire discussion and connection among like-minded individuals.

Let’s say you’re targeting people who love to travel. This type of audience has various interests—destination, experience, food, and so on. You may write a blog article that features a list of vacation spots and activities in a specific location.

People are also more likely to share content on their social media profiles if they can relate to and see themselves in it. Try to understand what your target audience believes in and create a piece of content that affirms their points of view.

3. It Should Be ActionABLE

For a content marketing campaign to be effective, the content should not only spread information to a specific audience, but it should also prompt action and explain to the reader how they can achieve a certain objective. This is known as actionable content.

When creating actionable content, you must understand your prospect’s dilemmas or problems. You need to recognise these problems and provide answers, solutions or helpful advice.

So how do you actually create this kind of content?

First, you should focus on the ‘how-to’ element of your content. Instead of only presenting a list of ideas, explain how to execute them or guide readers on how to choose the right one.

Next, use visuals (i.e. images and videos) to explain your thoughts and ideas. The human brain is hardwired for visual content. Adding visual elements to your content will help your audiences process the information easily.

Also, actionable tips that are backed by real-life examples can convince your readers to take action. Include examples and statistics within sections of your posts to make your content trustworthy.

Lastly, use clear calls-to-action (CTAs). Keep them short and sweet but make sure you get the message across whilst evoking a sense of urgency.

4. It Should Be MemorABLE

Great content leaves your audience in awe. It lets readers hang on to your words or message not just for a moment, but for a long time.

Tapping into a single emotion such as happiness, sadness, anger or fear is one way to make content stick with your target audience. In a study conducted by Psychology Today, it was found that people respond to the emotional part of the ads than the text itself.

That is why tear-jerking and humorous campaigns tend to leave an impact on audiences. The strong emotions they convey help to engage, influence, and inspire people, making the campaign viral and memorable.

Apart from using emotional triggers, there’s another method to leave your audience awestruck- a cliff-hanger.

There are a few steps to create cliff-hanger content. First, begin with writing strong and magnetic headlines. Your headline should give readers a glimpse of your content’s purpose. Next, craft a promising introduction. Tell readers why they should care about your post and promise them a solution to their problems.

Then, leave them with a question that will make them reflect on how they can implement the knowledge you provided. The question should leave them wanting for more and clicking your call-to-action (CTA) button.

Back to You

Behind every successful brand, there are high-value content pieces designed to promote its business.

If you want to stand out or at least keep up with your competition, then develop content that’s readABLE, shareABLE, actionABLE, and memorABLE.

Fun fact: Those four words all end in ABLE. That means you have a bigger chance to achieve your goals if you’re able to create content that meets the above qualities.

Here at 2Stallions, we recognise the value of content marketing and uphold the above practices. If you need assistance with developing content that engages and sells, we would be happy to help.

🔓 Unlock Your Brand’s Potential With an Expert Content Marketing Company. Elevate Your Online Presence, increase engagement, be at the top of the minds of your targetted users, and Drive Results. Get in touch with us today!

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