PR-Report features a workshop report from a not unprominent company. It should be of great interest to all those responsible for content marketing and digital media. It comes from one of the most successful departments for digital marketing communication ever - Bosch. This way to the complete article as pdf.
The background of a great transformation success
Bosch is not just anyone when it comes to content marketing. According to Unicepta, Bosch has encouraged more people to actively engage with content via social media than any other German company. Particularly remarkable: despite more than 4 million user responses annually, Bosch has not lost control of its topics. On the contrary, the content published by Bosch ITSELF generates more shares, likes and other engagements than all EXTERNAL publications about Bosch combined. This means that the company's internal media house has more communicative power in its own topic areas than all editorial departments, influencers, and private publishers worldwide.
Corporate Communications becomes a "Publishing House" - the concept works.
"Data-based decisions" is what Head of Communications Christoph Zemelka calls in PR REPORT the "basic mechanics" for achieving such results. Anchoring data-based decision-making in a corporation or even just a teram requires hard and patient work. You need a clear goal, a convincing concept and staying power.
- The German PR Prize / Unicepta names Bosch "Thought Leader 2018" with the "highest impact in the digital space"
- Bosch calls itself a "publishing house" as a communicator
- and we call Bosch: our "lighthouse customer
Three lead agencies and one content marketing process
And what is the story behind this success by head of communications Christoph Zemelka and his head of digital Micha Schmidtke? Three lead agencies are named in the article:
- C3 (for Content Marketing).
- Sapient Nitro (for Technology & Innovation).
- and .companion (for Analysis & Decision Support)
Of the three, .companion has been around the longest. From 2015, when we started with the external data analytics services for Paid, Owned and Social. At the time, Bosch was running 350 social media channels and websites globally, organizing exponentially growing digital communications in the usual channel-centric silo structure. Teams were overloaded; tools tools tools were completely dominating; content, topics, quality and performance of content and of marketing came far too short. What to do.
In 2016, Bosch decided to stop organizing digital communication by channel. At this point, the first cornerstone for the transformation had already been laid: cross-silo KPIs and reports on media performance. This was followed by the reorganization of processes and the development of a topic-oriented organization. This was done along a uniform "content process" that was laid across (almost) all silos.
- Strategy & Planning
- Creation & Production
- Publication & Distribution
- Marketing & Promotion
- Analysis & Optimization.
The process is a continuous loop (Infinite Loop, just like the postal address of Apple HQ). Since then, the content loop has been used to manage "ongoing communications" as well as "events and campaigns". The decisive factor is the day-to-day business. .companion supports it continuously and intensively so that teams can make data-based decisions about content and media.
The results are more than impressive: content quality, media impact, and digital footprint have risen continuously - even though the number of Bosch channels is constantly increasing despite consolidation. Today, there are 500 channels, and tomorrow....the content loop will be able to cope without complaint. Respect for this management achievement at Bosch!
Learn more now - with or without conversation
Anyone who wants to know what it means in concrete terms when a company's marketing and communications departments want to transform themselves into a "digital publishing house" is welcome to ask in Stuttgart, or, of course, here in Berlin.
HERE now the entire article from the PR Report. We wish you a nice Long Read!
