Summary

Kiran Kapur and Nick Wake discussed careers in content creation. He defines content marketing as the creation and distribution of various media to add value and achieve organisational goals. Nick detailed the evolution of the role from a specialist copywriter to a multi-skilled "all-rounder" proficient in words, design, and video, a trend accelerated by technology. The conversation concluded with an emphasis on the critical importance of soft skills, such as relationship building, for career progression in the field.

 

Key Points

  • Content marketing was defined as an umbrella term for activities involving words, sounds, design, animation, and video, created to help an organisation achieve an objective by adding value.
  • The role of a content creator has evolved from siloed specialisms like copywriting to a more generalist "all-rounder" who possesses a broader range of skills across different media.
  • Technology, such as design tools like Canva and video editing apps, has made it easier for individuals to become multi-skilled content producers.
  • Content creation roles are highly varied and depend on the context, such as the industry, company structure, target audience (B2B/B2C), and available resources.
  • The title "junior content producer" was described as a misnomer that often fails to reflect the high level of technical skill, creativity, and broad responsibilities demanded by the role.
  • In addition to technical abilities, soft skills like relationship building, proactivity, and good internal communication were identified as essential for career development and advancement.

 

Transcript

Transcripts are auto-generated.

 

The Cambridge Marketing Podcast with Kiran Kapur, brought to you by Cambridge Marketing College. See their range of courses and apprenticeships at marketingcollege.com.

Kiran Kapur, host (00:13):
Hello and welcome to the Cambridge Marketing Podcast. My guest today is Nick Wake, college tutor and owner and founder of Awaken Communications, a Marketing Communications Consultancy. Nick, we're going to be talking about careers in content creation. So can we start with the basic one? What is content?

Nick Wake, Awaken Communications (00:33):
Morning, Kiran. And what a great question to kick off with. If I can perhaps adapt the question slightly and give you a definition of content marketing. So content marketing is an umbrella term or an expression for activities that involve any of the following. Words, sounds, design, animation, and video produced on behalf of an organisation and disseminated through a variety of channels to help that organisation achieve an objective. And what we're doing now is content marketing. So hopefully we're adding some value for those who are interested in the topic of content. And at the same time, we're reinforcing Cambridge Marketing College's credentials as a provider of marketing education services.

Kiran Kapur, host (01:25):
Okay. So I think there's several things there to explore, but one of the things I really liked was the word adding value because I see an awful lot of people. LinkedIn is full of people like this saying, "Create content, create content, create more content." And I always wonder about seeing content that actually maybe doesn't add value.

Nick Wake, Awaken Communications (01:43):
Yeah, absolutely. So I think content marketing's a relatively new term that covers older forms of marketing communication, but also the myriad of new channels that now exist through which we can communicate with our customers, but principles haven't changed at all. So good content should be targeted and relevant. It should seek to entertain, inform, or educate. Bad content, and you're right, there's plenty of it around, is irrelevant, boring, unwanted, and adds no value at all.

Kiran Kapur, host (02:22):
And I think, I mean, back in the day when I started my marketing career, you talked about more like copywriters as opposed to content creators. So is that fair that that's where content creation as a career sort of started?

Nick Wake, Awaken Communications (02:35):
Yeah, most definitely. So copywriting is a specialist element of content production. What I'm finding with the junior content producers that I look after is that they, if you imagine, imagine a wheel with three spokes and those spokes are words, design, and let's say video stroke photography, that those are specialist elements of content production. And then in the middle, you've got somebody that might be regarded as an all rounder. And I find that really helpful when I meet somebody who comes onto the programme that we run with Cambridge Marketing College. I find that a really helpful way of identifying where that particular student sits, what their strengths are. And then obviously, we have a conversation about where they want to develop, but yes, we have people who, when we were starting out, Kiran would be referred to as copywriters or who want to be copywriters, want to specialise in words.

(03:56):
But I think that your value as a content producer to any organisation, whether you're working in house or for an agency is enhanced if you can develop a broader knowledge, understanding, and even some of the technical skills that are needed to produce content. And technology has really changed the landscape as well now. So it's made it easier for all rounders to emerge because we can, with the help of tools like Canva, for example, we can all be basic designers with the help of some of the apps on ... We can all be amateur video producers and editors and that content, producing content like that can be perfectly acceptable in certain channels for certain objectives. So yeah, I think specialisms definitely still have their place without a doubt. And it's one of the decisions that you need to make when you're developing, you're finding your way in the world of content production and trying to develop your career.

(05:31):
Are you going to be a specialist or a generalist? But there's no doubt that technology is making it a lot easier to be an arounder these days.

Kiran Kapur, host (05:41):
Okay. So you said content could be word, sound, design, animation, and video. And as I've indicated, when I started back in the day, I wanted to be, in fact, I originally started as a copywriter. And the design side was something that as the copywriter, you didn't get involved in. You produced the beautiful copy, but you then handed it over to somebody else who produced the design and the photography and everything else. And you might be involved in a little bit of the briefing of that, but you certainly wouldn't be involved in actually going out and getting your hands dirty or playing with ink. That's clearly changed.

Nick Wake, Awaken Communications (06:17):
Yeah, it has, but it depends on context.

Kiran Kapur, host (06:23):
Okay. So one of the things I wanted to ask you was a sense of the quality and the time you spend on creating content. And I appreciate that one can produce quality content very quickly. One can also feel that perhaps you have to spend longer crafting it. Is that a sign of the type of material that you're creating? So would TikTok be considered to be somewhere where you had something that was slightly more rough and ready and that was acceptable because it was behind the scenes? How does the quality level work?

Nick Wake, Awaken Communications (06:59):
Well, again, I think quality is something that always should be strived for. I think that there are definitely some channels where the rough and ready approach, or let's call it authentic and real rather than sort of overly polished and artificial works well. Some content is just an in the moment opportunistic piece of content that you push out really quickly and you don't have a lot of time to think about it, but you're just reacting to an opportunity. Quite often that might be to entertain customers, to have a bit of fun with something that's very timely and topical. And yeah, some of the sort of best award-winning content is content that's been produced really quickly in the moment in response to something that's just happened.

Kiran Kapur, host (08:06):
Yes. But I know a lot of planning goes in and the famous one is always the Oreos when the-

Nick Wake, Awaken Communications (08:11):
That's right, that's right, exactly the one I was thinking about, yeah.

Kiran Kapur, host (08:14):
Yeah. 'Don't worry, you can always dunk in the dark', but if you actually talked to the agency that was running the Oris account, they had tens of people there ready to do stuff. It was all ... I mean, they didn't know that that's what they were going to end up with, but they had plenty of people on the ground ready to pounce on anything that happened.

Nick Wake, Awaken Communications (08:34):
Yeah, absolutely. Another good one I can think of and a good example is Bernie Sanders at Biden's inauguration sat looking very cold in a chair and very quickly his meme was created and planted in an IKEA chair, which then went viral as a result of lots of people then popping Bernie Sanders into different situations, but fantastic publicity for IKEA and they reacted very, very quickly. I'm not sure they necessarily had an army of people waiting for that opportunity, but certainly you can imagine they've got a reasonable size in- house teams. Somebody spotted the opportunity to do something really topical in the moment, and it wouldn't have worked if they didn't react really quickly.

Kiran Kapur, host (09:34):
Okay. So we've talked about there being specialisms, but also becoming an all rounder. So tell me a little bit, because we're going to talk about content careers. So tell me a little bit about what a content creation role might look like.

Nick Wake, Awaken Communications (09:49):
Yeah. Okay. Well, let me give you some examples then. Let me introduce you to some of my students. So my first student, Jack, worked in a small agency environment. His role had a bias towards video and animation by his own admission. He wasn't great with words, but he loved moving image. He was working with a variety of different clients. The agency had a kind of niche specialism in the broad area of sustainability and climate change. And he was at his best and happiest when he got to create and edit original video footage. Another student, Erin, is similar to Jack, but he's working in- house for Dream Automotive, which is a company that supplies body kits for, you won't mind me saying this, you can imagine boy racers if you like. He wants to pimp up their cars. And Erin's producing a lot of original video and experimenting with different publishing platforms, but still finding that YouTube is a key one.

(11:04):
You've got Jasmine, who's also on the video side of content production, but this time for a very high end commercial and domestic cooking appliances firm. They also produce upscale coffee machines and refrigerators. She's doing lots of original video and photography while food is being cooked or coffee being made and everything she does has to look and feel really high end. Then you've got Charlotte who works for an NHS trust in Peterborough. She's using the design tool, Canva I mentioned earlier, to push the boundaries on all aspects of their recruitment.

Kiran Kapur, host (11:45):
Okay. So I think it's possibly worth pointing out that the apprentices that you tutor are technically doing what is called a junior content producer apprenticeship. I have to say the level and the quality, I've popped into one of your groups the other day is incredible. Maybe it's actually jaw dropping and you think these are not juniors in any way, shape or form. So it's an interesting use of the word junior there. What sort of job descriptions do you see?

Nick Wake, Awaken Communications (12:16):
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. I mean, I think it's a terrible title, junior, and it bears no resemblance to the quality of work that these guys are putting out. It's just not a very flattering term, is it? But yeah, I have seen a few job descriptions for junior content producers. So let me just share a couple of these with you. So the first one, responsibilities, collaborate efficiently with both our digital marketing and brand departments to create content that will be shared across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok. Follow our brand vision closely, combining new creative ideas with consistent design rules, learn to use a range of Adobe software, including Photoshop, Illustrator and Premier Pro. Understand the best practises for each social media platform and learn what is required when creating content for specific campaigns and social media structures, work alongside the team's social media schedule, updating templates consistently and on time, produce quality video and image content for our website, accompany the marketing team sales consultant to film and photograph content for our case studies, film and work with different departments to create live content for our social media channels, work on advertising campaigns to promote our webshop products, individually lead personal projects with professional support.

(13:57):
I mean, first of all, I don't think there's anything that sounds junior about those responsibilities and they are broad and wide ranging, they are creative and they are technical.

Kiran Kapur, host (14:11):
They are very technical. The interesting thing about the two jobs was the first one was very, very on the video side and the other one seemed to have video and audio and writing as well. So it was very much an all rounder.

Nick Wake, Awaken Communications (14:23):
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I think hopefully that ties in with what I was saying earlier. It's a little bit like marketing, isn't it? In its broadest sense, no two marketing roles are the same. And the nature of what is required on a day-to-day basis varies enormously according to context, according to the industry you're in, according to the structure of the company, according to the resource, how the company resources itself, the balance of in- house and out of house, your particular strengths as an individual, whether it's B2B or B2C, whether it's private, public or public sector or charitable, all of these factors help to determine what's required on a day-to-day basis in any given role.

Kiran Kapur, host (15:21):
So we've talked a little bit about the technical side and the being an all rounder or a specialist. Are there any sort of soft skills that you see coming through that really help someone in a content production role?

Nick Wake, Awaken Communications (15:35):
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think the soft skills are the key to how your career develops and where you want it to develop. So take Christine who's keen to get more involved in the original creative concept and is struggling a bit with being just sort of pigeonholed and told this is your particular area of responsibility. The key to that is relationship building, your ability to build relations, to be proactive, to good internal communication skills. You can't just sort of sit back and wait for it to happen. So yeah, I think soft skills are just as important. If you want your career to develop and grow and you're keen to take on more responsibility, I'm sure there are some content producers who perhaps all they ever want to do is just film and edit great video. And if that's all they ever want to do, that's absolutely fine.

(17:07):
And they'll be focused on making sure that they stay up to date with all the emerging technology and they'll be honing their technical skills and so on and so on. But if you're remotely interested in running a team, for example, progressing up, taking on more responsibility, then you need to develop those soft skills. And actually, some of those soft skills sessions that we run as part of the junior content producer programme are the ones that the students really enjoy. One of the early ones we do is we ask them to read some content on team dynamics and the qualities of a good team member. And then we ask them to reflect on where they think they do well as a team member and where they might like to improve and to provide examples to support their reflections. And yeah, those sessions are really good. They really enjoy them and I really enjoy them.

Kiran Kapur, host (18:16):
You never know quite where you're going to learn in sessions like that. Nick Waite, that was a great overview of content production careers and the width and the extent of a career in content production, which has moved incredibly into all sorts of areas. Thank you very much for your time.

Nick Wake, Awaken Communications (18:33):
It's been an absolute pleasure, Kiran. Thank you very much.

Announcer (18:36):
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