Tom Martin of Converse Digital traveled to Cleveland, Ohio last month in order to attend the first Content Marketing World conference.
According to his report in Ad Age, he was one of the few agency execs to show his face there, despite a good turn out from client organizations.
Over beers after the opening night, I ran an informal focus group of presenters. The social media consultant Jay Baer had the best take on what we were witnessing: “Agencies largely whiffed on the first digital revolution and have been forced to play catch up via mergers and buyouts for a decade. They’re frantically trying to catch the social media wave, and now seem to be missing what may be the larger play — content marketing. It’s a huge opportunity moving forward, and the lack of agency attendance here suggests that maybe history is destined to repeat itself.”
Martin notes that “small agencies have a great chance to get the jump on our larger, slow-moving brethren. Why? Because, content marketing favors lower cost, nimble production methods and, let’s face it, convincing senior management to adopt these kinds of processes, is harder to accomplish at a mega-holding company than a small, privately owned agency.”
I might add that smaller agencies focused on content marketing can also help their “slow-moving brethren” get it in gear. For instance, how many agency blogs are there in need of fresh content today? Too many. Thankfully, small companies like mine are prepared to help address the problem.
