Content Ideation in Content Marketing & Link Building Campaigns

Welcome to a new and very special edition of Crawling Mondays today, in which we are going to cover a very unique topic: content creativity and ideation. Whether in content marketing for digital or online PR campaigns, for link building campaigns too. What is the process that specialists follow when creating content that everybody will want to share, to link, to endorse, to promote, that content that you will see in publications that you don't necessarily need to pitch so hard to get coverage from because it's so, so, so good. For that, I have 2 people who are focused on this. And on one hand, I have Shannon McGirt. She's Client Services and Delivery Director at AIRA. And until 3 weeks ago or so, she was the Head of Content and PR. And then on the other hand, I have Mark Johnston, who's the founder of Content Hubble, and he's a creative consultant. So thank you, thank you very much for coming today. So the first question that comes into my mind is like content ideation and creativity, right? Whether in content marketing, link building, or digital PR, how does it fit into this larger SEO process? What is it and what is not? And how do you define it and how important is it? What is the impact of content within the final outcome of a successful PR campaign or link building campaign?

I mean, ultimately, it kind of, you know, link building has always been a huge part of the Google algorithm so that Google can assess what sites are valuable and what sites are valuable for specific results. And so far, that doesn't show any signs of disappearing. And then yeah, there's an interesting question about, you know, how— what's the connection between digital PR and link building? And yeah, there's been some debates online about that recently. And really, I think they just get into a lot of semantics, you know. Is link building part of digital PR? Is digital PR part of link building? And to an extent, I think it doesn't really matter, you know, however you see it. I mean, I call myself a content creator, but I usually am hired— well, was traditionally hired to create content that got links to help with the ranking. Most of these days I'm hired by the teams that are doing that to train them. How do you come up with ideas and how do you figure out if those ideas are going to work? And then I think your question was a little bit more about where does the idea and the production come in and the promotion. I've heard different I've heard different takes on this from people I totally respect, and I think it often just tells you which side of the process they're on. And, you know, I, you know, I've seen people online say that you should spend 60, 70% of your time in promotion. I'm thinking of a few people in particular, but actually that's where they tend to spend their time. And whereas, like, I'm the creative guy, so if you ask me, I'm like, oh, it's all about the idea. But the balance is somewhere in between. I think the idea obviously makes your life easier, and I think the pieces that get huge success, the idea is critical. You can usually grind out a little bit of— well, you can often grind out a little bit of success for a lesser idea, but that will have a limit.

So I think I'm gonna deal with the 2 questions in 2 different parts, if that's okay. So the first one there that you mentioned, Aleyda, about how important or How important is content marketing in the world of SEO? It's still hugely important. Like we know that links are a massive ranking factor. We're gonna see that all over Twitter. It's not changing. And so the need for that and the need for brands to create content that's gonna build their trust and their audience's trust in them, that's relevant, that can get their brand out there, there is still very much a big, big place for that. And it's brilliant to see to an extent our industry thriving through creative agencies that are creating this level of content. Where the idea sits in the content marketing world is really interesting because I have a traditional PR background. I'm a PR through and through, like bread and butter, picking the phone up to journalists back in my traditional PR days, selling stories in, and even to an extent at ERA. I was brought on board as a PR to sell these ideas in and to get those links and pieces of coverage. But I can't underestimate and I can't stress the importance enough that if you don't get your idea nailed and it's not a good idea, you can pitch that story for hours and hours and hours, days, weeks, months, however long it would be. But if the idea isn't there and it's not getting cut through, and because it may have been done before or the data is questionable or whatever it may be, you're not gonna get those results in through the door. So the outreach team are gonna really, really struggle. So to bring it right back down to the foundation, It's so, so important to spend time crafting, creating, and molding an idea that's actually gonna go out and perform. And there are so many different ways you can do that. Like, Mark has definitely supported us at ERA in kind of like, you know, laying out these processes to be able to go off and get these big, big wins and stuff like that. But I can't, even though my background, like to your point, Mark, there where you said, depending on what side of the fence you sit, whether you're the creative or whether you're—

The business.

whether you're the outreacher, I can't actually get away from the fact that the idea is one of the most critical and important parts of that process. Coming up with it, making sure it's robust, making sure it can stand the test of time as well. That's really, really important.

So if I had to ask you, which are the steps that you follow? I know that this question is so simplistic and potentially very high level, but which are the— do you think like the building blocks of your work and those steps that need to be taken yes or yes for the process to be successful at the end of the day?

So I mean, realistically, an idea can come from anywhere, right? You know, and when we're creating content, we're usually taking some data and we are presenting it often in a visual format, and then that will reveal a certain piece of information. We call that the angle. And you can start brainstorming on any one of those, but actually I kind of tend to start with research and I have come up with ideas in each one of those. But one of the challenges I've seen with people that do that, particularly see the formats, they see a format work well and they ideate using that format. The ideas become the same every time. It becomes very formulaic. Here's a topic, we'll add this format, the most Instagrammed, whatever. And there's the idea. But I prefer really to do research. I mean, I use lots of tools like BuzzSumo or SparkToro, which I really like. But the one I've used the most traditionally, because SparkToro is relatively new, has been BuzzSumo. And I will choose the topic area and find out what is popular here. Or I might go to— similarly, I might just go to a niche publication that focuses on this. So to give a really simple example, and then I'm looking to see, I'm looking to see what do people care about here? What do they share? And it's funny that I look at BuzzSumo, which shows you shares. I know there's link count in there, but I do focus on shares because that to me, even though we want links, that to me tells me that people care about this. You can see things where they've managed to generate links, but if people don't share it, I'm like, people don't care quite as much about this as they just naturally socially share it. So I look for that, and then I'm looking for, okay, so that's what they're interested in. And I try to get curious with the topic and learn about the topic. And I ask myself, what have they not told me that I'd really like to know? Or what would I, what would I like to be able to see visually that they haven't shown me? And to give a really quick example of that, there's a little bit of an old one now, but, you know, I was researching for a company that wanted to get coverage in the in the tech startup space. And actually, at the time, I knew very little about tech startup space. So I went to TechCrunch, and I noticed that they were constantly talking about acquisitions— which Google's acquired this company, Apple's acquired this company. And the one thing I just wanted to see was, like, has anyone shown all the different companies that Apple and Amazon and Facebook have acquired and for how much? And they hadn't. And I really just wanted to see it laid out over time, the different amounts, you know, and they've acquired They acquired things like Tumblr, or Yahoo had acquired Tumblr. And, you know, Google, we forget this, but they acquired YouTube back in the day. And actually at the time Facebook acquired WhatsApp, which was like for a ridiculous amount of money. But that's an idea of just going in and seeing what do people care about, what do they talk about, and then what have they not shown us? What else would I like to know? Really, it's about getting engaged and getting curious. What questions do you have? And then, could we answer one of those questions in a way nobody has?

So that is like the process to establish a potential topic. How many of this do you need to have to have like a proper, you know, to say, okay, this is like, this is the list of the 10 topics or the 20 topics that I will pitch to my client or the decision maker and validate. What is the next step, would you say? Because that is the first one, right? The research.

That's a great question, actually. So I, when I'm researching, what I'm looking for, things that resonate, and I'll have 2 windows open. I'll have one where I'm doing the research and one where I have just a GDoc of stuff I'm finding along the way. It's almost like Hansel and Gretel leaving breadcrumbs that I might want to come back and see. And so maybe I'll open up, I'll do BuzzSumo, and I'll put in a topic. Let's say maybe I start in automotive, but then I realize, you know what, there's a lot about electric vehicles. Let's just zoom in on electric vehicles. So then I do electric vehicles and I will go through like 200, 400 results in BuzzSumo, just scanning the headlines, noting anything I see. And if anything particularly interests me, I'll open that in a new tab, go and visit them, and then come back. In the, in the doc, what I'm noting is all the interesting things I find and any questions I have about them at the time. Time, or any ideas that pop to mind. Oh, you know what would be interesting? That would be cool. Or do you know what this reminds me of? It reminds me of this other piece. I wonder if we could do something there. So it's like the thing that resonates plus little seeds of ideas that I'll come back and capture, pull out. I then— I'll come back later and brainstorm off of those or develop them further. And then I will have— I don't like to start filtering down ideas until I have it Very least 60 to 80 ideas, because most of your ideas won't be good. But if you have enough, some of them will be.

60 to 80?

Yeah, easily. Like, I once did ideation for a client that had 49 pages of ideas, and most of them were rubbish, but that's what you've got to accept.

Well, and let's, let's imagine you have 80 ideas. How many do you pick up from 80?

1, 2, I will usually end up pitching 3 to 5.

3, yeah, I was gonna say 3 to 5 is the usual normally, isn't it?

Eventually, but I've got to develop them further. So you'll filter out, you'll filter out 60 of them immediately, right? And then you've got 20, or maybe you filter it down to about 10. Then you try to think a bit more detailed about how you would do it, and then you realize some of them aren't going to work, some of them aren't that interesting, and okay, we've got a few left.

So we follow quite a similar, I guess, a similar process in that sense. So there are 3 when it comes to coming up with the idea and pitching There's really 3 main pillars. So research, ideation, and then validation. And again, the first pillar there around research and to kind of build on what Mark has said, super important. That's when your curiosity really, like really, really, really needs to kick in because as Mark said, a lot of what happens in our industry can often be pick a successful format. I've seen another brand do it well. How do we overlay it together? Wow, it's gonna go and get links. But what we actually need to start thinking about is how we innovate and push those formats forward. And the way that you do that and the way that you come up with new formats ideas that set that bar even higher for the industry is in that research phase. And so Mark's mentioned there that, you know, he would dive into BuzzSumo and see what gets shared and stuff like that. I tend to, again, like set myself up a bit of a swipe file. And again, this has kind of come from Mark. So if I was to go off and, you know, look at travel, anything that I see, I read the news religiously, like all of the time, I'm constantly checking what's going on in the news. And so if I was to come up with a travel idea, I would start at some of the big publications and seeing what people are writing about at the moment. And, you know, what other brands are saying and start to chuck them all in and see if I can pull themes out. And it could be that, you know, I find 10 articles on sustainability. So I'm starting to think, okay, I know that's going to be covered and that's interesting. But what are we actually talking about when it comes to sustainability? Is it eco-hotels or do we actually need to talk about how we improve travel? And should more people be taking trains instead of going up into the air, for example, on airplanes and stuff like that? The other side of it, when I'm kind of building that swipe file, is again, looking at like Reddit, like just see where it takes you because you could go to a dead end, but actually you might find something that no other, you know, no other person's come across that sparks that interest, that could create that emotive connection or emotional connection with your brand that you can build out and build on. And then with ideation, again, more ideas the better. Chuck as much, even if it's just one sentence, or 2 sentences at this point. Like, get it out your head, get it down. And then the other really important bit is validation, which is, yeah, cross-referencing everything and just making sure it hasn't been done and stuff like that. But again, can't stress enough how you've just got to embrace that research stage and just let your mind wander.

Shannon's actually highlighted quite a few important parts there that I just wanted to comment on. So when you're doing your research, If you find that— remember I said I open the headlines in BuzzSumo and I scan them. But if you find that you never kind of go down a rabbit hole, you never open one thing and then actually you want to find out something else, or you search for something or you follow a link in it and you kind of just go off down this path because you engaged and because you got curious. If you find you never do that, then you're really just skimming the surface. You know, it's— you're just going through the motions when all ideas boil down to an emotion. And so if you feel it, if it resonates with you, if it then grabs your curiosity, chances are it's going to grab other people's. And you've got the indication because of all the activity online. But if you never get lost down that rabbit hole, then it means you're not engaging with the topic and you're going to have a difficult time coming up with something that resonates with people. And to not get lost, the simple solution I have for that is I always have where I started open in the first tab so that if I do get lost and go, oh my God, where the hell was I? It's back here. It's in the first tab. The other part is, you know, research is important, but you don't want to just be doing all your research when the situation demands it. Like Shannon says, she's keeping up with the news. You know, I've learned a lot from the people in advertising, and they talk about strategists and creatives— this sounds a little bit cheesy— but essentially being like just curious and students of life. They're just fascinated by all sorts of things. Those are the different things that are swimming about that might allow you to come up with an idea.

Yeah.

You know, I remember one example that springs to mind is, you know, Giselle from— well, Giselle and Danny from Neoman were working on a piece and they saw this brilliant piece by NPR about showing the most popular baby names over time, and they thought there was something else they could do around this. And they, you know, eventually Giselle came up with, what if we looked at the most gender-neutral baby names over time? And the reason she knew that is just because she's constantly absorbing what's going on in the media, and she knew that gender-neutral names was a thing that people were talking about.

Mm-hmm.

that connection too. You know, the research is part of the preparation. There's a great book called A Technique for Producing Ideas, and it's the tiniest book ever, but everyone should just read it no matter what you do. And he talks about preparation being both specific and general. The general is the research, the consuming, the curiosity you do in your life anyway. And the specific is when you have a brief and you need to burrow in and find out what they care about. And you need to do both. And on that topic, one more thing I'd say is the curiosity and the noticing things and asking questions. Those are the kind of— those are the moves, those are the techniques that you need to be creative. And like a sports person, you don't want to only practice those moves on match day. You want to be practicing them all the time, which is what Shannon was doing there. She didn't have a client for that, but she saw something that was curious and she's asking questions. So that's how you develop the kind of muscle strength that when it comes to game day, when you do have to come up with ideas, you're ready. You've got it in the muscle.

It's amazing, the creativity muscle. So one question here, because I do like the way that you have showed the importance of being creative, of being curious, right? To explore ideas. But then there's also this side of things that at the end of the day, these ideas need to align to a business purpose, to a brand. To certain guidelines, to the character of the brand or the purpose of the campaign in the first place. What do you want to achieve at the end of the day? So for example, poker online or casino online saying, oh, which are the poker movies or the casino movies or how many bets they have taken, things like that to connect a little bit online. And so when you see these content ideas, you say, okay, so it makes sense because they do this too. So there's There's an overlay there, there's an alignment there. So where in the process is that validation, or how important it is?

So I think looking at those 3 pillars that I said about the research, the ideation, and then the validation, I'd kind of treat it as a funnel. And the first piece with kind of the research, you want to start really far and wide. And then as you go down with your ideation and then into your validation, that funnel becomes a lot thinner, obviously, at the bottom. A bit like an inbound funnel, if We want to talk about the marketing one. So it's really the validation point where we start to look at our ideas through that kind of lens. We don't really mind too much when we're trying to come up with those 50, 60, 70 ideas if there's a tenuous brand link. It's about keeping those creative juices flowing and to just get everything that's out of your head down because that might spark something else. But when it comes to the validation side of things, and like we've got quite, I think it's like 6 to 8 quite strict check-in points that we'll try and get an idea to me in terms of a process. One of them is relevance and is it relevant to the brand and how tenuous is that link that we're trying to make. We have historically, yeah, we've definitely stretched the guidelines of that and, you know, I think everyone has with what we do. We are now trying to be far more conscious of that because, Aleyda, I think what you said there around, you know, Google looking at it and looking at the relevance of traffic and stuff, looking ahead into the future, this is going to become more and more and more important, right? This is going to, not just for Google, but for the success of our clients' sites. And ultimately, again, going back to the fact that I guess I'm a traditional PR, I really don't like the idea of us pitching something in that a journalist would say, why have you made that? Or what have you done there? Like, how do I marry these up? Because actually it's not just the client's brand that you're representing, you're representing Aera's at the same point. And we need to be really conscious that we're making good quality, relevant content for our clients that are going to go off and get those links. So that's definitely something that like is always in the back of our minds. There is obviously some flex with some of that stuff. So again, to use the example of travel, much broader in terms of, you know, the avenues that you can go down and often the links that you can create with or make with your brands. More niche kind of little pockets of the internet and stuff like that, and what's of interest to them, to a really niche brand like Mark, you mentioned engineering and stuff like that, that's definitely often more of a challenge. But I think that really comes down to like you having an open conversation with your client around like Where are, where are the boundaries for that and where do you sit? Where are your views? So if you want really high relevant traffic, you know, that's hyper relevant and that allows us to just operate on this little pocket of the internet and go out to those really niche engineering sites. Yeah, we're not going to go and probably go viral for you. We're actually probably going to get 8 to 10 really, really high quality relevant links that links into your brand. But if we go bigger, and less relevant and we're clutching at straws to make that tenuous link, there is probably a bigger chance that you're going to appeal to a broader audience. I think Google's going to become more and more tuned into this though, like looking ahead into the future, and I think it's something for our industry to be really aware of. And honestly, the acid test for me is, do we feel confident pitching that in? And would a stranger say, okay, why are Marks Spencer talking about that? Or why are BMW pitching that? Like, there's just no connection there. It comes down to common sense. Mark, I don't know how you feel about that. Similar, I think.

Oh, absolutely. There's so much you can comment on there. But yeah, I mean, I think a lot of it is maybe a bit of a hangover from older link building practices where we used to be able to just build links offsite that nobody really ever saw. Maybe there was directories or articles spinning or whatever, like the old kind of approach. And it didn't really Didn't really impact brand because nobody really saw it, which tells you how, you know, why those links would eventually be devalued by Google. But, you know, the more and more that we create content and we're promoting it to publications where it gets seen, then that is where we start merging with PR and brand, and it does make an impression, and we need to make sure that that fits. One example might be is often to look at the benefit. What do they use your product for, right? So payday loans, you're not going to just talk about loans all the time, but they're using it to get out of financial difficulty. So your content is probably about helping people get out of— helping people in financial difficulty. That's a rich area. There's loads you can do there. I'm not saying it's not challenging. I'm not saying there's the stigma around payday loans in the first place. And by the way, that's one of the things for link building. If your site, if you're in that market and it looks shady or is shady in any way, then, you know, that's the first thing you need to deal with. But yeah, like think about the benefit. What it allows you to do. You know, so like if you're a company selling flights, you don't do all your content about flights because people don't necessarily care about flights. You do it about what that allows you to do, to travel, to explore. It's always about the— well, it's not always about the benefit, but often the benefit of the product is where is a good area for you to tie into the brand relevance. Another example might be the context in which they use it. So it makes perfect sense for a beer company to do lots of content about football, right? Or some kind of sports, because that makes sense, because that's the context in which they appreciate the product. So even though they don't sell football, they're not a sports company, but it makes sense for the brand to be in that space.

100%.

What are the most common scenarios that you see where people fail at this, right? Like, which are the usual mistakes or errors? Or like, I'm pretty sure that you tend to do this. As an SEO myself, the first thing sometimes that I tend to do when I land on a new website is like, I take a look at the code and the metadata. I imagine that you, whenever you see a piece of content out there being shared, linked, or getting a lot of attention, you go and take a look and see, oh, that is amazing. But then in the other cases, you see something published out there too. And so it's like, wow, like why everybody would like to cover that? Or like, or I will have done this in this other way that I know that works much better based on your experience. Right? So which are the— most common errors, mistakes that you see with the actual final piece?

First of all, the data. So say, for example, if I was reading MailOnline and then I saw— I think when you're in our industry, you can very clearly see the kinds of, I want to say, real news versus the campaigns that we pitch in that then become news. And, you know, you click on the link, you go onto the content piece, and you start having a look around and you see what's going on. And I think that one of the biggest things that I start to look for is transparency around the data and what the content piece actually So on all of our pieces, we'll have a methodology, quite a robust methodology. We'll link out to datasets and stuff like that because it increases the authority and I guess the weight behind the piece. There's been cases where I haven't seen methodologies or surveys are a really good one where you'll see that an infographic has been made of a survey pool of 100 people and you're like, how can you be making these really bold claims like 1 in 4 people don't like X, but you've only asked 100 people? Like, how has that gotten— how is that even news?

But I think it shows a little bit what happens with social media nowadays. Like, the oldest, craziest claims are the ones that are going to end up getting attention. And then if you look at the data— well, I looked at the data and say, okay, this is rubbish, but there are so many other people who don't look at the data and they will start sharing anyway, which is bad in any case. But I think that also many publications and many people, many brands end up leveraging that for the wrong purposes. So the craziest claim you do, you know that you're going to do well. Like never mind that you only asked the question to 2,000 people who were not representative at all, right?

Yeah. So that's probably the first one. The other one as well is that I think often comes down to the design and Mark, you'll probably like agree with this one as well, I reckon. Sometimes, and we have definitely been guilty of this, we overcook the creative and we don't let the story or the really interesting insights come through. And often that can be really detrimental to the piece, where actually there's some really cool data points or there's some really nice insights that we could be singing and shouting from the rooftops about. But because we have this big shiny, all-singing, all-dancing visual that looks cool and it feels cool, but it's really complicated, it could be potentially there's another way of illustrating that point and illustrating that story. Yeah, I think they're probably the 2 ones for me.

For me, it's about angle and execution that normally bugs me. And, you know, if people come up with an idea that is, let's do a report on this or a guide on this, that's not an idea. That is, you know, that's just, that's just a format and a topic. But it's like, what is the specific idea in it? Like, get very specific. I mean, you also see this in, say, when people do the history of or the evolution of They just bundle in a whole bunch of facts that happened over time, and you look at it and you think, but what's the point? What is the one thing I'm meant to understand here? You know, the guys at Aira did a report on edtech, and so that itself isn't an angle, but within it they had quite a few angles. They had this beautiful one that they discovered how many teachers are actually funding the technology in their classrooms themselves because the schools are underfunded and they want their kids to have access to technology. That's really— I thought that was really powerful. stat and a powerful angle. So that's— you want to make sure you're finding something strong in there. And actually, for me, I'm quite big into data viz and the visual side of the execution. And I think a lot of times, again, people don't really make the point clear. A visualization should help you see and understand the information. A lot of the times it's just making it pretty. And sometimes I hear people say, oh, we found this thing and it was ugly, so we're going to make it pretty. And I'm like, no, like, make it better, make it easier to understand. Either reveal new information or present it in a way that makes it easier to understand. There's actually, I would say, the most powerful example of what I mean by this happened last year and continues this year. How much easier have we found it to understand what's happening in different countries with coronavirus when we see the curves? You know, it's probably been one of the most powerful examples of data visualization, and some of the newspapers have done an exceptional job. You know, because we talk about these numbers and you think, well, what does that mean? And then you see the curve and you see it relative to each other and you're like, holy crap, I get it. Let's stay indoors. This is crazy. But that's probably been one of the most impactful uses of data visualization I've seen. My only point in our context is notice how seeing that helped you understand. That's the purpose of visualization.

Yeah.

And I think that's often missed. I think we just think it's making it pretty or giving the journalists something to stick in their post. But it's not. It's about how can the way that this is presented make us see it in a different light.

Perfect.

Excellent. So to start wrapping up a little bit, I wanted to ask you if you could share, please, some of the best pieces or examples of content that you have seen out there in general, then the ones that you feel the most proud of too, because I'm sure that you have participated in amazing pieces that probably many of you and the people who are watching also will even recognize, and it will be great showcase a little bit of work? And then those pieces that you have seen out there also that you have said, why, right?

Ah, so many, so many to choose from. I'll name a few. So I really liked, um, the guys at Era did a series of pieces about, very simple, that you put in your age. You know how there's lots of projections about the, by the when new technology is going to become a reality. Because we're in this crazy world now where like AI and AR and everything coming together, things we're going to be able to see and do in the 3D printing, the things we'll be able to see and do in the future is crazy. But if they say like, okay, this will, um, a 3D— what is it, like a robotic pharmacist will be a reality by 2050 or whatever it is— those things are a little abstract. So they created this piece where you just put your name, your age in And it's like, by the time you're 49, like, they're like, 10% of the clothing you're wearing will be attached to the internet. And these were like real facts. And it was just that little bit they did that made it— that put you in the picture. Very simple, but very compelling. I like that. Shannon likes to always throw up a piece about which countries drink the most, purely because I told her it wouldn't work and then it did. Because it was her piece and she loves bringing that up. So I'm going to get in there before her. But, um, the things I've seen out there recently, I really like— I really like the Sandtone piece. I think that got a lot of coverage where Rise at 7 looked at the color of different beaches around the UK because it's so simple and it's something people really care about. And then they compared it to shopping for paint and getting the right color for your house. They had this nice visual metaphor. And then I'll pick one more. The guys at NeoMam, James Barnes did a piece that I was kicking myself because when I saw it, I was like, that was so obvious, how did I not see that? That's the thing with creativity, it's obvious afterwards. It's like a murder mystery, like, oh, I see it, but the clever thing was figuring out in the first place. There's a brilliant piece called— that looks at the vocabulary of hip-hop artists. It's on a great site called pudding.cool.

That was gonna be the one that I was gonna say, Mark.

And it's— I mean, there's so much in pudding.cool that I love, But I knew about that, Pete. They made that years ago. They analyzed all the different words that different hip-hop artists use and therefore who has the biggest vocabulary. But James Barnes from NeoMam came up with the idea recently to— well, last year— which world leaders have the largest vocabulary. And obviously in the era of Trump as well, that's quite— what would you call it— quite compelling because obviously it's something that I think people think about. And I just, when I saw that, I was like, that was so obvious. Why did I never think of that?

I think Puddin, like, it's one of my favorite sites for inspo, the one that Mark just said there. But if I had to name 3 that I have looked at and thought, ah, I wish I made that, or wish like the team had made it, or I wish that was my idea. The first one would be the future of the office worker. You know, that again became quite a really popular format. I think we saw a future of a remote office worker and future of a gamer. But the one that really kickstarted it was a lovely looking lady called Emma. She was basically— I think the brand, it was called like Fellows or something.

Yeah.

They went way back into medical kind of studies and blog posts that were done by university lecturers and doctors and scientists and started to look at the hypothesis and the results and the outcomes of office work. And, you know, our backs were hunched over, our hands and our fingers were all crunched up, and our eyes were becoming smaller because we were squinting. And they essentially made a real-life person that had all of these ailments to them and to their body. And then I think there was a video that supported it as well. But I loved that because again, it took something that was quite abstract for people to understand and something that people are quite curious about. You know, we're told that actually sit up straight, you know, your posture and stuff like that, but we don't necessarily know the impact of sitting in a desk chair for 8 to 10 hours a day is gonna have. And Emma, albeit bless her, she didn't look— she wasn't the prettiest in the world and she definitely had some health problems going on. I think again looking at that campaign I was like, yeah, that's really good, like that conceptualizes something that nobody else has and I really like that. Mark did one with, I think it was Go Compare or Confused, around potholes.

Confused.com.

Confused, yeah. You did a lot of Freedom of Information Act requests, right? And you basically—

They did it. I helped them with it.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. I'll clear that up. So the internal team did a load of Freedom of Information Act requests and essentially pulled together the depth of the UK's pothole problem, which comes up. And the thing that was really smart about it is it was a perfect blend of creative and PR because potholes are spoken about about every single winter in the UK press. Like, they probably are globally, but specifically in the UK press, it seems to be a real problem from like January through to March when snow comes in and, you know, the roads are a bit of a mess and stuff like that. But it was this long scrolling graphic that basically compared the depth of the potholes if they were all put together to like the Eiffel Tower. And as you were scrolling on your computer screen, you saw dinosaurs that were there. And it really, again, helped make something that affects people every day. People are getting their tyres buckled and bent and stuff like that because of driving over these potholes. And it made it very real and it helped us understand just how many potholes are in the UK and what the problem was. The latest one that I absolutely love was from Louise Parker and her team, where again, video content. I think we're going to see some more and more of that. But they got a scrap car, and they went to a shooting range, and I think it was called like the Rage Range or something like that. And they just let people shoot this car and let off some steam because of all of the quarantine and stuff in the UK with air rifles. And the video was explosive, and it looked like, you know, something out of Call of Duty. But again, that was really, I think, again, it's not data viz in any sense, but it was something that really struck a chord.

Yeah.

Because it was emotive and we can all, you know, we all want to be out of our houses. We're in a third lockdown. People know that it's not very good right now. And to set up this range and it was really, really relevant to the brand as well. It was just, yeah, I looked at that and thought, oh yeah, you've got a good one there. That was good.

It's good timing too. They aligned well the timing and context for that one. That is great. Amazing. Amazing. Thank you very much. This is a great way to finish today's episode. And as you can see, well, they have I have tons of ideas. If you have any questions, if you have any doubts, please, please leave your questions below. I'm going to pin them so they can come back and answer any doubts. And then of course, follow them. You can follow Shannon, you can follow Mark on Twitter. They are very active too. They're always sharing very insightful information. And I know that you, Mark, you started also your newsletter not so long ago too.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

In Mark newsletters too. So thank you very much for your time. I learned a lot and I'm pretty sure that the audience has learned too. And of course, if you liked this video, remember to like this video, to subscribe to the channel. There's much more coming like this. And thank you very much for your attention and see you in the next Crawling Mondays.

Bye-bye. Thank you guys.

Bye-bye. Cheers. Crawling Mondays.