The Content Engine

Striking a balance between technical accuracy and engageability in #content is challenging. The CGAP team came to us to overcome this hurdle and we couldn’t be more proud of the results. The dedication of Tammy Mehdi and Jahda Swanborough and our team’s editorial and creative excellence has resulted in a three-year partnership that has produced hundreds of empowering and evidence-based pieces of original content. Each week, we connect in a newsroom-style meeting where we exchange fresh story ideas to support CGAP’s communication goals. Every content piece is produced in collaboration with CGAP technical teams and communication leads. Each idea, piece of copy, and visual is run by specialists to ensure all content is informative and accurate. TCE is there to make sense of the detail and nuance that can come with complex research, and to help ensure every post is engaging to an online audience. The numbers speak for themselves 🤩👇 https://lnkd.in/ef9irbcu #financialinclusion #contentmarketing #SDGs

Nothing infuriates your leadership more than to hear that the competition is doing something better than they are 😏😏😏 Use 'outside' data to make your case.

Here are three things our Co-CEO Roberts Rabcevskis learned at the CHARGE - Powering Energy Brands in Lisbon last week, which explored the latest in branding and communications in the #energy sector. 1. Branding can change minds The clean energy transition is making energy companies rethink branding. In his (singing!) panel session Lars Bonderup Bjørn, CEO at EWII said: “The most important thing is your message and content”. Changing brand perception takes time and can only happen through the regular stories you tell, which must reflect genuine action. Every month, every week, every day. When both - branding and content - are done well, you create the power to drive change, build trust and ensure global brand affinity 💥 2. People should be the main character in all branding decisions Many comms leaders agreed that people should be at the centre of organisational stories. Employee advocacy was a much discussed topic and Kate Aunaas Ingram, VP of Global Attraction & Mobility at Statkraft, advised that comms teams and HR departments should work hand-in-hand to surface stories around talent, their expertise and impactful work. “Let’s not keep our people the best kept secret in the energy space” said Kate in her inspiring Ted-style keynote. At the end of the day, people build trust with people. 3. Branding is safe from Gen AI… for now There was little talk on Generative AI which was surprising. Roberts spoke with Rune Kirt and Louis Rose from Kirt & Thomson, who are helping organisations develop visual concepts of their innovations in the energy space. From this conversation, Roberts realised that as rebrands are: - complex creative work - a change management exercise that brings in so many different stakeholders - require close human-to-human interaction and trust… … Gen AI is unlikely to make an impact in the conceptualisation, creative direction and diplomacy that is needed in brand development in the short to medium term. #content #sdgs #energytransition

It was a joy to wield the moderator’s 🎤 at the launch of Forum Circle, the World Economic Forum alumni network.  I talked career journeys with Cynthia Hansen and Fernando Alonso Pérez-Chao. The superpower Cynthia has taken with her from the Forum? Systems thinking, or the ability to solve problems by seeing the big picture. Meanwhile, I learned that Fernando continues the Forum mission of ‘improving the state of the world’ by ironing his trousers - and leading the fight for LGBTQ+ inclusion at a time when same-sex relations are still criminalised in many countries. As an ex-journalist, one of the things I miss most about my time at the Forum - along with the amazing colleagues - is the sense that you have a front-row seat on history being made. It was a brief return to that feeling as I listened to Forum President Børge Brende give an update on the state of the world. Which is, in a nutshell, fraught. Borge pointed out that the last time we tried “a multipolar world without multilateralism” was in the thirties, and that debt levels were the highest seen since the Napoleonic Wars. As he put it,  “We need to find a path to civilised, win-win cooperation.” Kudos to Jaci Eisenberg for organising a thought-provoking and hugely enjoyable event.

Introducing The Content Cocktail 🍸 our endeavour to bring the Geneva digital communications community together to discuss all things content over a cold drink. We meet regularly at The Content Engine HQ and are always looking for new people to join us. Each session has either a presentation, a panel discussion or an activity to spark inspiration. If you’re based in the Geneva area and would like to meet like-minded digital comms professionals, send us a message and we’ll put you on the guest list for the next event.

“I avoid the news.” – say 36,000 people surveyed worldwide by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. How do you tell your story, no matter how sombre it may be, without turning audiences away? 314 media leaders shared their plans in a Reuters Institute 2024 survey, (with some helpful tips from us about how to action these): 💡 Better explanation of complex stories ↳ Break big numbers or innovations down into relatable content. Measure change in lives affected rather than in degrees Celsius. 💡 Solutions/constructive journalism ↳ Talking about problems inspires hopelessness, doom and gloom. Talking about solutions inspires hope. 💡 More inspiring human stories ↳ People relate to people. Show faces, names and voices of the people involved, affected or influential in your work. 💡 Simpler language/accessible formats ↳ The average American is considered to have a readability level equivalent to a 12 to 14 year old. Use that as your test - and remember simple doesn’t mean dumb. 💡 Diverse presenting reporting team ↳ We live in an interconnected and diverse world. Your stories need to reflect that reality. Bring in diverse perspectives to both appeal to more audiences and strengthen your communications.

Last week our Editor In Chief, Ceri Parker (Radford), took a trip down memory lane and a glimpse into the future, all at the same time. "I was in Paris for the XYZ conference on generative AI, held in start-up paradise Station F, and I stayed in an area I knew well from a year in Paris as a student many years ago. While so much was nostalgically the same (the metro signs, the smell of croissants, the airy disregard for the concept of a pedestrian crossing), it was also a different world...." Read the full post 👇 https://lnkd.in/esNJYhyc

The Zombie Engine: a short story co-written by every single member of The Content Engine team with illustrations created by Generative AI and one of our designers, Nell. Using an app called Playground, which creates text to image models based on the Stable Diffusion XL model architecture, Nell Prieto constructed some spine-tingling posters and brought our Zombie apocalypse to life. “The app is very intuitive and easy to use. While it could use some improvements, the results are decent enough.” How did she prompt it? “I just picture the poster in my head and start coming up with prompts based on that. I usually have to tweak things a lot before I get good results. I’ve realised that if you really know what you want to create, it’s much easier to describe the image.” Luckily our thrilling tale got the creative juices flowing 🧟 You can read it here: https://lnkd.in/eqPDSBga

Here is what we’ve learnt from experimenting with AI voiceover. ✅ The right tool can give you scarily good results that sound natural around 80% of the time ✅ You can tweak the voice to change the age, gender and accent - ensuring it really enhances the story ✅ Logistics are minimal and results instant. We save a vast amount of time not needing to book a studio slot or to align with people’s recording schedules. ✅ If a customer isn’t happy with the first version we can quickly and easily tweak, refine and produce a second with no extra cost. ✅ AI voice overs could be a cost-effective way of making all content accessible for blind people and those with sight loss. Despite all these positives we think this negative is really important 👇 ❌The overall effect isn’t yet as magical and dynamic as the talented humans we work with ❌ AI voice overs need to be checked carefully as the odd key word is sometimes missed and names can be mis-pronounced We’re lucky to have customers who are willing to collaborate with us on content innovations like this and will continue to test the exciting new content production tools out there, but we hope we will always need humans to help us create content too. Has your organisation experimented with AI voiceover? Listen to the one below and tell us what you think. #AIGeneratedContent #ContentMarketing

Great content starts with great ideas. But how do you summon inspiration? We asked some of our editorial team, expert storytellers who pitch hundreds of content pieces a month, for tips on how to stay creative under pressure. Wise words Farahnaz Mohammed-Cormack, Prachi S., Edward Brydon & Holly Goodall 🙌 #creativity #content #ideation