Content, Curated. – Issue #16

Despite life essentially grinding to a halt for a few months, time is still flying by and we’re already half way through June.

Working from home certainly has it’s challenges, and if you’re anything like me, your awesome neat ‘WFH Space’ you flexed on Instagram has already turned into a mess.

There’s a lot going on in the news, but it does seem like we’re slowly seeing more normality behind the big headlines, which is evident in the fact that some of the content pieces featured this month have performed really well.

Made something you’re proud of? I’d love to see it! Send it over to markprtr@gmail.com 💌

Must-see Content 👀

Window Swap 🔭

Lets start with something positive. Window Swap is an awesome lockdown project where people upload videos of the view from their window, allowing you to seamlessly flick through people’s perspectives from around the world. I lost a good 15mins to this and found it oddly calming. I also thought about adding the view out of my window, but number 23 still haven’t put their recycling bin back and it ruins the whole shot. Get your shit together Neil.

Reddit Comment Activity 💬

This is a great piece that essentially encapsulates all of the things people have been up to during lockdown, by looking solely at the comment activity on different subreddits.

The Junkyard Quiz 🚗

I always find these types of pieces fun, though I’m completely terrible at this one. The aim is to scan the junkyard and look for iconic cars from film and TV. You’ll have to be quite the avid film watcher to complete this one.

The Clown Prince of Crime 🤡

We used to see pieces like this all the time back in the day, so this piece evokes a lot of nostalgia for me. This format actually works really well for the purpose of this piece, despite how terrifying the 2012 Joker is.

100,00 Faces 😞

A more sobering piece. 100,000 Faces is a project to highlight the sheer number of people who have succumbed to COVID19 in the US, and while all the faces are generated by a computer, they “…provide a demographically accurate view of the actual covid-19 victims, accounting for age, race, and gender.”

An Illustrated Guide to Masked Wrestlers 👹

Once again, The Pudding have put together an awesome piece that looks at the masks and stories of wrestlers. It’s incredibly well made and presented perfectly.

One Hit Wonders 🎵

This is such a good idea. It looks at the percentage of plays from an artist’s top songs versus the percentage of plays from other songs. Simple presentation but really effective.

Different Ocean/Sea Things Explained Visually 🌊

Can you tell I get a lot of inspiration from Reddit yet? If you can look past the potato quality picture, I thought this was a really interesting way of looking at different ocean/sea related ‘things’. We don’t often see physical objects being used for content campaigns except maybe link bait products, or ‘visualising’ the amount of sugar in a drink etc., but they can be very effective.

Visualisations of Movies 🎥

I’ve featured stuff like this a few times now, but I think they’re great. This one encompasses more classics, and presents it slightly differently. Neat.

The Men’s Health Gap 👨

This is an interesting piece that looks at ‘the men’s health gap’. What is the health gap? The piece explains it much better than I could: “Health gaps are differences in the prevalence of disease, health outcomes (both physical and mental), or access to healthcare across different groups. These groups can be anything from ethnic to socio-economic. In this study we have examined the health gap by gender across 156 countries around the world.”

More Great Content…

PR Stunts

The below campaigns may not have been intentional PR stunts, however they did attract substantial attention from the media.

Barnard Castle Eye Test 🍺

I’m aware Brewdog are rough around the edges, but this limited release taking a jab at Dominic Cummings for flouting lockdown rules is a genius idea. The original page they used has over 100 LRD, but unfortunately just redirects to their homepage now and is probably being treated as a soft 404 (not that they care).

Discovered via James Brand 🕵️

The Table Vault 📱

The Table Vault is the ultimate answer to antisocial phone use. It discreetly locks away up to 10 phones out of sight, and will only open once a predetermined timer has run out.

Discovered via Andy Chadwick 🕵️

Must-read Articles ☕

Below are some articles that are absolutely worthy of a read during your coffee break:

Must-follow Marketer 👑

Who: Abi Bennetts, Digital PR Strategist at Digitaloft

Why: Abi regularly shares insightful stuff on both her Twitter and her own site, where she posts her newsletter, Work in PRogress. As well as sharing interesting campaigns and self-learning resources, she also interviews other awesome people who work in PR, so be sure to sign up and go through the back catalogue. She’s also speaking at RemoteSEOMeetup this week, so I recommend attending if you can!

To Conclude

That rounds off the latest issue of Content, Curated. As always thanks to those of you who sent over content, and I highly recommend you follow anyone I’ve credited as they either have a good eye for campaigns, is making good content, or both. If you’re not yet subscribed, feel free to do so in order to be notified of future issues, and follow me on Twitter if you want.

Cheers,

Mark.

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