Senior executives are hungry for quality branded content - but rarely get what they want.
Some 71% of C-suite executives reckon most branded content is boring, expected and repetitive according to a unique study of reading habits in the boardroom carried out by Raconteur. The report also shows that brands who can get it right can win a valuable new audience.
Freddie Ossberg, founder and CEO of Raconteur says: “It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it.”
“Too many brands are going for the forgettable middle, where you don’t develop an opinion on anything, you’re just trying to play it safe.”
Raconteur’s survey of 500 executives across the UK and Europe, The elusive C-suite: content that cuts through, provides insights into how and when senior business leaders consume content; how to create content that gets read; and how to distribute it so that it finds the right audience.
Research from Edelman and LinkedIn shows the power of branded content done right: around 50% of senior executives said that a company’s thought leadership directly led them to award business to that firm.
A 2015 study said that there are 4.6 billion pieces of content produced daily, and that figure can only have risen since. This blizzard of messages means users are trying every trick in the book to insulate themselves from all but their most-trusted sources, including spam filters, ad blockers and developing new ways of skimming and sampling content.
“People filter more quickly than ever before, they’re more intense in that process,” says Joshua Graff, UK Country Manager & VP EMEA of LinkedIn. But he says that when business people find content that is useful, they will spend their valuable time to read or watch it - properly.
“People are reading long-form content” says Graff. “There are nine million CEOs on LinkedIn today, and they are reading content that’s on average 1,000 words… that’s taking them longer than 5 minutes.”
Misha Jessel-Kenyon is Head of Digital Publishing at Raconteur
Learn how to create content that engages the C-suite. Download Raconteur’s exclusive research report: The elusive C-suite: content that cuts through
