Since the pandemic financial services brands have truly jumped on the content train. The top asset management brands are producing 100s of articles each year meaning that there are thousands out there. This has been driven by social media platforms and the “rewards” brands get for producing content that engages the platform’s users.

We have been big advocates of social channels, and many of our campaigns for clients are driven by ads on social. However, we have started to have doubts about content’s role in a marketing strategy. The difficult question we have had to ask ourselves is, does producing all this content better serve the platforms (who produce little or no content), or the brands pouring money and time into it? What works on social channels is dictated significantly by the algorithm which, based on my simple understanding, is designed to encourage people to spend as much time on the platform as frequently as possible. Where does helping brands build awareness and understanding factor into how that content is distributed? I think it would be safest, from a brand marketer’s point of view, to assume not at all.

Don’t get us wrong, we know content has its place. But we think that place might be more limited than how it is currently used suggests. Take the Spring Statement for example, AI tells me that there are thousands of articles out there on the topic; from journalistic sources but also from any business that is potentially impacted and has a content strategy. That means, all of them…

Our question is who is going to read all of these articles and why would they choose to read one brand’s over another’s, and more importantly over journalistic independent sources? Our view is that no one is going to read an article about current events from a brand that they are not highly involved with and trust. Therefore, if there is any expectation that this content can help grow a business by getting new potential clients involved, this is a false hope.

Our view is that content is potentially useful for current investors, flattering for internal audiences but ultimately is doing more for social media platforms than the producers’ brand.