The complete guide to content marketing for startups

Content marketing. Paid ads. Conference speaker slots. Personal branding. Growth experiments.

There are a whole host of options out there when exploring the best marketing strategies to implement as a startup founder or marketing leader.

It’s hard to know which route is best – especially in a startup, where every decision feels magnitudinal.

The problem is that this leads many startups to try and do a bit of everything at once, taking a more generalist approach to marketing. But, without the time, money, and people to invest heavily in this, this leaves marketing efforts spread way too thinly and not seeing results.

So what’s a better approach?

Well, I’m here to advocate that content marketing is a highly effective place to start for startups. 

If you can consistently create great quality content that is relevant to your audience and share it across the channels that they use, you’ll build brand awareness and reputation as a leading expert in the space and generate traffic which converts into leads over time.

Want to learn more? Then this complete guide to content marketing for startups is for you. 

I’ve answered all of the FAQs on content marketing that I’ve heard throughout my career from startup founders, CEOs, and marketing leaders – sharing my best advice based on my experiences building high-performing content engines for early-stage and growth-stage startups, to help you do the same for your company. 

Here’s what I’ll cover in the rest of the article:

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What is content marketing? 

Content marketing is the practice of creating and sharing relevant information which provides genuine value or entertainment to a target audience, in formats such as blogs, white papers, videos, social media posts, etc. 

The purpose of content marketing is to increase brand awareness and reputation, and build a relationship with an engaged audience – occupying mindspace so that they are more likely to be converted into loyal customers over time when a need arises which your product or service solves. 

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What are the different types of content?

There are many different types of content format that can be harnessed to maximise engagement with different messages and different audience members.

Here are the most common types of content to consider using:

  • Blog posts
  • White papers
  • Original research
  • Gated content
  • Case studies
  • Video content
  • Webinars
  • In-person events
  • Podcasts
  • Infographics
  • Social media posts.

Let’s take a closer look at each, including examples from my own content marketing work. 

Blog posts

A company blog has been a content marketing staple for a long time, and they’re still going strong today, particularly as a vital part of any SEO strategy. 

Blogs can be short-form, addressing a single topic or solving a specific problem area or sharing updates. Here’s a few typical short-form blog formats, complete with examples written by yours truly:

Screenshot of two short-form blog posts

Or they can be long-form articles which go a little deeper into a topic area, typically reaching the 2,000+ word count mark. Typical formats include:

Screenshot of two long-form blog posts

White papers

White papers are long-form, in-depth pieces of content on a specific topic area. They are typically educational and aim to demonstrate expertise, presenting a problem or industry trend and provide a brand or individual’s perspective on a solution or methodology to address that problem area, which can sometimes be quite technical. They’re typically published as a standalone PDF which is often gated. 

White papers tend to be a more formal content format than other types of content such as blogs or videos – in the UK, for instance, the government issues white papers which are designed to outline their proposals for future pieces of legislation. For this reason, they’re typically associated with larger and more established corporate brands.

Here’s a couple of examples of white papers:

Image of an example white paper

Original research

In original research content the findings from a bespoke piece of research are analysed, with key recommendations or conclusions outlined.

Research reports are a particularly strong type of content for tech startups that have proprietary data from their product which can be harnessed to give new insights to an industry. Here’s a couple of examples that I’ve worked on:

However, it’s also very possible for companies that don’t have their own data to pull from to produce original research. 

A common approach is to conduct an industry survey and use the findings from this to produce a report, such as Lattice’s State of People Strategy report which uses survey findings from their audience of HR leaders.

Image of an example data report: Ravio's compensation trends 2024

Gated content

Gated content refers to any content which has access to it restricted until a user inputs their contact information – sometimes also referred to as lead magnets. 

The core purpose is to generate leads by gathering the email of users who are interested in the content, which can then be used for marketing or sales campaigns, with the aim of eventually converting the user into a customer. 

In-depth and long-form content formats like white papers, original research reports, e-books, or guides are typically used as gated content, where there is a large amount of value given within the content in exchange for the user’s email address. Here’s a few examples:

Tools or templates e.g. Kamma’s retrofit messaging toolkit or Ravio’s salary band progression calculator are also commonly gated.

Example of a sign up form for gated content: Ravio's compensation trends 2024 report

Case studies

As a type of content marketing, a case study tells the story of how you (or your company) successfully worked with a customer to solve their problem. 

The aim of a case study is to demonstrate how your product or service can address the problems of your target audience and to build social proof by showing how other companies have had success through relying on you or your company. 

Case studies can be written and published as blog posts or as web pages. Or,they can be in a video format and feature interviews with the customers you’ve worked with.

Here’s a few examples of case studies that I’ve worked on over the years:

Video content

Videos can be a highly effective way to convey a message or story to an audience, and are a very common type of content today across many key channels such as YouTube or social media platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok.

In fact, in Semrush’s State of Content Marketing 2023 report video came out on top when marketers were asked which content format performs best for their organisation. 

Results of Semrush survey question asking marketers the most effective content format
Credit: Semrush

There are a myriad of different ways to use video for content, including:

  • Educational videos: Some brands have great success with using videos in the same way that you would use blogs (or even repurposing blog content into a video format), to educate their audience on relevant topics or problems. It could be a talking head video where a member of the team talks the audience through a topic, or it could be animated with a voice over. 
  • Product video / demo: Videos can be an effective way to introduce potential customers to your product or service, showing how different aspects of your offer works.
  • Event recordings: Recording webinars or in-person events and making it available as an on-demand video is a great way to make the most out of an event.
  • Case studies: Video case studies or testimonials that feature happy customers are a great way to demonstrate social proof and build trust in your product or service. 

Videos need to be optimised differently depending on the platform they’re being shared on to be successful – a landscape, 20 minute, ‘how to’ video might perform well on YouTube, but will be completely incompatible for TikTok.

Webinars

A webinar is simply an event that takes place online. It will typically include a presentation as well as time for discussion or audience Q&A. 

There are many different formats for a webinar which can work well for different audiences. 

For instance, it could be an educational webinar (or series of webinars) where a subject expert takes the audience through a deep dive into a specific topic area. 

An example of this is Cosy Homes Oxfordshire’s retrofit webinar series that I ran back in 2021. The target audience typically had lots of questions around how different energy efficiency measures worked, so this educational style of webinar with plenty of time for questions worked well. The video recordings have also continued to build views on YouTube ever since.

Panel webinars are another common format, bringing together several industry speakers with different perspectives on a topic.

Ravio, for instance, has had success with panel webinars. Their core topic of compensation is one in which there is no one ‘correct’ approach, and so bringing together several experts with differing views and experiences brings a breadth of knowledge to the audience and helps to demonstrate the power of the Ravio community. 

Screenshot of a linkedin post advertising a Ravio panel webinar

It’s also common to use webinars as a way to launch new product offerings or research reports, with an internal speaker giving a presentation about the key findings or the problem being addressed, before opening the floor to audience questions.

At Kamma, for instance, a webinar was a core piece of the launch campaign for the new research report I authored: ‘The State of the Climate Transition for UK Mortgage Lenders in 2024’.

Podcasts

Podcasts are a type of audio content (although video podcasts on platforms like YouTube are also now common). They usually make up a themed series on a particular topic e.g. true crime podcasts or like My Favourite Murder or content marketing podcasts like Content, Briefly or book review podcasts like Overdue (and these examples also give you a nice snapshot into my favourite podcast topics!)

If educational or thought leadership focused content is a key part of your content marketing strategy then a brand podcast could be a great medium to test – it can be a great way to explore key topics in depth and demonstrate your expertise, without bringing sales-focused messaging into play. 

One example of a podcast that I’ve worked on is the How Researchers Changed the World podcast by Taylor & Francis (now ended). 

This was an interview-led podcast, a series of 12 audio interviews with highly successful academics whose research has had a positive social or environmental impact – with topics spanning from the role of music in dementia (Orii McDermott) to the ethics of AI (Steve Omohundro) to the relationship between cycling and relationship-building (Marco te Brömmelstroet). 

The purpose was to demonstrate the positive impact of the academic research published in Taylor & Francis journals, building brand awareness and reputation, and encouraging early-career researchers to choose to submit their own research to those journals

Collection of images from the How Researchers Changed the world podcast

Infographics

Infographics are a visual form of content, aiming to convey information, data, or statistics in an accessible way.

It might be a large, standalone infographic which is embedded on a webpage or made shareable as a downloadable PDF – like this infographic on home energy efficiency that I worked on for Cosy Homes Oxfordshire, for example. 

Cosy Homes Oxfordshire infographic on home energy efficiency

Or it could be a smaller infographic which conveys one specific piece of information or one finding as a small snapshot – these kinds of standalone graphics can make great images for social media or for use within blogs.

Here’s an example that I designed for Kamma, originally for use within a press release on the impact of the Labour party returning to the UK government in 2024 and then later shared on the Kamma LinkedIn page too. 

Kamma graphic showing the impact of a Labour government on UK housing decarbonisation

And here’s an example I designed for Ravio, originally for a blog on the topic: ‘Should you grant equity compensation to startup employees?’ and again later used as an image on LinkedIn too. 

Graphic by Ravio showing the percentage of companies that offer equity compensation to all employees

Social media posts

Social media posts are also a type of content marketing. Social media posts are short-form content that can either be text-only, or can include an image or video alongside text. 

It’s common to repurpose other forms of content (e.g. blog posts, videos, reports, etc) into shorter summaries or clips to be shared as social media posts. 

For this reason, there’s a lot of overlap between content marketing and social media marketing. The key difference is that social media is a channel, whereas content marketing is a strategy – so social media platforms may be one of the channels that you decide to distribute content through. 

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TOFU vs MOFU vs BOFU content – what’s the difference?

When you’re exploring different types of content you might come across the terms TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU content.

TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU are short for top of funnel, middle of funnel, and bottom of funnel – with funnel referring to the marketing funnel i.e. how new leads are generated and nurtured to eventually become customers. 

Leads require different types of content at different stages of the marketing funnel, which is why you’ll often see TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU referred to in relation to content types.

Let’s take a closer look at the difference between TOFU vs MOFU vs BOFU content.

Graphic showing the marketing funnel: top of funnel (TOFU) awareness, middle of funnel (MOFU) interest / consideration, bottom of funnel (BOFU) conversion

TOFU content

Top of funnel (TOFU) content targets members of your audience who are not yet familiar with your brand, product, or service – the ‘awareness’ stage of the marketing funnel.

The aim is to create content that offers genuine value to your target audience in the subject area that you have expertise in – whether it aims to answer a specific problem the audience typically has, provides information to support their research, or simply entertains them. 

So, through this TOFU content, you can build awareness of your brand with a broad audience and capture the attention of audience members who have the potential to become warm leads through demonstrating your expertise in a topic area.

TOFU content can take many forms, spanning any and all educational and informational content. 

It often includes explainers with headlines like:

These could be in any content format from blog post to YouTube video to podcast episode to LinkedIn post to webinar – depending on where your audience typically hangs out and what kinds of content they typically consume. 

Example of TOFU content: Lune's 'Scope 1,2,3 emissions, explained'

MOFU content

Middle of funnel (MOFU) content targets members of a target audience who are in the ‘interest’ or ‘consideration’ stage of the marketing funnel. 

They are aware of your brand and the types of product or services you offer. They may have relevant problems that they’re looking to solve, but they are more likely to be looking for advice or information on how to solve that problem themselves – they aren’t yet ready to evaluate different products or companies and make a purchase.

The purpose of MOFU content, therefore, is to demonstrate that your company has a deep understanding of the problems that the audience member is facing and has the necessary expertise to help them solve that problem. 

To target the middle of the funnel it’s therefore very important to build that understanding of the problems and pain points of your target audience so that you can address them through content – meaning you should be regularly analysing sales conversations (tools like Gong that automatically record or transcribe sales calls are super helpful here), interviewing ICPs in your network, researching the kinds of questions and discussions arising in relevant communities, and so on. 

It also helps to increase the quality of the content at this stage if you can incorporate expert viewpoints (either internally from your team members or through collaborating with external partners or subject matter experts) or new data analysis.

With MOFU content you also want to start weaving product messaging into the content to raise awareness of the products or services that you have to offer in relation to the problem faced, but it isn’t explicitly product focused.

Here’s a few examples of MOFU content I’ve worked on which address specific pain points of an ICP audience:

  • Ravio – What’s a fair and competitive salary in European tech? This blog targets users who are either evaluating what salary to offer a new hire or starting a compensation review and don’t have an accurate picture of the current market for salaries. They’re looking for information on salary data and so a salary benchmarking tool like Ravio is the perfect solution for them, but they aren’t explicitly looking for external products or services to solve their problem yet.
  • Kamma – The State of the Climate Transition for UK Mortgage Lenders in 2024. Kamma’s ICP audience are ESG / Sustainability leads at UK mortgage lenders. They often act alone but have a big responsibility to drive the sustainability strategy for a whole company, a topic area which is still in its infancy for many companies. We regularly heard from our customers, therefore, that they were keen to understand how other ESG leads were approaching climate transition planning and climate disclosures. This report is the result of that: an in-depth analysis of the climate plans and progress of 85 lenders and a survey of ESG leads to identify key barriers and priorities.  
  • Kamma – How to handle missing EPC data in a mortgage portfolio. This blog post addresses a major pain point for Kamma’s audience who struggle to accurately calculate company carbon emissions due to many mortgaged homes not having a valid EPC. The blog features proprietary data from Kamma’s dataset, as well as introducing Kamma’s own solution of predictive EPC modelling.
  • Lune – $500 vs $5: Why does the cost vary so much in carbon credit pricing? Sustainability leads who are considering carbon offsetting as part of their company’s sustainability strategy often end up confused about the pricing of carbon credits because there is so much variance in price and quality. This blog addresses that pain point for audience members who are already considering offsetting, whilst also introducing Lune’s value proposition of offering only the highest quality carbon credits at a range of prices, to eliminate this sourcing problem.
Example of MOFU content: Ravio's 'Building an effective management structure'

The middle of the funnel is also where content for nurturing potential leads comes into play. 

This means identifying the members of your audience who have already shown an interest in your brand and creating content that aims to ensure they remain engaged and keep you top of mind, which could include:

  • Email subscribers. If you gather emails for a newsletter subscriber list, these are middle of funnel contacts. They will typically be nurtured through a regular (monthly) newsletter which shares any new content, company updates, industry updates, etc.
  • Gated content downloads. If you have any content on your website that requires a user to submit their email address to access the content, those users that do submit their email are middle of funnel contacts – they’ve shown enough interest to exchange their email for that content. They will typically be nurtured through semi-regular emails, which could be set up as an automated nurturing workflow through a CRM like Hubspot.
  • Webinar / event attendees. A user who has registered and attended an event or webinar that you’ve hosted is a middle of funnel content. As with gated content downloads, it’s well worth continuing to keep in touch and nurture those leads over time to keep them interested and introduce them via MOFU content to areas of your product that could help to solve their problems.  
Example of an email newsletter: Ravio's monthly subscriber email

BOFU content

Bottom of funnel (BOFU) content targets members of a target audience who are actively evaluating products or services to solve a problem they have. They likely already know your brand but they may also be looking at your competitors too. They may be an existing lead or prospect that your sales team is speaking with. 

The primary purpose of BOFU content is to drive conversion i.e. to turn that lead into a customer, through demonstrating that your company is the best option to help them solve their problem. 

BOFU content should always be optimised for SEO because it naturally aligns perfectly with the search terms that users input when they are evaluating different options – terms like ‘Hubspot vs Salesforce’ or ‘Hubspot reviews’ or ‘best CRM tools for marketers’.

The typical formats for BOFU content include:

  • Competitor comparisons that aim to demonstrate why your company is the best choice. Common headline formats include: ‘[your brand] vs [competitor brand] and ‘[competitor brand] alternatives’ – like this ‘Kamma data vs EPC open data’ blog post, for example.
  • Product pages or videos that explain how your products or services solve the problems that the user is looking to solve – this overlaps with Product Marketing who are typically responsible for developing product and value messaging, but these product pages can be great for SEO so worth considering in your content plan too. 
  • Case studies or reviews that provide vital social proof that other companies are working with you and having success from it. This could be about compiling written or video case studies (see case study section above) or it could be a marketing push to build a library of testimonials or reviews for a site like G2 which is commonly used during evaluation. 
Example of BOFU content: Kamma's 'best home retrofit planning tools'

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What is a pillar page in content marketing?

A pillar page in content marketing (sometimes also called an anchor page) is a long-form article or blog post that covers all possible aspects of a topic in one large overview.

Pillar pages are a core part of a topic cluster model in content marketing and SEO, wherein the pillar page provides the overview of a topic and then links out to several other blog posts that cover specific aspects of the topic in much more depth.  

Graphic showing the topic cluster model – a pillar page which links to various pieces of cluster content.

Topic clusters are great for demonstrating the depth of your expertise on a specific topic area which is relevant to your target audience. 

They’re great for SEO because they demonstrate your brand’s authority on the topic to search engines like Google, making the content more likely to rank highly. They also naturally create the ability to create a structure of internal links linking between relevant pieces of content on your website, which also boosts SEO. 

One topic cluster example is a group of content on the topic of equity compensation that I delivered for the Ravio team. 

The pillar page for the cluster is a blog article titled: The complete guide to equity compensation for startups. This article broadly covers all the basics on how to structure an equity compensation package for employees, as well as a whole host of FAQs on the topic.

Example of a pillar page: Ravio's complete guide to equity compensation for startups

The pillar page then links out to several blog posts that dive deeper into specific aspects of the topic of equity compensation and showcase Ravio’s expertise and data on equity benchmarking:

Example of cluster content: Ravio's 'how to use equity refresh grants'

The topic cluster model can also be used to build backlinks (again, hugely beneficial for SEO) by working with partners or subject matter experts to develop guest posts or collaborative pieces of content. 

For Ravio’s equity compensation cluster, for instance, I also developed two partner content pieces which each link back to Ravio content:

Example of partner content: Factorial's 'how equity compensation drives employee loyalty in startups'

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What does a content marketer do in a startup?

Content marketers are responsible for planning, producing, and distributing content. The aim is to increase brand awareness and reputation amongst a target audience, with the ultimate goal of attracting and converting more leads into paying customers. 

A startup will typically have only one content marketer (at least in the early stages), and so they will be responsible for the entire content programme – setting the content strategy, creating content (which could be in collaboration with freelance content writers, designers, video producers, etc), and distributing that content via the relevant marketing channels.

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Should you hire a content marketer or work with a freelance content writer? 

There are pros and cons both to hiring an in-house content marketer or working with a freelance content writer or strategist.

Hiring a content marketer onto your in-house team typically comes with a higher total cost once you factor in recruitment costs as well as ongoing payroll and expenses. 

However, an in-house content marketer has the time and focus to quickly pick up in-depth knowledge on the industry and the specific product or service you offer. They’re able to be very hands-on, flexing to create whatever content has the highest potential each quarter. They’re also able to spend the time to analyse and measure content performance to understand what’s working and drive the ongoing strategic direction of the content function in collaboration with other teams. They’re able to grow with the company, perhaps taking on responsibility for other content writers or junior content marketers as the team scales. 

Working with a freelance content writer or strategist is much more flexible and cost effective, as you’re able to work with them on specific one-off projects and book more or less of their time depending on needs. You’ll get the benefits of working with a highly experienced content writer who has delivered quality content for several different companies and understands what works – which can be especially beneficial in early-stage startups who want to test content marketing but might not be ready to commit to adding headcount to the team. 

However, a freelancer will typically have less in-depth knowledge of your product and your audience so you still need to make sure that they’re briefed well in order to ensure the quality of content is high.

Ultimately there’s no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer to the question of whether you should hire a content marketer or outsource content marketing to a freelance content writer or strategist. 

Often a combination of the two works especially well – an in-house content lead who owns the strategy and planning, but who works with a freelance content writer to increase capacity to deliver new content. 

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Why should startups invest in content marketing?

A key challenge for many startups (especially in the early stages) is that your audience doesn’t know you exist.

It’s hard, because you’ve spent a lot of time and money building a product that you genuinely believe solves a real problem for an audience, and solves it way better than any of the well-known competitors do.

But you’re getting very little interest in that product.

So you’re spending even more time and money on cold outreach by your sales team (or often by the founder / exec team themselves in the early days) to try and hustle up sales.

That outbound motion is crucially important. But you also want to be planting the seeds for inbound leads – the customers that come to you directly to find out more about your product. If no one knows your brand exists, those inbound leads will never come. 

Content marketing is a highly effective way to do this.

Through creating high-quality branded content that provides real value to your target audience, showcasing the expertise of your team on relevant topics and demonstrating how your product can solve real problems, you’ll increase brand awareness and reputation amongst your target audience. Your brand becomes a trusted and top-of-mind source of information so that, when problems arise, you’re an option on the table and those audience members come to you as an inbound lead. 

As I see it, there are three main areas of value that a strong content marketing engine offers for startups throughout the lead lifecycle:

  1. Elevate the brand. Regular, high-quality content builds a recognisable and trustworthy brand voice through providing expert information, insights, or education on the real problems of the target audience.
  1. Drive warm inbound leads. Showcasing the expertise of the brand and the value of the solution(s) you can offer to the real problems of the target audience builds a pool of warm leads who know and trust your brand. These warm leads could be built through driving SEO and inbound website traffic, an engaged set of followers on a relevant social media channel e.g. LinkedIn for B2B startups, a list of email subscribers who want to keep updated with your latest content, a group of users who have downloaded gated content from your website, etc.
  1. Convert leads into customers. Conversion-focused content which aims to educate leads on why you are the best option for them and how you’re successfully working with other customers can hold huge value for startups by driving the conversion of leads into customers, ultimately increasing revenue. 
Why should startups invest in content marketing? 1. Elevate the brand and build awareness, 2. Build a regular flow of warm inbound leads, 3. Convert leads into paying customers

This also aligns with the idea of TOFU vs MOFU vs BOFU content, as these three areas of value align with the marketing funnel (see section above).

Content marketing has the added benefit of being cost effective. All you need is a person to build and run the content engine (whether you hire an in-house content marketer or work with a freelance content strategist and writer like me) and you’re off to the races.

It’s also long-lasting. If you create genuinely valuable content that addresses real problems then it will last forever – you’ll just need to occasionally run a content audit and make a few updates to make sure it stays accurate with new developments in your industry. 

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When should you start content marketing as a startup? 

The sooner the better.

As soon as you’re ready to launch your startup and go public you need a strong content marketing strategy to build your brand, drive inbound leads, and support the sales cycle.

I typically recommend that early-stage startups start their marketing team with a product marketer and a content marketer – the two go perfectly hand-in-hand to ensure a strong brand presence and a clear understanding of your product from the very beginning. 

I’ve had great success with this approach myself at Lune and Ravio, building the content function alongside the very brilliant Alicia Carney as the lead on product marketing.

What is a content marketing strategy?

A content marketing strategy is a document that defines the direction and plan for how content will successfully support the most important business goals a company has.

The content marketing strategy is typically created at the point when a company decides to actively use content marketing as a key part of the overall marketing strategy, which might align with when the first in-house content marketer is hired at a startup. It should then remain a living document, updated and refreshed regularly (typically quarterly, at least annually) to remain in line with business priorities and developments. 

An effective content marketing strategy should always include:

  • Content marketing objectives. What do you want to achieve through content marketing? What wider business goals are being driven through content?
  • Target audience. Who are we aiming to reach through content marketing? How do we want to influence them? 
  • Competitor analysis. What areas of content (topics, content types, channels, unique angles, etc) are our key competitors currently winning in? Do we want to try and beat them at that? Are there gaps in the market that we could aim to fill with our own content strategy?
  • Content pillars. What are the most important topics for that target audience? Which topics do we have subject expertise on? Which topics align best with our product or service? Which topics are less well-covered by competitors or other outlets? I typically recommend having three core content pillars.
  • Content formats. Which formats do the target audience like to consume their content in (reports, blogs, press articles, social media posts, videos, podcasts, etc)? Which formats do we have the in-house expertise to deliver? Could we work with freelancers for other formats?
  • Content channels. Which channels do the target audience hang out in (search engines, LinkedIn, TikTok, Slack communities, media outlets, Reddit, etc) and that, therefore, we should distribute our content through? Which channels do we have the in-house expertise and resources to manage? Could we work with freelancers for some channels (e.g. social media management)?
  • Collaboration ecosystem. Do we have internal subject matter experts that we could harness to increase the quality of our content? Are there external experts in our network? Do we have a partnership ecosystem that we could harness as a content distribution channel? Are there partners that we could collaborate with on shared content or guest posts? Should we work with influencers to increase the reach of our content? 
  • Content cadence. How often do we want to publish new content on each of the key channels we aim to use?
  • Content marketing budget. Do we have any budget to work with freelancers to increase our capacity for content creation or to help with certain formats (e.g. content design, video production, etc)? Do we have any budget for content distribution to increase the visibility of our content through paid channels e.g. social media ads, google ads, paid placements in media outlets, influencer partnerships, etc.

Content strategy guide: How to build an impactful content engine

If you’re looking for more guidance on how to develop your content strategy, head to my guide on the topic – it’s a step-by-step guide which also includes examples and templates to help you create a practical strategy that will guide content decisions.

Go to the content strategy guide >

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What is a content calendar?

A content calendar (or editorial calendar) is a schedule which shows when you will be publishing new content via core marketing channels e.g. blog posts, LinkedIn posts, email newsletter, podcast episodes, etc. 

It’s a living document which is kept up-to-date by a content marketer or marketing team, helping to organise content publishing and ensure a consistent stream of new content without lots of overlap with several pieces of new content posted on the same day on the same channel. 

Content calendar example

📣 Free content calendar templates

I’ve turned my own trusty content calendar format into two free templates to help you get up and running quickly with content planning and management.

Go to the templates >

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What’s the relationship between SEO and content marketing?

SEO and content marketing are very closely intertwined.

Content marketing is an overall strategy which aims to build brand awareness and drive inbound leads through creating and distributing content that provides value to a target audience.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a more specific channel or tactic which aims to drive website traffic through implementing techniques that make specific pieces of content (typically blog posts but also videos, LinkedIn posts, webpages) rank highly in search engine results pages (SERPs).

SEO is, therefore, typically a very important part of any content marketing strategy – a vital channel for distributing content which will help to increase the number of users that engage with any piece of content over time. 

Here’s an example of a piece of content – Ravio’s French employment law guide – that I specifically optimised to rank highly for the search term ‘france employment law’. As you can see, it’s now the top result on Google for that search term, as well as being featured in the AI overview and in the featured snippets for more specific questions like ‘What are the employment laws in France?’

Example of SEO optimised content: Ravio's French employment law guide

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How do you come up with content ideas?

Great content answers the real questions and problems of your target audience, and so coming up with content ideas means uncovering what their most pressing questions and problems are. 

So, whilst exploring examples of how other brands approach content is great for inspiration, the best content ideas will always come from listening to your ICP audience. 

This can be done through:

  • Listening in to sales or customer success calls – getting your commercial team into the habit of recording all calls using a tool like Gong is incredibly valuable to start building a picture of the most common questions and pain points of your target audience, which can be addressed via content. 
  • Internal feedback loops – similarly, ensuring all commercial team members are regularly sharing ideas and feedback from prospects or customers means that any recurring topics can be addressed via content.
  • Identifying questions submitted to the team via contact forms or during events / webinars
  • SEO research – conducting keyword research on various relevant topic areas via an SEO tool like Ahrefs or Semrush or a social listening tool like Answer The Public will enable you to identify the common search queries of your target audience, which can be addressed via content. 
  • Research via other channels e.g. social media or forums – searching key terms or questions related to the most important topics for your brand on channels like LinkedIn, Reddit, or Quora can highlight the kind of questions or problems that your target audience are regularly trying to find answers about, which can be addressed via content.
All good content ideas come from listening to your ICP audience

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How do you do content marketing well?

In my experience, effective content marketing boils down to the following:

➡️ The delivery of quality (well-researched, well-written or produced, to-the-point) content…

➡️ Which deliberately showcases the unique value of your brand and your expertise in a set of key topic areas that are highly relevant to your target audience…

➡️ And which is published consistently over a long period of time across the top channels that your target audience uses every day. 

In combination, this content builds the authority of your brand and brings the right audience to your brand’s core channels.

Achieving this boils down to having a super strong content marketing strategy as the foundation which sets the strategic direction for all content creation and distribution (see section above).

If you need help with putting that strong content marketing strategy into place, or you have a question that I haven’t answered in this article, then please do get in touch – I’d love to chat!

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‘Sustainable Style’: The Greenwashing Truth Behind H&M’s Conscious Collection Adverts

This blog was first published on my Medium profile.

Is H&M’s Conscious Collection actually climate conscious?

Back in 2019 Norway’s Forbrukertilsynet (Consumer Authority) revealed that they were investigating fast fashion giant H&M’s sustainability claims.

Their investigation came under the Marketing Control Act in Norway, Section 2 of which states that marketing cannot contain ‘an incorrect or otherwise misleading representation which is likely to influence the demand for or supply of goods’.

Essentially, if brands mislead their customers in any way, it’s illegal under existing Norwegian law.

“H&M are not being clear or specific enough in explaining how the clothes in the Conscious collection are more ‘sustainable’ than other products they sell.”

Bente Øverli, Deputy Director of Norway’s Consumer Authority

The Consumer Authority were particularly concerned that H&M may be unable to back up their claims about the sustainability of their business, and of their H&M Conscious collection in particular. 

✨ Looking for alternatives to H&M Conscious that are actually ethical and sustainable?

Here’s a few recommendations for sustainable fashion without the greenwashing:

  • Project Cece: A marketplace for over 200 ethical fashion brands.
  • Beaumont Organic: Premium sustainable fashion, with products made largely with organic, GOTS certified cotton.
  • Lucy and Yak: Comfortable and colourful women’s clothing.

This concern stemmed from the lack of explanation offered by H&M about exactly how their Conscious clothes are being manufactured:

“As H&M are not giving the consumer precise information about why these clothes are labelled Conscious, we conclude that consumers are being given the impression that these products are more ‘sustainable’ than they actually are.”

Bente Øverli, Deputy Director of Norway’s Consumer Authority

If we look at H&M’s own website content, this lack of precise information becomes clear pretty quickly.

They did once have a webpage entitled ‘HM Conscious Explained’, now removed.

Luckily, I have the receipts.

The HM Conscious Explained page (ironically) did a very poor job at explaining why the Conscious Collection gets that name.

Conscious products not really explained at all

Maybe it’s just me, but for an ‘explanation’ I’d expect a little more detail than just two short and sweet paragraphs.

They claim that the H&M Conscious Collection is their ‘most environmentally sustainable’ products – but given they’re a fast fashion brand that is well known for being very unsustainable, the ‘most’ here doesn’t give us much comfort.

In terms of explaining why these products are ‘conscious’ and ‘sustainable’, the only justification given is that they use up to 50% recycled material (or 20% for cotton products) in production.

However, they don’t go into detail about the types of items they’re recycling, how they’re recycled, how they’re produced, what the carbon footprint of these products is compared to their other ranges, or even what their definition of ‘sustainable’ is.

It just doesn’t feel very transparent or trustworthy.

Alongside this explanation comes their marketing and photography of the collection, all of which centres around ‘green’ imagery of Conscious-clad models surrounded by lots of grass and plush green plants:

H&M Conscious marketing imagery

But is all this ‘green’ actually just an indication that we’re being greenwashed by H&M’s marketing department?

Let’s consider all we do know about the environmental impact of fast fashion brands like H&M. 

Between 1992 and 2002 we’ve decreased the amount of time we keep our clothes by 50%. 

The fashion industry churns out over 1 billion items of clothing every year, producing 1.2 billion tons of CO2 equivalent at the same time, accounting for 5% of global greenhouse gases [1].

Furthermore, cotton is one of the main crops used in the production of clothing. 

Although it’s often portrayed as an eco-friendly option compared to synthetic alternatives, cotton is actually an incredibly thirsty crop. It takes 20,000 litres to grow 1kg of cotton, which is the amount needed to make one t-shirt and one pair of jeans [2].

And that’s not to even mention the social impacts of fast fashion.

It’s well known that clothing factory workers are underpaid and overworked, and there’s also evidence of mental and physical abuse in the factories. The 2013 Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh highlighted the terrible conditions of the industry, with over 1300 people killed when a clothing factory collapsed. H&M was one of the brands being manufactured in that factory.

With this said, I’m pretty sceptical that a fast fashion brand can be sustainable at all.

Sustainable [adj]: able to be maintained at a certain rate or level; conserving an ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources.

H&M specifically have two main strands (as far as I can tell) to their ‘sustainability’ aims.

The first is their Conscious Collection of clothing, which we’ve already discussed.

The second is their clothing recycling service, allowing customers to take old clothing from any brand to their stores to be recycled.

If we examine this clothing recycling service, H&M’s sustainability becomes even more questionable. The vast amount of clothing produced by fast fashion, and our growing demand for this as consumers, means that it would take fast fashion brands like H&M 12 years to recycle what they produce in just 24 hours. With this fact in hand, their recycling service starts to seem incredibly ironic. They’re encouraging consumers to recycle their old clothing, whilst they continue adding to the problem at an alarming rate themselves.

Plus, a significant percentage of the clothing that they produce goes immediately to waste, never even reaching the stores for consumers to purchase.

In 2017 it was announced that the Vasteras power plant in Sweden would be going fossil fuel free, partly because they had been contracted by H&M to burn their defective clothing. After opening that year, by November 2017 the plant had burned 15 tons of discarded clothes from H&M [3].

The most ironic slogan you’ve ever come across

And so, H&M’s recycling service becomes incredibly hypocritical.

So why do they really offer this service? And what’s the true incentive behind the development of their Conscious Collection?

The answer to that is simple.

Their primary goal is to maximise profit, at all costs. 

That’s why when you do take a bag of old clothes back to H&M to be recycled, you receive a £5 off voucher for your next purchase at H&M. The whole scheme is a marketing campaign to retain customers and persuade you to buy more clothes, contributing further to the fast fashion industry’s profits at the cost of the environment.

This is backed up by research into the fashion industry too.

A review of consumer sales between 2013 and 2018 by researchers at the Stern Center for Sustainable Business, of New York University, found that products that were highlighted as ‘sustainable’ would sell much faster than products which were not [4].

So, by giving the impression that they are an environmentally conscious company, and by selling products that are marketed as ‘conscious’ and ‘sustainable’, H&M are doing themselves a massive favour in terms of sales and profit. This is what lies at the heart of their sustainable style focus.

The unreliability of their sustainability claims are clear in the below statement from Helena Helmersson, H&M’s Head of Sustainability at the time of the Conscious Collection launch (who then became Chief Exec, before stepping down) when she was asked how H&M could prove and ‘guarantee’ their eco credentials:

“I don’t think guarantee is the right word…A lot of people ask for guarantees: ‘Can you guarantee labour conditions? Can you guarantee zero chemicals?’ Of course we cannot when we’re such a huge company operating in very challenging conditions.”

Helena Helmersson, H&M Head of Sustainability in 2019

When huge high-street brands like H&M claim to care about climate change, and to be deliberately working to improve their sustainability credentials, it gives us a way to feel like we’re engaging with sustainable fashion and boycotting all that fast fashion stands for.

It’s an easy option: H&M is cheap, accessible, and it’s what we know. We don’t have to stop shopping, we can shop at our high street favourite and still be seen as an eco warrior.

But this doesn’t feel authentic.

It’s clear that H&M are making movements towards being more sustainable, and as a huge company every small step they make is significant. 

However, if we rely on fast fashion brands to make the industry sustainable, then we’ll be waiting a long time.

Given the resources that they use and the waste they produce, I ultimately think that there’s a fundamental contradiction at the centre of the idea that a fast fashion brand can sustainable, which marketing and labels cannot fix.

Buy less, and buy from the brands who truly have ethics and sustainability at the heart.

References

[1] Facts from https://7billionfor7seas.com/fast-fashion-facts/

[2] Fact from WWF https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/cotton

[3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/sweden-power-plant-h-m-coal-burn-vasteras-stockholm-oil-discarded-products-a8073346.html

[4] ‘Research on IRI purchasing data’, NYU Stern (March 2019)

E.On’s ‘It’s Time’ ad campaign: we’re ‘all’ just watching the world burn

This blog was first published on my Medium profile.

E.On’s latest advertising campaign is titled ‘It’s time.’

It centres around a short video which depicts people going about their everyday lives whilst completely oblivious to the climate apocalypse of floods, fires, tornados, and ice cracks that surround them — even singing a tune with the lyrics ‘time is on our side’.

The message is clear: the climate crisis is here, we need to act, and E.On has the solutions to get us out of the mess that surrounds us.

Is this a genuine message of solidarity by a company changing its ways? Or another energy company greenwashing campaign?

Let’s break it down.

We’re all to blame for climate change

The main issue I have with E.On’s ‘It’s Time’ campaign is that it places individual people at blame for failing to act on climate change.

The entire narrative of the campaign is normal people, going about their lives, failing to pay attention to the impending doom of climate emergency descending upon them.

It’s the same narrative that the oil and gas industry has had for years — the most well-known example being BP (with the help of ad agency Ogilvy) deliberately popularising the idea of an individual carbon footprint to shift blame away from the fossil fuel industry.

The E.On campaign is no different.

It depicts a world where individuals are entirely naive to the climate crisis, and where businesses and governments have nothing to do with the inaction — they aren’t even present in the campaign.

Even worse, the people in the video are all preoccupied with their phones and laptops whilst fires and floods rage around them, as you can see here:

And here:

And here:

It tells us that we all care more about scrolling through the virtual worlds of TikTok and Instagram than we do about the deterioration of the real world that surrounds us.

I don’t know about you, but to me, that’s insulting.

And it’s especially insulting because it comes from a company that has been a major fossil fuel energy provider for decades. It comes from a company who is quite literally to blame for those fires, floods, ice melts — we’ll look more at E.On as a company later.

This narrative is even evident in the way E.On’s team talks about the It’s Time campaign in the media, suggesting it was absolutely deliberate.

Scott Somerville, UK Chief Marketing Officer at E.On, said of the campaign:

“Whether it’s governments, businesses or homeowners, there’s a huge amount of positive intention when it comes to sustainable energy, but rarely do any of us bring enough urgency to the situation.”

And Ross Newton, the Creative Director at the advertising agency who produced the campaign, House 337, said:

“It’s incredibly important that we all act on the climate crisis, but we didn’t want to use the same old shock tactics. Instead, we wanted to highlight the behaviour that we’re all guilty of.”

Interesting, eh.

There truly is nothing subtle about the energy industry’s avoidance of blame on climate change these days. 🤯

Inspiring panic and guilt, not action

Let’s also consider how the climate crisis is being depicted within the campaign.

Remember that Ross Newton, the Creative Director of ad agency House 337 who produced the campaign, stated: “we didn’t want to use the same old shock tactics”.

And yet what we see is an apocalyptic landscape of fires, melting ice, rising floods, and tornados.

Contrary to what Newton says, this does seem pretty much like the ‘same old’ story of doom and gloom.

There are two big reasons that this is entirely ineffective messaging for a sustainability-focused marketing campaign.

Firstly, whilst there’s no denying the truth of the picture — as we know all too well, extreme weather events are becoming increasingly regular and severe as a result of climate change, as are floods and wildfires — this kind of dark, apocalyptic view of the climate crisis does nothing to inspire change. Instead of motivating action, it inspires only feelings of panic, hopelessness, and guilt.

Secondly, even though climate impacts like these are becoming more and more visible in the media across the world as they increase in frequency, they can still feel like a faraway, abstract issue, rather than something that is impacting us closer to home. Pasting a background of climate impacts behind images of everyday life simply isn’t going to make an audience more likely to take action.

Sidenote: check out Climate Visuals for insights on what imagery has real impact in communicating climate, and an evidence-based photo library.

Didn’t you know? E.On has the solution to climate change!

Of course, despite trying to hide behind a charitable message, E.On’s ‘It’s Time’ campaign is just that: a marketing campaign. If it wasn’t good for the business, they wouldn’t do it — after all, that’s how fossil fuel companies got us into this mess in the first place.

The video ends with a ‘call to action’.

That might sound like a good thing, a call to arms as we all rise up against climate change. Not quite. In the world of marketing a call to action or CTA is the prompt at the end of a piece of advertising which asks the audience to take a desired action, like ‘read more on our blog’ or ‘get 10% off today using code CLIMATE’.

In this case, the final voiceover message of the campaign is: “E.On have the solutions to help us all live more sustainably” (note the ‘us all’ creeping up again), and the call to action is to go to E.On’s website and take a look at their sustainable energy offerings: renewable energy tariffs, heat pumps, solar panels, and EV chargers.

For the past few years, E.On have been gradually re-branding themselves from fossil fuel energy supplier to green energy supplier.

Now, from the messaging and content on their social media profiles, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d stumbled upon a small community energy organisation or a climate campaigning organisation.

Here’s a snapshot of the E.On Instagram bio, for instance.

And if you go to the It’s Time campaign page on the E.On website, it’s the same story:

What’s also striking on the webpage is the message of urgency: “… we all need to act. Not by 2030. Not by next year. Now.”

And that’s true of their Instagram content too:

It’s striking because underneath this recent sustainable re-brand, E.On has a long history of compromising the environment through their oil and gas activity — they even proudly share their history since 1923 on their website.

Not just the environment; they’ve compromised people too. Like the 4,700 people in the Nenet tribe of Siberia who have been displaced from their land and faced declining health due to pollution, to enable the construction of a huge pipeline to extract oil and gas, part-owned by E.On.

So that message that ‘we all need to act right now’? It’s pretty ironic.

You might be wondering if it’s possible that E.On have truly now changed their ways — and it’s a good question.

So, let’s take a closer look at those sustainable solutions that E.On offer.

First, renewable energy.

E.On claim to offer their customers 100% renewable energy.

They produce their own renewable energy from biomass, largely at two plants in Sheffield (Blackburn Meadows) and Lockerbie (Steven’‘s Croft). Biomass is only a sustainable source if the biomass being burnt for energy is a waste product.

It’s very difficult to find any information on the actual sources of wood in Sheffield and Lockerbie — the E.On website states they use ‘local waste wood only from British sources’ but no details are given on what this is, which makes it feel questionable.

The Blackburn Meadows biomass site in Sheffield.

The rest of the renewable claim is entirely down to REGOs. This means that E.On is buying certificates of origin from actual renewable energy producers, without actually adding any renewable energy to the overall supply — read more on this from Good Energy.

Next, the home energy products: heat pumps, solar panels, EV chargers.

These are all much needed to make our homes more energy efficient. But, the reality is that all of these home energy add ons are only efficient if our homes are already efficient — well-insulated with no leaks or draughts — and most UK homes simply aren’t. There needs to be much more focus on home retrofit and rolling out heat pumps and local energy networks at a systemic level before these are truly ‘solutions’ on a large scale — and the UK government is currently failing pretty hard at that.

But, in the meantime, it makes E.On look good if their marketing focuses on their shift to sustainability.

And that’s truly the crux of the matter.

Sustainability looks good today.

That’s why companies like E.On are making campaigns like ‘It’s Time’.

Because, contrary to the message of the video, people are very aware of the climate crisis and they care deeply about it.

Instead of people’s inaction, it’s companies like E.On that are more concerned about continuing to line their pockets with profits than preventing its impacts.

Because E.On remain the UK’s second biggest energy supplier, and their profits doubled in the first half of 2023, with UK sales of £12.6 billion.

And that kind of money would be game-changing for community energy organisations like the Low Carbon Hub in Oxford or Carbon Coop in Manchester who are actually doing the work to transform the UK’s energy system for the better.

So maybe It’s Time we focus our energy elsewhere.

Vestiaire Collective’s ‘Think first, buy second’ campaign is an example of great sustainability marketing

This blog was first published on my Medium profile.

Vestiaire Collective’s latest marketing campaign — titled ‘Think first, buy second’ — brings light to the textile waste dumped on farflung streets as a result of the overconsumption driven by the fast fashion industry.

The campaign centres around a super short animated, AI-generated video which shows piles of discarded fast fashion littering Times Square, with the message: ‘what if fast fashion waste was on your doorstep’.

Which is also being shared across social media, both the video and static images of the messages within it — like this one on the Vestiaire Collective Instagram page:

It works nicely as a continuation of the video from their Black Friday campaign from last year (2022), when they began banning certain fast fashion brands from the Vestiaire Collective platform.

That video used footage from the actual locations where fast fashion waste is dumped, like the Kantamanto market in Ghana, where 15 million items arrive from the global North each week 🤯.

So, last year Vestiaire Collective showed the reality of where textile waste ends up, and this year they’re emphasising this through imagining a world where, instead of hidden away in Ghana, it ended up in world famous tourism spots like Times Square.

And, it’s not just a marketing campaign.

Vestiaire Collective are coupling the marketing with real action — they’ve banned an additional 30 fast fashion brands from being listed on their second hand marketplace, including serial greenwasher H&M, as well as the likes of Zara, Uniqlo, and Bershka.

It’s a great example of sustainability marketing done right.

Why?

Three key reasons:

  • Bringing climate impacts closer to home
  • Focusing blame on the fast fashion industry, not on individual consumers
  • Working with trusted messengers to deliver an educational message.

All of which are tactics which are proven to work when it comes to climate communications that really cut through.

Let’s explore these three elements a little closer.

Bringing climate impacts closer to home

The status quo is that climate change is seen as a faraway, abstract concept.

It will happen far in the future to people living on the other side of the world. That leads to a lack of urgency because, unfortunately, we humans aren’t great at planning for the long-term, we tend to respond only to what we see as immediate threats.

Because of this, it’s vital for climate communications campaigns to bring climate impacts closer to home — emphasising the impacts happening right now, to people like us, in places like this.

And that’s exactly what Vestiaire Collective do with their campaign.

They’ve picked up the piles of textile waste from the market stalls in Ghana that fast fashion brands use as a dumping ground, and placed them in Times Square — a location that is not only well-known amongst western consumers as a famous tourist spot, but also as an advertising hotspot.

Focusing blame on the fast fashion industry, not on individual consumers

The fossil fuel industry began a trend of blaming individual consumers for climate change a long time ago — emphasised nicely by BP creating the term ‘carbon footprint’ as a way to do just that.

Other climate change fuelling industries, like fast fashion, have been quick to follow suit.

They create ‘sustainable’ lines that represent 0.0001% of their overall stock, or they put the onus on individuals to donate or recycle their garments (*cough cough* and then don’t forget to buy more *cough cough*). H&M, we’re looking at you on both of these examples.

Even sustainable brands often focus their marketing on consumers making behavioural changes to cut carbon emissions. Replace your body wash with our soap bar. Subscribe to our plastic-free, organic veg box. And so on.

So, it’s refreshing to see Vestiaire Collective resist this narrative on two fronts.

First, and foremost, the blame is most certainly placed on the fast fashion companies in this campaign.

Nowhere do Vestiaire Collective suggest that the piles of textile waste are the fault of individuals buying fast fashion. No, they are absolutely the fault of fast fashion brands for overproducing and driving overconsumption.

Secondly, the campaign is also pleasingly self aware.

Whilst Vestiaire Collective is not a fast fashion brand itself, it is a business and it does, therefore, have significantly more influencing power than an individual when it comes to cutting carbon emissions and driving systemic change.

And the campaign doesn’t shy away from that. The main action of the campaign is that Vestiaire Collective is removing fast fashion brands from the marketplace. The brand is using its own power to take action against fast fashion itself.

Of course, there is a secondary ask within the campaign, which is for consumers to buy second-hand (as good as it is, it’s still an advert for the marketplace). The name of the campaign focuses on this: ‘Think first, buy second’. In fact, if I had one note for Vestiaire Collective on the campaign it would be to change the overall campaign name to keep that primary focus of blame on the fast fashion industry.

Working with trusted messengers to deliver an educational message

Historically, the least trusted voices have been those producing most of the messages on climate change.

From politicians, to journalists, to economists and business owners, there are a whole host of prominent, public-facing people out there who have made the climate crisis seem like a debate, rather than a lived reality.

And on the other side of the coin, communications to raise awareness about climate change and its impacts and solutions have been predominantly led by scientists and researchers.

They may sound like a trustworthy group of messengers, but actually the public have fairly low trust in science, fuelled by the fact that scientists often don’t communicate in an accessible manner for a generalist audience

This has all led to an overall lack of understanding on the topic of climate change, and a lack of action to drive change.

As part of the ‘Think first, buy second’ campaign, Vestiaire Collective have produced a 5 step framework to define what ‘fast fashion’ actually is.

This is great because it both increases understanding about a climate-related topic, and gives consumers a practical guide for taking action — a useful checklist that they can use when evaluating a brand to buy from.

And, to top it off, Vestiaire Collective also worked with ‘an international committee of activists and fashion sustainability experts’ to answer the question.

These are trusted messengers.

They’re the researchers who really understand sustainability in fashion. And they’re the sustainable fashion influencers that consumers know and trust from their social media timelines.

They’re tagged on the educational Instagram post to add that trust to Vestiaire Collective’s communications:

And they’re amplifying and reinforcing the message through their own channels too:

Whilst in the comments of Vestiaire Collective’s posts other trusted messengers are showing their support — sustainability influencers like Brett Staniland, Venetia La Manna, and Isaias Hernandez who have all been incredibly vocal to their audiences about greenwashing by fast fashion brands.

In working with, and gaining the respect of, these trusted messengers, the trust that their audience have in them gets transferred to Vestiaire Collective.

Which is a superb brand building exercise for them. I, for one, clicked that ‘follow’ button immediately — and I doubt I’m the only one.

The ‘Oblivia Coalmine’ ad by Make My Money Matter: a good example of climate communication?

This blog was first published on my Medium profile.

Make My Money Matter is a campaigning organisation working to shift our financial system away from profiting off fossil fuels and towards investments that build a socially and environmentally just future.

The latest Make My Money Matter campaign focuses on pensions.

The video at the centre of the campaign features Olivia Colman as ‘Oblivia Coalmine’, a power-hungry oil executive who thanks us all for continuing to fund their sky-high profits via our pension providers’ investments in the fossil fuel industry.

So, does the Oblivia Coalmine campaign work well as a piece of climate change communication?

Let’s take a look.

The pros

There are several reasons that the Oblivia Coalmine campaign is a great example of climate change communication – let’s take a look.

Using a trusted messenger

The use of Olivia Colman as a trusted messenger makes the Oblivia Coalmine campaign a strong example of climate communication.

Historically, there has been very little trust involved in communicating climate change. From fossil fuel companies fuelling denial to politicians placing blame on individual citizens to climate scientists whose scientific jargon is hard to decipher, the voices producing most of the messages on climate change have been some of the least trusted — making it less likely that audiences will believe and act on the messages they hear.

Using a household name like Olivia Colman to spread a climate-focused message means it’s likely to go further and reach audiences that might not usually engage with climate communications.

“I hope everyone who sees this ad realises the shocking — but unintended — impacts of our pensions and makes their money matter. It really is one of the most powerful things we can all do to protect the planet.” — Olivia Colman

This is evident in the extensive press reaction to Oblivia Coalmine, with the campaign winning coverage in traditional media outlets like the Telegraph and Independent, as well as reaching pensions-specific media outlets like Pensions Age, sustainability-focused media like Sustainability Beat, and even the climate deniers over at right wing media GB news.

It helps also that Make My Money Matter was founded by well-known film director Richard Curtis (Love Actually, Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral to name but a few), adding a second household name into the mix.

This use of well-known names to increase the impact of climate change messages has started to gain traction, a great example being the ‘Climate Science Translated’ video series by Climate Science Breakthrough which features comedians like Nish Kumar and Jo Brand explaining important concepts in climate science in a fun and accessible way.

But, other than Olivia Colman’s involvement, what else makes the Oblivia Coalmine video effective as a climate comms piece?

A simple message and one that outrages

Pensions and how financial instutions invest and profit of them is a pretty complex topic to get into.

But, the campaign keeps the message simple and memorable for a general audience, not being tempted to go into depth on the ins and outs of how pensions and investments work, but instead focusing on the injustice of our hard-earned pensions being used for no good.

Creative use of satire

The campain uses satire as its core lever, poking fun at the greasy executives of the corporate world to bring light to a very real issue.

In doing something different to the norm of both sustainability marketing campaigns and the greenwashing campaigns of the fossil fuel industry, it stands out in a good way.

Putting the blame back on those profitting from climate change

Too much of the climate change narrative has been commandeered by the fossil fuel industry.

The video effectively exposes the oil and gas industry’s greenwashing marketing techniques through its script to emphasise the point that it is those extracting and burning fossil fuels for profit who are to blame and who are continuing to find shady ways to continue filling their pockets (like benefitting from our pension funds).

My personal favourite script line is: “We’ve even managed to build a few little wind turbines to keep Greta and her chums happy.”

The cons

Whilst there are undoubtedly many successes to point out in the Oblivia Coalmine campaign by Make My Money Matter, there are also two big downsides that are worth highlighting alongside them:

  • It’s yet another ‘doom and gloom’ climate narrative
  • The campaign was produced by Lucky General creative agency, who have worked with some *questionable* brands previously.

Doom and gloom climate narratives

Climate communications often centre around a narrative of loss and despair. We’re all used to seeing images of extreme weather disasters or polar bears clinging onto icebergs, with language of battles, fights, and emergencies.

Think of the WWF’s tendency for a ‘once it’s gone it’s gone’ message on wildlife conservation – like their #lastselfie or love it or lose it campaigns — for example.

That’s all true and factual and important.

But, it isn’t always conducive to action.

Fear and hopelessness can be motivating, but only if there is room for the audience to act and solve the problem. But most climate change comms doesn’t leave room for solutions, for what the alternative could look like.

As Krosnick et al put it in their ‘A Study of Popular Concern about Global Warming’:

“People stop paying attention to global climate change when they realise there is no easy solution for it.”

We need to see climate change communications that move beyond that doom and gloom narrative and which also paint a picture of what a brighter future could look like if we manage to minimise climate change — the pull factors that inspire and motivate audiences to act.

So, in this instance, what if our pensions were no longer invested in fossil fuels? What could that mean for society?

The problem of climate change campaigns by advertising agencies

Make My Money Matter partnered with a creative agency to produce the Oblivia Coalmine campaign.

That isn’t necessarily a problem in itself.

But, creative agencies work with many brands.

And as the Clean Creatives campaign shows us, it’s common for creative agencies to work on oil and gas campaigns — or with other brands that are actively doing harm to the environment.

And this is true in this case.

Make My Money Matter worked with Lucky General.

They’re by no means the worst offender in the advertising agency world — you won’t see them on this year’s Clean Creatives F-list — but they certainly have profitted from some campaigns that are highly questionable in terms of both environmental and social impact, like:

  • Virgin Atlantic: airlines are almost as bad as oil and gas when it comes to greenwashing
  • Princes Tuna: we all know from Seaspiracy that there’s no such thing as sustainable fishing, and tuna is one of the worst offenders for killing dolphins and other marine species
  • Amazon: no words are needed to explain why they’re a bad guy
  • Betfair Gambling: there’s no such thing as fair gambling.

And that’s to name but a few.

So, there are certainly improvements to make.

But, regardless, it’s pleasing to see climate change communications campaigns hitting the headlines and see celebrities backing important campaigns — so perhaps, in this case, the pros outweigh the cons.