Think big, start small....

by the BCMA and Jan Godsk

The BCMA is in a privileged position to have access to the leading experts and pioneers of the branded content industry. This interview is a part of ‘For The Love of Branded Content’ series which brings together ‘thought-leaders’ from across the globe to share their ‘love’ and advice on what it takes to succeed in the ever-evolving world of branded content.

Jan Godsk, Founder of Ideatakeaway, Creative Consultant, Branded Content specialist, Head of BCMA says it's important to think big, but start small.

Learn more in his short interview below.

1. Why do you love branded content?

I guess this is a professional as personal thing to me, going back to my time at the Danish School of Advertising. Through those  years I kept experimenting, with media, storytelling, communication anything I could lay my hands on in the sense of creating advertising solutions for Brands. As the principal at the graduation said, “let us hope that Jan has found his place” But it took some years after my graduation to find my place, it wasn’t until BMW launched “The Hire” and thanks to Carlsberg Denmark who believed in me and the team and our idea of creating a storytelling web platform to build their online presences. This was the early stage of Branded Content and has since then given me the opportunity to keep on “Experimenting”, because Branded Content is not only a new creative tool to help brands differentiate themselves in their market, but also a creative pool of solutions that cannot be standardised products – if they could, they wouldn’t be creative and wouldn’t make a difference.

2. What do you love the most about branded content?

BC&E is now an important creative tool of modern marketing, helping brands to differentiate themselves in a more and more generic market and carve out distinct positions in their market sectors.

And what I love the most about BC&E is that it does this differently from traditional advertising by actually being what interests people, instead of interrupting what people are interested in. So BC&E is about adding value and relevance through high quality content that involves consumers in the brand promise. It’s all about ‘us’ as an audience – entertain us, fascinate us, enlighten us, or help us.

3. One piece of advice you’d love to give someone undertaking branded content?

Think big, start small…Think big refers to business and ambitions, start small refer to insights… Insights is nothing new just like content. But by dramatizing insights through content, then content will bridge the emotional gap between brand and consumer, like content also bridges the emotional gab between TV and digital media.

Furthermore we live in an era when technology and media are changing at a breakneck pace. Combine this with the fact that users, brands and media are all creating and publishing content, and the result is a growing overload of trivial content. This places a high demand on the quality of the ideas behind branded content, which doesn’t just mean that brands need to develop great stories – they need to develop content that adds value beyond brand value, and has relevance to both the audience and the brand.

4. What is the best example of branded content you love?

Apart from Lego the movie?!…The best examples of international BC&E work that, for me, define the category and showcase BC&E as a creative force of modern marketing include:

And, as winners of the Grand Prix in the creative effectiveness category at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, these three examples illustrate why BC&E has now truly taken off.